:: Annual Reports A n n u a l R e p o r t F o r 1999 - Origin of the Library - The Society of Libri Prohibiti - The Current State of the Library's Collections - The Operation and Activities of the Library - Our Results in the Past - Our Publications - Our Results in 1999 - Our New Publication - Goals of the Library for 2000 - A Word of Thanks Origin of the Library The library of "prohibited books" arose from the need to collect in one place and to provide wider public access to the production of exile and samizdat publishers and thus to fill in one of the "blank spots" of our recent history. We are convinced that one of the pillars of democracy is the citizen's right of access to information without any kind of obstacles, and we are trying to contribute to the fulfillment of this right. In order for us to provide this service, the library must be private and independent. After a year of overcoming many legal, financial, accommodation, and other problems, we succeeded in opening the library in October 1990 on Podskalská Street, with the financial and technical assistance of the Czechoslovak Charter 77 Foundation and with the participation of many noted representatives of culture, including the President of the Republic. Subsequent activity of the library was made possible by the generous help of many like-minded supporters. Thus there was created in the Czech lands a truly unique and irreplaceable library, which until then had been lacking here. The basis of the library was the archival copies of the samizdat Edice Popelnice, which Jiří Gruntorád issued, and further publications acquired by him during the period of "normalization" through purchase or exchange. The collection then consisted of about 2000 books, a representative collection of magazines, and other documents. The Society of Libri Prohibiti In view of the fact that the library needed the status of a legal entity, on April 24, 1991, we established and registered with the
Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic a non-profit association of citizens- The Society of Libri Prohibiti- whose primary goal is support and help during this time of establishing and building up our library. Members' contributions are voluntary. Among the founding members of the society are the writers Václav Havel, Ivan Klíma, Hana Ponická, Zdeněk Urbánek, Ludvík Vaculík, and Jan Vladislav. Also rector emeritus of Charles University in Prague, Radim Palouš; rector emeritus of Masaryk University in Brno, Milan Jelínek; the former director of the Institute for Contemporary History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Vilém Prečan; the former Minister of Culture, Pavel Tigrid; journalist and former general director of Czech Radio, Vlastimil Ježek; director of the Masaryk Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Jaroslav Opat; director of the Center for Theoretical Studies at the Philosophical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Ivan Havel; and the distinguished Catholic teacher and publisher Oto Mádr. In accordance with the statutes on civic associations, the representative of the society is Jiří Gruntorád. The society today has 175 members. In addition to the named founders they include the writers Jan Beneš, Jiří Gruša, Petr Kabeš, Petr Král, Alexandr Kliment, and Jaroslav Strnad; literary scholars František Kautman, Antonín Měšťan, and Jiří Brabec; Vojtěch Balík, director of the National Library; the former Czech ambassador to Bulgaria, Petr Pospíchal; Mirko Janeček, publisher of Kanadské listy; and other exile and samizdat publishers, publicists, and friends of the library. The Society of Libri Prohibiti invites all interested people who can and want in any way to help our library, to become members. The Current State of the Library's Collections The library consists of collections of samizdat and exile literature, of an archive of documents, and an audiovisual section- in all, about 19,000 library units and about 1600 periodical titles. We expand the collections through purchases, exchange, and gifts from friends, both at home and abroad. We make copies, including electronic copies, of borrowed materials which we do not have in the archive in the original and also of valuable, unique materials, and we lend these copies for use in our
reading room. The library's collection is divided into the following sections: 1. Czech Samizdat Monographs and Magazines The fund has more than 9600 units from the 1970's and l980's, both editions (e.g., Edice Expedice, Petlice, Popelnice, Česká expedice, Kvart, Kde domov můj, etc.- approximately 100 editions and publishers) and also publications not released in editions. We have 330 titles of magazines (e.g., Information about Charter 77, Information about the Church, Revolver Revue, Vokno, Historické studie, Kritický sborník, Střední Evropa, etc.), and all the significant periodicals are complete. 2. Czech Exile Monographs and Magazines The collection includes 5100 units, representing 35 publishers which had a continuous program of editions, and more than 400 individual publishers and institutions which issued publications in Czech. We have the complete productions of the following publishers: 68' Publishers, Index, Poezie mimo domov, Rozmluvy, Opus bonum, Arkýř, Konfrontace, Edice satiry, Framar, Moravian Library, etc. We also have more than 600 titles of exile periodicals, including complete volumes of the magazines Svědectví, Listy, Studie, Proměny, 150,000 slov, Obrys, Západ, Reportér, Hlas domova, Text, Kanadské listy, Sklizeň, Skutečnost, České slovo, Národní politika, Právo lidu, Paternoster, and others, including the period from the end of the 1940's to the present. 3. Monographs and Magazines of the First and Second Resistance The collection contains 57 monographs of legionnaires' literature from the First World War, 470 monographs of the Czech war exile from 1939 to 1945, and some magazines from the period of the First and Second World Wars. 4. Foreign Samizdat Monographs and Magazines The collection has more than 160 library units of Slovak and more than 590 units of Polish samizdat; 37 titles of Slovak and 180 titles of Polish periodicals. Russian samizdat and periodicals from the former German Democratic Republic are marginally represented. 5. Foreign Exile Monographs and Magazines The collection has more than 360 library units of Slovak exile monographs and 50 magazine titles; 215 volumes of monographs of the Russian and Ukrainian exile from 1920 to 1990, along with several magazines. Polish exile literature is represented by only several dozen publications and magazines.
6. Foreign Language Monographs and Magazines The collection of foreign language books relating to Czechoslovakia and other communist countries or to the issue of human rights, including translations from Czech, has more than 1700 volumes and 360 magazine titles. 7. Documentation and Archives Documents concerning violations of human and civic rights in the former Czechoslovakia and the whole Soviet bloc form a large part of this collection. It is a collection of written documents which arose mostly from the activities of the independent initiatives of Charter 77, the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS), the East European Information Agency, etc., and also the works of individual authors and groups circulated by samizdat; feuilletons, political commentary, occasional texts, petitions, letters, etc. We took further steps toward processing these last year, and at the moment we have more than 900 records ready. We also have unpublished works and manuscripts (260 units), documents and writings about the activity of exile organizations, publishers, and editors, including correspondence, samizdat posters, flyers, and archives of photographs and newspaper clippings. 8. Reference Library - General Subject and Secondary Literature Here we have books, magazines, and other writings about samizdat and exile literature; catalogs; bibliographic collections; dictionaries; and biographical and dissertation work, in all more than 600 items. 9. Audiovisual Section This arose in 1993 from the initiative of PhDr. Aleš Opekar. Today we own recordings of underground and non-conformist music on 1100 cassettes, 80 CD-ROMs, and 80 gramophone records; audio recordings of underground lectures and seminars (about 450); video documentaries and films of amateur production (about 330) on more than 200 videocassettes. We try to obtain recordings directly from the originators, therefore of the best possible technical quality. The Operation and Activities of the Library The headquarters and reading room of Libri Prohibiti, which has been in operation for ten years now, are located at Senovážné Square No. 2 in Prague 1. We are open four days a week, Monday through Thursday afternoons, from 1:00 to 5:00. Publications are available to the reading public without charge, the majority of them for use in our reading room, which has 18
places. We loan out multiple copies upon the posting of a security deposit. We also provide standard services, including research, copying, and consultation. We are beginning to fulfill the goal for which our library was founded: to complete the production of exile and samizdat material, including audio and visual. We own materials that are available nowhere else in the Czech Republic or even the world, and the greater part of this material is recorded in electronic form. In view of this our library has a fundamental significance for improving the information situation in this area. The library's collections are extensive and besides literature and literary research include history, political science, philosophy, theology, sociology, culture and politics, human rights, international relations, and more. Our library is therefore indispensable for getting to know our recent past, whose various aspects it is possible to research in our work place. Our services are used by various institutions at home and abroad (for example, the Institute for Czech Literature and the Institute of Contemporary History, both at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic; the Museum of Czech Literature; the British Library in London; the Institute of Eastern and Central Europe at Amsterdam University, etc.), by researchers, high school and university students, Czech Television, publishers, journalists, and others. Not only Czech but also foreign students search for material for their dissertation work here. We also make practical training possible for second- and third-year students of the Institute for Information Studies and Library Science at the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University. Our Results in the Past We have contributed to the publication of the following: Johanna Posset: "Česká samizdatová periodika, 1968-1989"; "Minulost a dějiny v českém a slovenském samizdatu, 1970-1989" (compiled by J. Vlk, V. Vaňková, and J. Novotný); Michal Přibáň: "České krajanské a exilové časopisy po roce 1945"; Aleš Zach: "Kniha a český exil"; František Knopp: Česká literatura v exilu"; Lubomír Machala: "Průvodce po nových jménech české poezie a prózy"; "Texty The Plastic People of the Universe" (compiled by Jaroslav Riedel); Ivan Jirous: "Magorův zápisník" (edited by Michal Špirit); Martin Pilař: "Underground: Kapitoly o českém literárním undergroundu"; Gertraude Zand: "Totaler Realismus und Peinliche Poesie: Tschechische Untergrund-Literatur 1948-1953"; Václav Havel:
"Spisy/1-7/" (prepared by Jan Šulc). Our research has also been used for compiling the personal bibliographies of Jan Lopatka, Bohumil Hrabal, Jan Patoçka, Sergej Machonin, Václav Havel, Zbyněk Hejda, Jiří Němec, also a bibliography of translations by Roger Schutz, and in many further cases. The library's collections, including audiovisual, are being computer catalogued with the library ISIS/MAKS system, and we are currently completing them and working on their revision. We are also enlarging our database with records of desiderata and are creating bibliographic collections, in addition to processing article bibliographies of important samizdat magazines, for example Kritický sborník, Host, Historické studie, Obsah, and others, of which we have more that 5000 records. We have published some of these bibliographies in Kritický sborník. We are gradually issuing bibliographies of the following samizdat editions: Jungiana, Nové cesty myšlení, Spisy Jana Patočky, Česká expedice, Krameriova expedice, Popelnice, Expedice (black and light series), Alef, and Knihovna Střední Evropy. Our Publications Catalog of Books of the Czech Exile In 1995 with the financial help of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic we issued, through the publisher Primus, our Catalog of Books of the Czech Exile, 1948-1994, as we called it. It is actually a combination of bibliographic books issued in the West by Czech publishers and of the catalogs of three Prague libraries (Libri Prohibiti, the National Library, and the library of the Institute for Czech Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic). Several years of preparation, including research in the National Library and the library of the Institute for Czech Literature, preceded its publication. The catalog, sold out today, contains 3111 bibliographic records, has 394 pages and a title and subject index. It was compiled by Jiří Gruntorád. Communications of the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted and Reports of the East European
Information Agency In 1996 we bibliographically processed the Communications of VONS (the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted) and Reports of the East European Information Agency. These bibliographies are available in electronic form and also as a printed catalog (an internal printing by Libri Prohibiti). This project was made possible with the help of the Foundation for the Development of a Civic Society (NROS). Information about Charter 77: An Article Bibliography 1978-1990 Within the framework of the book edition of the article bibliography Information about Charter 77, we electronically processed the basis for the printing of this publication, and in March 1998 we issued through Doplněk publisher Information about Charter 77: An Article Bibliography 1978-1990. The Foundation for the Development of a Civic Society from the PHARE Program of the Commission of the European Union supported the project. This publication contains 4129 bibliographic records and has 628 pages and an author and title index, plus an index of institutions. Jiří Gruntorád compiled the bibliography with the help of Jana Lifková. Czech and Slovak Exile Periodicals and Czech Magazines Issued Abroad after 1945: The Collection of Libri Prohibiti In 1998 with the financial support of the division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs concerned with Czechs living abroad (OKKV), we described in detail and catalogued 547 titles of exile periodicals issued from 1945 to 1998 in Libri Prohibiti's collection. The printed catalog with indexes is directed to the needs of our library users. It was compiled by Jiří Gruntorád and Lucie Formanová. Our Results in 1999 Since last September we have had INTERNET pages in Czech and English at our address: http://libpro.cts.cuni.cz. This was made possible with the financial help of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the kind contribution of the Center for Theoretical Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Visitors can find here our annual report, new articles about the library, information on our publications,
and a summary of titles of exile magazines complete in electronic form. By the end of last year about 600 people had visited our INTERNET pages. Last year we acquired over 1000 library units and a further 200 periodical titles through gifts and purchases. These parts of our collection increased as follows: Czech samizdat monographs by 300 library units Czech exile monographs by 200 units Czech and Slovak exile periodicals by 50 titles Monographs of the Czech war exile by 30 units Foreign-language monographs by 200 units The reference library by 100 units The audiovisual collection by more than 300 audiocassettes and 20 CD-ROM units During 1999 we transferred three complete exile magazines to electronic form: the independent review Skutečnost, issued from 1949 to 1953, with 1096 digital pages of text; the somewhat more extensive independent cultural review Sklizeň, issued from 1953 to 1979, with 2040 pages; and the monthly for politics and culture Zápisník, issued between 1958 and 1962, and having 491 pages. This completes our transfer of exile periodicals to electronic form. All of the data are stored in duplicate on CD-ROM (Skutečnost - 3 CD-ROM, Sklizeň - 6 CD-ROM, Zápisník - 2 CD-ROM, and samizdat - 1 CD-ROM), and we provide them to users. Including several samizdat publications we processed more than 4000 pages. This is, of course, only a small fraction of all the materials which must be transferred to electronic form in the near future, not only to preserve them as our cultural heritage but also to use them more effectively and make them more accessible. In the past year we connected another computer to our network. Our library visitors can now use our electronic catalogs at three terminals, one of which is equipped to read CD-ROM. Our New Publication The Exile Periodical: A Catalog of Periodicals of the Czech and Slovak Exile and Publications by Czechs and Slovaks Living Abroad issued after 1945 In 1999 we prepared The Exile Periodical for publication. It will be issued in February or March of this year with the support of the Foundation for the Development of a Civic
Society from the PHARE Fund, of the division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs concerned with Czechs living abroad, and of the Magistrate of the city of Prague. It is something of a continuation of our Catalog of Books of the Czech Exile 1948-1994, and again combines bibliography and catalog. It is a list of records of all known titles of periodicals issued in Czech during these years, and we also devote our attention to magazines in Slovak and other languages. An important part of the book is the bibliographic entries of all titles in the collection of Libri Prohibiti, including a listing of all issues, and also a listing of periodicals in the library of the Náprstek Museum in Prague and in the archive of the Olomouc Center for Exile Studies. The catalog contains 1093 bibliographic entries and has 502 pages besides a title, publisher, and personnel index. It was compiled by Lucie Formanová, Jiří Gruntorád, and Michal Přibán. Goals of the Library for 2000 Our main goal is to accumulate the most complete and highest quality collection of books, magazines, and other materials which were created by the Czech and Slovak exile, and of all the accessible productions of our domestic opposition, our samizdat. We want to completely catalog these collections by computer and to make the results accessible for the purpose of further research, both in our computer network and in the form of book and periodical publications, also by issuing them on CD-ROM and on the INTERNET. This year it is necessary to: - continue with our acquisitions - continue the computer cataloguing of our collections and new acquisitions - begin processing the archive of domestic and exile documents - gradually present more and more of our processed data on the INTERNET. - continue building and cataloguing the audiovisual project - continue the project of preserving some endangered exile periodicals by transferring them to electronic media (CD-ROM) with the help of a scanner This year we are presenting three projects to the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, and one project each to the AGNES association and the Foundation for the Development of a Civic Society. We also presented projects to the division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs concerned with Czechs living
abroad (OKKV) and to the Oldřich Dubina Foundation, but both of these were rejected. In view of the limited funds of the state budget, we assume that grants will not cover our expenses and that we will therefore have to gain additional sponsors. A Word of Thanks Our thanks go to the Foundation for the Development of a Civic Society and to the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, which again, although not without problems, contributed a grant for our projects. Other contributions last year came from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, the Preciosa Foundation in Jablonec nad Nisou, the Czech Literary Fund Foundation, the Magistrate of the Capital City of Prague, ATECO s. s r.o., the American Fund for Czechoslovak Relief, Mr. and Mrs. Dohnal, Jennifer A. Simons, Miroslav Hamr, Jiří Brych, Milan R. Paul, Oldřich Černý, Jaroslav Strnad, and J.S., all of whom contributed more than 2000 Czech crowns. We also thank all other contributors, too numerous to mention. Without their material support the existence of our library and study room would not be possible. This also applies for the dedicated help of many individuals, especially Lois Russell, who has translated our annual report into English for many years now, and to Jan Šafránek, who has given us among other things his original drawing "The Reader", which appears on the cover of this report. No less thanks go to all the donors who have helped us expand our collections. We also thank the publishers who generously send us their magazines free of charge. Thanks to them Libri Prohibiti is what it is today. We thank in advance all future sponsors, and we remind you that gifts are tax-deductible. Prague, February 5, 2000 Jiří Gruntorád :: Annual Reports