The project Books Discovered Once Again was presented at the final conference of Programme CZ06, “Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Art”

Author: Ministry of Finance CZ, Nina Wančová

On Wednesday 21 July 2017, the final conference of the Programme CZ06 – “Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Art” - took place in Prague. This is the programme thanks to which the restoration of Czech cultural heritage and various live-art projects could be realized within the last three years.

Archive sources documenting handling of books and book collections in Czechoslovakia after 1918

Author: Marcela Strouhalová

In the course of the project, much has been written about the results of our research and its progress. Although the research hypothesis was that the National Library’s reserve fonds consist entirely of books confiscated from the enemies of the Nazi regime in neighbouring Germany and elsewhere in occupied Europe, the findings show otherwise; in terms of research of archival sources, the internal process of recording ownership marks and sampling the stories of the original owners.

On general issues of movement of books in Czechoslovakia after World War II

Author: Marcela Strouhalová

After World War II, extensive unprecedented transfer of cultural assets took place in Czechoslovakia. Besides art objects, this included at least 16 million documented volumes of books. The identification and classification of these books is difficult: After the liberation, foreign book collections were found in Czechoslovakia. Some were brought from Berlin libraries to then safer Sudetenland due to air-raid precautions, others came from large-scale post-war seizure and confiscation of property under the Presidential Decrees. Before the confiscation of property as a result of WWII was even finished, another wave of property confiscation hit the communist Czechoslovakia, this time concerning the property of emigrants and the "enemies" after February 1948. These events peaked with the pitiful treatment of monastery libraries, after the dissolution of monasteries in 1950.

Website - main communication tool

Author: Nina Wančová

A project without promotion might as well not exist. Presenting a project to the professional as well as lay public is important. The project Books Discovered Once Again is interdisciplinary, connecting historical research with librarianship, and this is why we hope it will inspire others. This is why we take the project promotion seriously. For us, the main communication channel is our website. And how have we created, changed and developed it?

Exhibition in Norway based on the findings from Books discovered once again

Author: Gro Kvanvig

On February 28th Stiftelsen Arkivet in Kristiansand, Norway, opened a new exhibition displaying some of the lost books from the project. The exhibtion tells the tale of books lost and rediscovered.

From Leipzig to Hostivař: 123 years of journeying 326 pages

Author: Marcela Strouhalová

The collection in the Reserve Fonds of the National Library of the Czech Republic can be viewed from various perspectives. One of them are the books themselves and the fact that behind every single book, there is a long story. However, it is a rather demanding and time consuming work. Allow us to give a classic story here.

Summary of cataloguing within the "Books Discovered Once Again" project

Author: Jaroslava Svobodová

During the "Books Discovered Once Again" project, i.e. from the project commencement to the end of April 2016, 12,780 volumes were thoroughly catalogued in the form of records at the recommended level of processing (according to the Resource Description and Access international rules), including both name and subject descriptions.

Multimedia presentation of the owners’ microstories

Author: Nina Seyčková

Among new activities in the extension project is the preparation of twenty microstories of original owners. These will include both individual owners and institutions or societies. The materials on the original owners of dispossessed and confiscated books will be collected primarily in archive research. Our tasks include the research presentation. We shall publish an eBook containing complete texts of the microstories, and shortened texts will be gradually published on the website. Further, we made a commitment to prepare the microstories and publish them on the website in a more attractive (multimedia) form. The following text summarises the selected options offered by current technologies and the internet.

Lecture “mini-tour” of Czech universities

Author: Marcela Strouhalová

An integral part of the "Books Discovered Once Again" project is the presentation of the results and visions of the project. Since we realised that projects represent one of the most important current tools in science and research, as well as in other programme areas, we decided that the target group to receive information on the project should be university students.

“It is (not) finished – it continues“

Author: Anna Vandasová

Slowly, but surely, the "Books Discovered Once Again" project completed sixteen months of its existence. During this time many materials were researched and documented, and many texts were written. Our activities provoked numerous responses and the interest not only of experts. However, it must be said that twelve thousand processed documents account only for a small part of the reserve collections of the National Library. There is a lot of work ahead to be done.

“Books discovered once again” monograph was issued

Author: Tomáš Foltýn

As the part of the Book World Prague 2016 the monograph named “Books discovered once again” was officially introduces to the audience. The book written by Mgr. Marcela Strouhalova, the historian of the project, is the last output of the first phase of the same named project supported by the EEA grants.

Project “Books discovered once again” results were presented in western Bohemia

Author: Tomáš Foltýn

Mgr. Tomáš Foltýn, the head of the research team, was invited to have two talks about the project results in the centre of the Western Bohemia region – in Pilsen. Both presentation were held during Monday 2nd May 2016.

Books discovered once again: project summary

Author: Marcela Strouhalová

The National Library is the largest library in the Czech Republic and holds a leading position in the Czech system of public libraries. In the past, it also served as the central institution for depositing many separate book collections originating from various sources. The library has been managing a large number of fonds. Its book fond is universal and of European importance. The institution stores books published in the Czech Republic, a selection of foreign literature, a large collection of historical documents and special collections. In total, it manages and makes accessible almost seven million documents.

Successful final seminar in Prague

Author: Jana Rumanová

The final seminars are one of the main outputs of our project. Here, we can actively present the results of our efforts and our work on the set goals and, at the same time, discuss these findings with the professional public. From this perspective, we can say that the final seminar held on 31 March 2016 in Prague was successful in both respects.

Opening of the exhibition in the Clementinum

Author: Nina Seyčková

On Thursday 31 March 2016 the final seminar of the project took place and was followed by the opening of an exhibition in the Clementinum. The exhibition summarizes the historical research carried out within the project by Marcela Strouhalová. The research attempted to answer three questions. What happened to the hundreds of thousands of confiscated books brought to the Sudetenland during World War II? What happened to the books confiscated shortly after the war? And who were the original owners? As this was the first probe into this section of the reserve fonds of the National Library of the Czech Republic, the research has elicited more questions than it has managed to find answers.

Exhibition in Clementinum

Author: Marcela Strouhalová

The soon-to-end project Books discovered once again presents its final exhibition, which will be installed in the main corridor of the Clementinum.

How the virtual exhibit happened

Author: Idunn Sem

The responsibility of Stiftelsen Arkivet in the Books Discovered Once Again project is to organize one of the two disciplinary closing seminars, and to explore the genre of virtual exhibit in order to communicate the project and field of knowledge to a broader audience.

Legal aspects of the books discovered once again

Author: prof. JUDr. Jan Kuklík, DrSc.

One of the main objectives of the project was to compile a legal analysis that illuminates the property rights attaching to the books from the project. Legal analysis was prepared by prof. JUDr. Jan Kuklík, DrSc. and the students of Charles University Law Faculty.

News about the final seminar in Norway

Author: Gro Kvanvig

The final conference will be in Kristiansand on 16 March 2016. The conference is to be held on the premises of Stiftelsen Arkivet. The heading for the seminar is: The ideological background for confiscation of books in an European and Norwegian perspective. This article includes short biograms of the invited speakers.

Meeting with the Norwegian Freemason society

Author: Gro Kvanvig

On August 19th we had a meeting with member of the Norwegian Freemason society, Helge Bjørn Horrisland, who is head of a project about the history of the lodge he is a member of. As far as we know, there were no confiscated books in Norway during the Second World War who left the country except for the collections of the Norwegian Freemason societies.

A brief introduction to the Second World War in Norway - And what happened to our literary community

Author: Stiftelsen Arkivet

When you are making a new world order, it is important that you control what people hear, read and watch. This was also the case during the Nazi-occupation of Europe during world war 2. All kinds of cultural expressions in the countries Germany occupied, were therefore controlled, but in various ways.

Would you like to learn more? Come to the lecture about the project

Author: Tomáš Foltýn

Thanks to its concept, our unique project Books Discovered Once Again allows the joining of routine library activities with interdisciplinary research and the presentation of cultural heritage. This approach is not very common in our environment, and this is why we see it as very important to introduce it not only to the professional public, but also to university students of the humanities, who this information can help in their studies and open further opportunities to use their knowledge in the area of new trends in the presentation of cultural heritage.

If you are interested in the project, you are very welcome to our lectures.

Characteristics of the processed publications

Author: Jiří Polišenský

Our aim is to process correctly 12,000 documents from approximately 300,000 found in the reserve funds of the National Library. The National Library staff has had no chance to work through those documents systematically. This is why the project Books Discovered Once Again was initiated. The project represents the first research into these books. Half of the 12,000 registered volumes belong to Masonic literature; thus the largest comprehensive collection of Masonic literature in the Czech Republic will be formed. What have we found out about the books? Where do they come from, and how did they find their way to the National Library depository? These very questions are going to be answered by the following article.

North Bohemian castles: depositories of documents and books 

Author: Marcela Strouhalová

Čtyři severočeské zámky se na krátkou dobu na konci druhé světové války staly útočištěm dokumentů a knih vyrabovaných nacistickými organizacemi prakticky z celé Evropy. Zámky částečně spojuje minulost slavných i méně slavných rodů, rozhodně však velmi pohnutý poválečný osud, podívejme se stručně na jejich historii.

Czechoslovak libraries and the National Library in the course of World War II

Author: Marcela Strouhalová

The period of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia meant great losses for Czech librarianship, brought about in several stages. After the announcement of the Munich Agreement, only a small proportion of books were successfully transported to the interior of the country. Most of the monastic and castle libraries remained in occupied territory.

Communication strategy

Author: Nina Seyčková

Nowadays, a project the public does not know about might as well not exist. Presentations, promotions and communication with the public are becoming increasingly important, and a great emphasis is put on them by our grant provider EEA, which is financing 80 per cent of the project. We also consider this part of the project important, and not only because we find our work interesting, but also because we hope that our historical research project might inspire other cultural and research institutions. So, how do we communicate?

Permanent exhibition in Stiftelsen Arkivet

Author: Nina Seyčková

A joint workshop of the project implementers was scheduled to be held in the premises of the partner institution Stiftelsen Arkivet in Kristiansand, Norway, in May 2015. The first day of the workshop was concluded with a guided tour of a permanent exhibition located on the ground storey of a former Gestapo building. The emotionally powerful exhibition is situated in an interrogation room and prison cells reconstructed as they were in 1942-1945.

Diagram showing the cycle of books in the project

Author: Tomáš Foltýn

What is happening with books in the project? How do we idetify which books belong to project and which are not? What do we do with selected titles? And where then we store it? The diagram presents all activities relating to the books in simply and clearly way. Read more about the librarian work in following five articles.

Cycle of a book - part 5/5: Making the processed books accessible

Author: Tomáš Foltýn

During the project’s implementation, processed cataloguing records are temporarily accessible only internally within the National Library. The reasons for this include the necessity for expert legal examination of the books and ongoing research into the historical context. Selected titles will be digitized to make them accessible to the public; for example, via the virtual exhibition which is one of the project’s outputs.

Cycle of a book - part 4/5: Labelling and storing processed books

Author: Tomáš Foltýn

If you are a National Library employee, the labels RF E... and RF F... or RF Z... will be no mystery to you. For others, the following article on labelling and storing books processed within the project may reveal one of the librarians’ secrets.

Cycle of a book - part 3/5: Processing

Author: Tomáš Foltýn

After the correct selecting books that fall into the “Books Discovered Once Again” project and the preparation stage comes the processing of the books, consisting of several steps. All of this is described in the following article.

Cycle of a book - part 2/5: Preparation of processing

Author: Tomáš Foltýn

Prior to the processing of documents, preparatory work is carried out. The books lay for many decades in the depository in Neratovice, covered in dust. Thus, they must be cleaned first, in some cases even repeatedly. After cleaning, a more detailed sorting is carried out. The preparatory work also includes searching library databases to find out whether another copy of the book in question exists in the system; if so, the copy is added to the record and a complete separate record need not be created.

Cycle of a book - part 1/5: Selection of documents

Author: Tomáš Foltýn

The subject of the project’s implementation is the processing of non-Bohemical documents stored in the depository of the National Library in Neratovice, which are part of the so-called reserve collections, and performing a related historical research. Two groups of interesting documents were selected within the project preparation.

Using stamps, among other things, we find out what the journeys of books were

Author: Nina Seyčková

All libraries continuously add new titles to their collections. It has become a habit that every new book is entered in the accession book and marked with a stamp by librarians. The books we examine in the project are marked with stamps. Therefore, priority is given to books with a stamp, or even several stamps. What are we able to find out from these stamps and what do they look like?

After war

Author: Marcela Strouhalová

The issue of material cultural heritage became highly topical after the war, especially after the issuance of Presidential Decree No. 5/1945 Coll., On the invalidity of certain transactions involving property rights from the time of oppression and on the nationalization of the property of Germans, Hungarians, traitors, collaborators and certain organizations and institutions. The decree came into force on 19 May, and, based on it, the first confiscations and nationalization of enemy property took place.

Ex Libris: memento of the original owner

Author: Nina Seyčková

The term Ex Libris originates from Latin, meaning “from the books”. In the European cultural context, Ex Libris first appeared in Middle Ages and was used to indicate the ownership of a book. The form varied and it has evolved in the course of time, from a simple insertion of the owner’s name to a stamp and even works of graphic art (a small label pasted into a book, with a woodcut, copper plate engraving, linocut, etc.) In this article, you will find bookplates from books included in the project Books Discovered Once Again.