Renewing Albania’s libraries

Renewing Albania’s libraries

Article Type: Commentaries From: Journal of Documentation, Volume 66, Issue 5

We reproduce below the document “New national strategy for Albanian public library development in information society”, by Ramazan Vozga of the National Library of Albania.

The Journal of Documentation has, over a period of decades, covered issues of the renovation and renewal of European library systems, following periods of conflict and of isolation. Choldin (2005), in one of the contributions to the JDoc at 60 series, reviewed several papers dating from the 1940s, describing initiatives to support European libraries after the 1939-1945 war, and contrasting these with similar initiatives in the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. She finds “fascinating similarities in the mood of the eras”; we may say that this mood extends, in some degree to situation of Albanian libraries today.

Vozga reminds us that Albania has been able to “rejoin the international community after decades of self-imposed isolation”. For Albanian libraries, as his strategy document shows, some of the issues are new. The pressing need for libraries in the Europe of the 1940s was for renewal of books stocks, and for the rebuilding of war-damaged libraries (Choldin, 2005; Danilewicz, 1945). For Albania today, as Vozga states, it is more a question of adapting unsuitable buildings, improving IT infrastructure and capacities, and preparing to contribute to the development of an information society. In addition, whereas in earlier times the perceived need was particularly for English language material, Vozga points out the need for an enriched content of Albanian language material, particularly in digital form.

Other issues are, perhaps surprisingly unchanged over the years. Both Danilewicz in 1945 and Vozga in 2010 write of the need for new ideas in library systems which have been isolated from the mainstream of professional thought. And both emphaise the need for training: though for Danilewicz this is needed for “union catalogues, readers’ advisory work, microphotography, special library methods, etc.”, while Vozga emphasises the need for training in management and in ICTs and internet.

As public libraries support the development of societies in transition, by both their information providing and their cultural activities, we may expect to see both the continuation of perennial issues, problems and solutions, and the emergence of new ones; and we see both in this new Albanian strategy. We wish Ramazan Vozga and his colleagues well in developing this. We hope the international library community will be as supportive of their efforts as it has been of libraries in other parts of Europe emerging from periods of isolation.

Lyn RobinsonDepartment of Information Science, City University London, London, UK