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Slovakia
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Directory Information
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History & Collections
The Library of Matica slovenská was established immediately after the Matica itself in 1863 and it started to fulfil some functions and tasks of a national library. The basis of its collections were donations and the bequests of private libraries of various outstanding personalities of the Slovak national revival. At the same time the basis of the national bibliographical registration was created and the bibliography was published in the scholarly journal Matica slovenská Chronicles.
Matica slovenská actively supported the development of the Slovak nation and this resulted in the conflict with the anti-national policy of the Hungarian government which forcibly closed the Matica slovenská in 1875. Its collections of some 40.000 volumes of 10.000 titles and 332 manuscripts were confiscated. In 1890 the "Library and Museum" association renewed its efforts to build up a nation-wide Slovak library in Martin. They had to start over again from the very beginning and the Slovak Museum Society took over the care for the collections of the library in 1896.
Shortly after the Czech-Slovak Republic was constituted in 1918, the Matica slovenská and its Library were restored (in 1919). The creation of modern deposit facilities in the new building of the Matica slovenská in 1926 was a good reason for merging the Library of Matica slovenská and the Library of Slovak Museum Society. The library had then about 100.000 volumes of books. After this Matica slovenská started the general cataloguing of the integrated library's collection, building the union catalogue of Slovak libraries and publishing the current national bibliography and the retrospective bibliography from the earliest records to 1900, a task which was undertaken by V. Rizner.
Matica slovenská expressed its interest to establish the Slovak National Library in the 1930's - in 1937 scholarly branches of Matica slovenská formulated the idea of creating a national library institution; the corner stone of its new building was laid in 1938 (however, it was never built up) and in 1939 the Matica slovenská was charged by the law to fulfil the tasks of the national library. In the same year the library gained the right of legal deposit. As a consequence, the Slovak National Library was founded in Martin in 1941. It was a non-governmental institution based on the principles of association. Around the same time the Slovak Bibliographical Society was founded. The library developed wide acquisition and publishing activities, especially of bibliographies, but due to various problems expectations were not fully realised.
In 1954 the Slovak National Library was nationalised and concurrently Matica slovenská was reduced and transformed into the Slovak National Library by the merging of the Library of Matica slovenská and the Slovak National Library and the addition of nation-wide conservation, bibliographic and library science responsibilities and it thus became the central element of Slovak librarianship. The stock was formed by over 480.000 volumes. In spite of ideological interventions by the state into its activities it built up the solid foundations of the national archive of Slovak documents, huge catalogues and bibliographic databases in the course of the last forty years. It also created the core of the present national library information and bibliographical system through methodical co-operation and co-ordination.
The library significantly contributed to the development of library and bibliographical science and the research of book culture history in Slovakia by publishing scientific and methodical journals, collected scholars' works and monographs. In addition it developed or at least took part in various library projects and programs, especially in the field of library automation and bibliographic standardisation.
Matica slovenská and the library moved in 1975 into the new building. It was internally restructured again in 1983 and the Slovak National Library was re-constituted under its old name as an internal branch of the institution of Matica slovenská.
Among the other branches of Matica slovenská is the Monument of the National Culture involving the Archives of Literature and Arts and the Slovak National Literary Museum, which care for archival and museum objects including manuscripts.
Today, the Slovak National Library in Matica slovenská is not only the focus for collecting, processing and preserving national library holdings but it also aims to be a thoroughly modern institution and a centre for librarianship with new complex functions and resources adequate to the challenge presented by world-wide developments in the library field, to meet information demands and also the general needs of society.
The Slovak National Library in Matica slovenská is the national library of Slovakia and Slovaks, the national bibliographic and database centre, and the central library of the Slovak Republic.
The library comprises:
The Slovak National Library primarily acquires, processes and preserves all Slovak-subject documents published anywhere, cares for the national archive of Slovak documents and provides access to them and builds, maintains and provides access to the other collections of the library and co-ordinates standardisation in the library field; is the centre of the Slovak National Bibliography and the national agency of the Universal Bibliographic Control: it co-ordinates bibliographic activities and in co-operation with research, academic and regional libraries it creates, stores and provides access to the general database of Slovak bibliographic records and publishes the Slovak National Bibliography; is the centre for developing and operating the library information network of research and public libraries of Slovakia and also maintains its union catalogue; in addition it is the National agency of ISBN and ISSN; is the national centre for national and international interlibrary lending services (including the loans of rare historical books) and for the international exchange of documents; is the national library centre for the preservation, conservation and restoration of documents and the co-ordinator of microfilming activities; is the national professional methodical and control centre for the historic library collections; it cares for the key areas of the historical library collections; provides information services for the development of culture, science and education; provides advice for libraries and librarians especially in the field of library automation; it also cares for the further education of librarians; cares for the application of new library-information technologies and media.
Collections:
SNK MS primarily acquires all documents published on the territory of Slovakia mostly through legal deposit but it also collects regional and special publications not covered by the law and also acquires foreign Slovak documents. SNK also has a rich collection of Czech documents from the period of the common state up to 1992 obtained through legal deposit.
In addition, SNL acquires other Slavic documents for the requirements of research, and also foreign general reference documents, like national bibliographies, encyclopaedias, dictionaries and most world-wide significant works representing other nations' science, culture, literature and arts.
The SNK's acquisition profile of foreign literature is focused on theoretical science, methodology of sciences, research work, research methodology; theory of culture; arts and theory of arts; library, bibliography and information science; museology, archives and biography science; palaeography and the book trade; philology, linguistics and Slav studies; literary science, history of literature literary critics, theory of literature; ethnography; and the most significant literary works.
The basic stock of SNK comprises 3,690.000 items including approximately 1,200.000 old printed books (published before 1830), of which 9.000 are 16th century printed books and more than 500 incunabula. Beside this stock there are also about 1,000.000 units of special historical libraries. SNK has 2.500 maps, 147.000 postcards 70.000 ex-libri, 21.000 gramophone records, 2.000 CDs, 2.000 tapes and 800 videocassettes and various other special types of documents (posters, graphics, catalogues, invitations, printed music, official documents etc.).
SNK currently acquires 1668 Slovak periodicals and 546 foreign periodical titles.
Indexes to Periodical Contents:
The Slovak National Bibliography database of articles from Slovak newspapers, journals and magazines is only available locally. It contains 570.000 records from 1978 onwards. After conversion to UNIMARC and loading onto an ALEPH system it will be available also on the Internet. This is planned for the autumn of 1996.
National Bibliographies:
At the moment, there is no special database of the Slovak National Bibliography available online. About 150.000 records of registration series of Slovak National Bibliography (books, periodicals, maps, dissertations, special documents, firms' documents, graphics, official documents, music, audio-visual documents, computer files and blind prints are included in the OPAC of SNK and will also be loaded in the next union catalogue. Components parts' records (articles from the periodicals and parts of some documents e.g. of songs on LPs or CDs etc.) are available on-line locally now and they will be converted to UNIMARC, loaded to ALEPH system and made accessible on the Internet later this year. However, the Sloval Nataionl Bibliography is now available on CD-ROM. At the moment, only books from 1977 onwards are available (some 65.000 records in UNIMARC). By the end of 1997 all 800.000 records should be converted to CD-ROM.
Database size: Total number of records of Slovak National Bibliography is about 800.000.
Update: daily
Classification schemes & subject headings: UDC and subject headings in Slovak language.
National Union Catalogues:
A National Union Catalogue does not exist at the moment, but it is scheduled to be established in the frame of the CASLIN project (Czech and Slovak Library Information Network) in SNK at the end of this year. We expect that once created, it can be loaded quickly in co-operation with the other Slovak libraries.
Other services:
Online Public Access Catalogue
World Wide Web Server
Sources:
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