IFLA/FAIFE
UNMIK - JIAS Department of Culture Report:
Assessment of Books in Mitrovica City Library
24 - 25 March 2001
By Andras Riedlmayer, Sophie Massal and Svetlana Pencheva
1. Background
In response to allegations concerning the state of the book collection of
the Mitrovica City Library and in particular the holdings of books in Serbian language,
the library was visited by a representative of IFLA and the President of the Norwegian
Library Association on 6 and 10 March 2001. Upon their recommendation (see Attached Report in Annex 1), an ad hoc committee carried out an
investigation and on-site assessment of the entire book collection. This was done in
cooperation with Mr. Hajrullah Mustafa, Director of the Mitrovica City Library and Ms.
Olivera Stevic, Director of the library in northern Mitrovica.
Mr. Andras Riedlmayer, bibliographer at the Harvard University Library and
an expert on cultural heritage in Kosovo, was invited to direct this examination as an
independent consultant.
Mr. Riedlmayer, accompanied by Ms. Sophie Massal, from the JIAS -
Department of Culture of UNMIK, and Ms. Svetlana Pencheva, Civil Officer at Mitrovica
Regional Administration, visited both the Mitrovica City Library and the library in
northern Mitrovica on 24 and 25 March, met with all parties involved and examined the
facts and the material available. On 25 March, a complete shelf count of the book
collection present in the Mitrovica City Library was carried out with measurement of
shelves and estimates of the number of books in all subject categories and languages in
all divisions of the Mitrovica City Library.
The director of the Mitrovica City Library and members of the staff were
present at the count and confirmed the findings of the commission. Ms. Stevic and Ms.
Gocmanac, from the northern Mitrovica library, were also consulted and agreed to the
proposed methodology.
2. Work done
The work of the commission was conducted over two days, Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 March.
On 24 March, the two Serbian librarians agreed to visit the Mitrovica City
Library on the south side of the city, jointly with the other members of the commission to
help establish the facts. They brought with them a list of books currently stored in boxes
in the library in north Mitrovica and some samples of the books in question. Many of the
books carry the markings of the Mitrovica City Library and were allegedly retrieved from a
paper mill in Vladicin Han in South Serbia (for background, see the above-mentioned
report). They suggested that this list be checked against the registers of Mitrovica City
Library.
At the outset, the Serbian and Albanian librarians agreed that the
presentation of this case in the Serbian daily Politika was full of errors and
misrepresentations and that it should not form the basis of this investigation. The
Serbian librarians stated that they had not been interviewed for the article and that they
did not regard it as responsible journalism.
They were also in agreement about certain facts concerning the library:
No full inventory of the Mitrovica City Library had been carried out for
more than a decade.
The library building had been open and unattended from 10 June 1999,
when Ms. Stevic went to north Mitrovica, until 14 July 1999, when Mr. Mustafa arrived and
took charge. All parties agreed, without assigning blame, that anyone could have entered
the library and taken books during this period.
While Mr. Mustafa and Ms. Stevic were not in agreement about all issues,
they expressed respect for each other as professionals and stated that they would like to
see more cooperation between librarians in north and south Mitrovica. It was pointed out
that, complying with the request of Ms. Stevic after the war, Mr. Mustafa had sent three
books from the Serbian Academy of Sciences to the library in north Mitrovica.
Therefore, the commission decided to focus on the verifiable facts at
hand. As a first attempt, Mr. Riedlmayer suggested, and the other members agreed, that a
small random sample of the list be checked against the registers and that an effort be
made to locate those books on the shelves. There were five items selected:
Savremena poezija Jugoslovenskih naroda i narodnosti
(accession no. 32923)
Vasiljev, Covek peva posle rata (32390, 32391)
Jakov Ignjatovic, Publicisticki spisi (33672)
Jakov Ignjatovic, Misli o srpskom narodu (33667)
Vladimir Boban, Srpske i albanske narodne pesme sa Kosova
(34214)
In all five cases, the registry numbers provided by the Serbian librarians
matched the entries in the library’s registers. An attempt was made to locate these
books on the shelves in the section of the library where Serbian literature is kept. While
the shelves were full of books, many of them by the authors cited, these five particular
items could not be located. It should be noted however that the arrangement of the books
on the shelves was not fully alphabetical. Many books were misshelved and some lacked
classification numbers. The library staff stated that the collection was being rearranged
to better meet the current needs of the users and they regretted that some of the
reshelved books were out of order.
The meeting was cut short because of the security concerns of the Serbian
librarians. Leaving the library under escort of UNMIK police, the two Serbian librarians
were confronted by a large crowd of youth from south Mitrovica who shouted abuse and told
them not to come back to the Mitrovica City Library again.
On 25 March, the three international members of the commission visited the
public library in north Mitrovica and met with Ms. Stevic amd Ms. Gocmanac for about two
hours. The commission was shown the current collection of the public library, consisting
of about 4000 books donated by the Serbian Ministry of Culture and foreign donors. The
library has 243 registered readers.
The commission also had a chance to examine the books in boxes alleged to
have been brought from Vladicin Han. The books were in a variety of condition, the
majority looked new and unused, others appeared to have suffered from rough handling and
damp. Most of the books examined wore markings of the Mitrovica City Library. Several of
the books had deep indentations in their covers, apparently having been tied together
tightly in bundles. According to Ms. Stevic, the books had been found in Vladicin Han tied
together with wire. Most of the books contained reader’s cards. According to the data
on the reader’s cards, most had never been circulated, while others had been
circulated for the last time as long ago as the 1970’s and the 1980’s.
While it was not possible to count all the books in boxes, the number of
boxes seemed to match the total number of books on the list presented by Ms. Gocmanac (477
items: see Annex 2).
Before leaving the library in north Mitrovica, the commission got
agreement of the Serbian librarians to the proposed working method for assessing the
collection currently in place in the Mitrovica City Library. The commission determined
that the best approach was to forego hunting for individual titles and concentrate rather
on the determining the holdings of the entire library by subject and language categories.
However, it was agreed that while examining the collection, the commission would be on the
lookout for a small number of key items mentioned by Ms. Stevic as items of particular
concern.
Returning to south Mitrovica, the commission continued its work in the
Mitrovica City Library. Mr. Mustafa agreed to the proposed working method for assessing
the collection. Members of the library staff accompanied and observed the commission doing
its work and agreed to and confirmed its findings.
Following standard library procedures, a count was made by measuring the
books on the shelves. A series of one-meter samples was taken and those books were counted
individually. Then the samples were averaged to produce a standard number of books per
meter. This procedure was repeated in every division to account for different book sizes
in different subject areas (the amounts ranged from 70 books per meter to 90 books per
meter). Then the books on the shelves were measured and the total number of books was
estimated using this multiplier. For books stored in boxes, the commission counted sample
boxes and then used that as a multiplier checking only to make sure that the counted boxes
were full.
The accuracy of this method was confirmed when the register of the library
was checked for the total number of fiction in the Turkish language. Using this method,
the commission estimated total holdings of 392 volumes in this category. A check of the
register showed that the number of registered items was 393.
3. Summary of Findings
Divisions |
Number of books |
1. Professional and scientific books |
4 723 |
2. Storage I |
4 391 |
5. Storage II |
4 438 |
3. Old and Rare books |
7 637 |
4. Processing department |
4 147 |
6. Children’s literature
* Albanian language
* Serbian schoolbooks
* Serbian literature
|
6 863
3 871
952
2 040 |
7. Mitrovica collection |
615 |
8. Reference collection |
512 |
9. Literature
World literature in Albanian
Albanian literature in Albanian
World literature in Serbian
Yugoslav literature in Serbian
Oriental literature in Serbian
Turkish literature in Turkish
Literary criticism in Serbian
|
24 788
3 878
5 950
6 961
5 823
363
392
1 421 |
10. Display windows |
111 |
11. Director’s Office |
419 |
Total: |
58 789 |
The division of Professional and Scientific books is more than 90% composed of books in
Serbian. All the books in the Reference division except for a handful of dictionaries are
in Serbian (see Annex 3). The books in Storage I were mostly in
Serbian and included a collection of 351 volumes donated by the Serbian Academy of
Sciences. The books in Storage II were a mixture of Serbian and Albanian titles. The books
in the Old and Rare Books division were all in Serbian language. The Mitrovica collection
included books in Serbian, Albanian and Turkish languages. The books in the Processing
division were mostly in Albanian and in foreign languages, as were the books in the
Director’s office. The breakdowns by language for the Children’s division and
adult Literature division are shown in the table above.
The commission counted 28 major sets of encyclopedias and dictionaries in
the Reference division, including a number of items about which Ms. Stevic had expressed
particular concern.
Acting upon the recommendations of the above-mentioned report and the
specific request of the Serbian librarians, the commission took particular care to assess
the collection of works by French, Polish, Italian, Spanish and Latin American authors
translated into Serbian. The commission found 39 shelves full of French literature
amounting to 35 linear meters of books (ca. 2450 items). Works by major French authors
were represented in many copies, including authors such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Gustave
Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Alphonse Daudet, Emile Zola, Marcel Proust and others. Polish
authors were also well represented with multiple copies of Czeslaw Milosz and anthologies
such as Savremena Poljska Poezija. Spanish authors were represented by multiple
copies of Garcia Lorca, Juan Vallera, Blasko Ibanez, Romulo Gallegos and others. Italian
authors were represented by works of Giovanni Bocaccio, Luigi Pirandello, Dino Bucati,
Alberto Moravia and others. Latin American and Russian authors were also well represented.
During the commission’s examination of the collection, the list of
books mentioned by Ms. Stevic as special items were kept in mind and the majority of them
turned up either on the shelves or in storage. Among such works were:
Kolekcija srpske knjizevnosti (several shelves)
Works of Feodor Dostoevsky (more than 30 volumes)
Many works by and about Vuk Karadzic, including the specific series
shown to us by Ms.Stevic, represented in more than 10 volumes.
Catena Mundi, 2 volumes
The Qur’an, the Bible and a presentation of Islamic Religion in
three volumes
Several volumes from the series on World Mythology were found in storage
Books of required readings on Serbian literature for schoolchildren
grades 1-8 were found in the children’s division, (952 volumes).
A deluxe edition of a boxed set of Jovan Jovanovic Zmaj Pevanja,
was found in storage
4. Conclusions and Recommendations
With the agreement of all parties, the commission established a reasonable
estimate of all the books currently held by the Mitrovica City Library, with the exception
of the books that are currently circulating with readers and 3 270 volumes donated to the
branch libraries in Tunel i Pare and Bare. The commission examined registers of all the
books transferred to the branch libraries.
The commission also examined a list prepared by the library staff of
Serbian readers who failed to return books borrowed in the last decade. There were more
than 1 500 books on this list. A corresponding list of books borrowed and never returned
by Albanian readers during the same period has not yet been prepared, but it can be
assumed, given the size of the borrower population, that such a list would include at
least 4 500 books. Presumably, many of those books would also include works in the Serbian
language.
Both the Serbian and the Albanian librarians were in agreement that the
Mitrovica City Library was left unattended between 10 June and 14 July 1999. The windows
and the locks were broken and children and strangers had unlimited access to the
collection.
Given all these uncertainties, it is difficult to form a definitive
conclusion regarding the allegations in this case. The commission considers that its most
important task in this investigation was to establish the facts that could be ascertained
and to determine the current holdings of the Mitrovica City Library.
The commission’s count established that the number of books currently
present in the building of the Mitrovica City Library is estimated at 58 789. Of these
books, approximately 3/5 are in the Serbian language and the rest are in Albanian, Turkish
and foreign languages. According to information submitted to the commission by Ms. Stevic,
as of February 1999, the library held 1 118 linear meters of books. Applying the same
multiplier used for this assessment, this figure comes to about 78 260 books. Given all
the variables (books donated to branches, books currently circulating with readers, books
never returned) as well as the circumstances described above, the difference between the
two figures is not excessive.
The commission hopes, and the Albanian and Serbian librarians agree, that
this assessment will serve as a baseline for the future management of the collection and
the safe guarding of all of its constituent parts.
The commission also recommends that as soon as practicable, the Mitrovica
City Library undertakes a full inventory of its collection. All interested parties should
be informed of the results of the inventory, including the Ombudsperson’s Office in
Pristina. For the proper management of its collection, the Mitrovica City Library must
ensure that all the books are properly cared for and arranged on the shelves in call
number order, no matter what language or ethnic constituency they represent.
Annexes
