Libraries and Museums: Year In Review 1999

Table of Contents

Libraries

While conducting business as usual—making information available and preserving knowledge and culture—some libraries around the globe were buffeted in 1999 by violent conflicts, careening technological change, human frailty, and nature’s paroxysms. Although virtually all libraries faced computer problems as the year 2000 approached only the Bibliothèque Nationale de France—Franƈois Mitterrand suffered all these unlikely problems in the same year.

In January researchers’ frustrations at flawed computerized retrieval systems at the F 8 billion (about $1.4 billion) “legacy” commissioned by former French president Mitterrand exploded into violence. A pregnant staff member was seriously injured and lost her unborn child. Some 2,500 staff members went on strike, returning only when management agreed to close the library on Mondays to lessen stress. The decrease in operating hours further outraged library users. Floods threatened rare materials housed on lower levels, and three eminent scholars writing in Le Figaro dubbed the facility a “sinister farce.” There were more strikes later in the year, and the National Assembly opened an inquiry into the debacle.

Researchers at the Russian State Library, affectionately known as the Leninka (because it had formerly been named after V.I. Lenin), were hoping for a more user-friendly computer system. A project sponsored by the European Union invested €1 million (about $1,150,000) to digitize some of the Leninka’s 84 million handwritten catalog cards. Russia’s financial woes created a crisis in the country’s libraries. Although Prime Minister Sergey Stepashin called for more funding for the Leninka in July, he was out of office a few weeks later. Service was halted at the British Library in London when employees who retrieved books for users went on strike over wages and working conditions that they likened to those of miners.

Libraries also suffered as a result of violent conflicts. The Yugoslav army occupied the National and University Library of Kosovo in Pristina, believing that NATO would not bomb a library. Previously, all of the Albanian library staff had been fired, a sixth of the 600,000-volume collection destroyed, and ethnic Albanians denied admittance. The ban was later lifted, and the new director was one of the fired employees. The public library in Kukës, Alb., which four years earlier had been confiscated and turned into a bar, was by April sheltering hundreds of refugees. Library service there was later restored. All three U.S. Information Agency libraries in Yugoslavia—in Pristina, Belgrade, and Podgorica, Montenegro—were damaged in protests against NATO bombings, and the Pristina facility was burned to the ground. In India students enraged over a caste insult ransacked the library at the Bangalore University. Elsewhere, Israeli air strikes against suspected Hezbollah targets in Lebanon damaged a library in Zibquine, and students in Liberia and Nigeria were injured while protesting inadequate library and other educational resources.

Government uncertainties about the societal impact of the Internet continued to affect libraries. China and Australia tightened restrictions on Internet use and content, but Guyana lifted its restrictions, citing its “access to information” commitment. In the U.S. the debate over preventing children from accessing inappropriate material continued to escalate. Legislation was introduced in Congress requiring schools and libraries receiving federal “e-rate” subsidies for Internet connections to install filtering software to block access to World Wide Web sites containing sexually explicit content. At least a dozen states introduced or passed similar filtering mandates.

Scandal struck the Vatican Library after officials learned that in 1989 the library director, who was subsequently dismissed, had sold the rights to digitally reproduce 150,000 Vatican manuscripts to two financially suspect Americans. The Vatican voided the contract and was involved in litigation.

In other news, the German Bundestag (parliament) was considering the establishment of a Holocaust library in Berlin. In July staff at Florence’s Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale rediscovered a bag containing a small amount of the powdered remains of Dante Alighieri, considered Italy’s greatest poet. The remains, donated to the library 500 years after Dante’s death, had disappeared in 1929. In Uglich, an ancient town in the Upper Volga region of Russia, the Library of Russian Vodka was established.

Separate earthquakes damaged libraries in Mexico and Colombia, and a hailstorm pelted an Australian academic library. The September earthquake in Taiwan inflicted serious damage to libraries in a six-county area surrounding the epicentre. The National Taichung Library suffered a partial collapse of its seventh floor and damages to its air-conditioning and water systems. Some 17 public libraries in the area either were demolished or suffered significant structural damage; 18 others were slightly affected. The Choctaw branch of the Oklahoma City, Okla., library system was demolished May 3 when a tornado ripped off its roof and destroyed more than half of its collection. A September 18 fire at the Louisville (Ky.) Free Public Library’s downtown branch caused more than $1 million in damage and incinerated as many as 10,000 books, most of them new.

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions met in August in Bangkok. Some 2,200 librarians gathered to share ideas about technology, resource sharing, and funding.

To commemorate the centennial of Andrew Carnegie’s donation of $5.2 million to build branch libraries in New York City, the Carnegie Corp. awarded $15 million to 25 urban libraries. Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys professional football team, and his wife donated $1 million to the Library of Congress to purchase replacement volumes originally held in Thomas Jefferson’s personal library.

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