Books not buildings

The recent death of Czech architect Jan Kaplický has renewed the debate about his controversial plan for a new building for the National Library in Prague. Supporters of the futuristic "Blob" design that won a 2007 competition, but which was blocked and then canceled by politicians associated with the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), present now the design of the library as Kaplický's legacy to his nation, a vision that should become a reality after the famous architect's death. They blame Czech aesthetic provincialism and pettiness for rejecting the avant-garde design. Library supporters proved their popularity in a recent demonstration on Old Town Square, attended by Foreign Affairs Minister Karel Schwarzenberg and other celebrities.

However, libraries are about making books and journals available to readers. Without books and journals, there is no need for a building. An old or cheap and ugly building on the outskirts of Prague could serve as an excellent library if it can obtain the books and journals and make them available to readers.

The National Library that also serves as the library of Prague's Charles University practically stopped purchasing foreign printed books and journals during the totalitarian era, and has not resumed acquiring them. Part of the reason is financial. The best American university libraries spend about $10 million annually on purchasing practically everything that is published that year. Admittedly, $10 million is a lot of money for a country that has still not overcome the legacies of socialism and is still among the poorer European Union member states.  But, as a percentage of the state's budget, such a sum is hardly significant. The Czech state spends much more money on, say, military procurements. Why does a nation that is basically pacifist need a tank force? Well, a state should have an army, and NATO requires of its members to spend a certain percentage of their budget on procuring NATO-grade weapons. NATO membership is essential for the Czech "return to Europe" and integration in the West. These are all valid arguments. But this is just as true for purchasing books and journals. Intellectual integration in Europe required access to Western scholarship and science. A civilized nation should have a well-stocked national library.

A larger library would require more space than is currently available at the beautiful Baroque buildings of the Klementinum, but any cheap and functional, even ugly, structure can house books, as long as it can maintain a suitable climate and easy accessibility to the shelved books. Access to contemporary and recent journals usually no longer requires shelves or buildings because they are digitized. Libraries purchase subscriptions to digital library services that rent selections of journals much like cable companies. Readers can then access these journals from their home computers via the Internet.

Under communism, libraries were repositories of knowledge rather than providers of information. Materials were not cataloged, and staff was untrained and poorly paid. Cataloging systems were neither efficient nor user-friendly. Libraries had no open shelves, and manual systems of retrieval were inefficient. Books were spread over many specialist libraries without central management or cataloging. Though cataloging has been digitizing and much improved more than a decade ago through a large grant from the Mellon Foundation, it did not make the books necessarily available because the National Library has a large section of "archived" books that are not to be touched but merely deposited. This section includes more than Czech printed books that are deposited for copyright purposes. For example, a recent edition of Max Brod's biography of Kafka in German that is cataloged is not available because it is "archived." When looking for a book that was printed in Bohemia in the 17th century, I was directed to a beautifully handwritten catalog from the 19th century. That catalog listed the book, which established that it existed in the collections then. Where is the book today? Where has it been during the past 100 years? Who knows!

During the 1990s, several philanthropic organizations were involved in organizing book donations to what used to be Eastern Europe - to both university and national libraries. However, donated used books were often those that Western donors did not need, frequently because they were outdated. Also, not everything that was donated actually reached potential readers. Some donated books were stolen, destroyed by academics who could not read them or hoarded in departmental or institutional libraries as trophies not to be touched or used. Other books languished uncataloged because there were not enough librarians to catalog them, or because the librarians were too lazy to do so. These donations dried up during the last decade, so Czechs must take responsibility for their own libraries now.

Despite the political and social upheavals, disruptions and discontinuities of the 20th century, most notably totalitarianism, in certain respects the cultural map of Europe that was established in the 18th century has been maintained. The most telling contemporary indicators of the frontiers of the 18th-century Enlightenment are the contents of libraries. All European copyright libraries and main university libraries make available virtually all locally, recently published books and journals. The borders of the Enlightenment matter when one looks for foreign printed books in foreign languages. Where the Enlightenment reigned - in Western and Northern Europe - libraries purchased knowledge from abroad. The easternmost decent research library in Europe is the State Library in Berlin (STABI), the eastern frontier of the Enlightenment. Where the Enlightenment never took hold, foreign books are just that: foreign, purchased by the privileged few for personal use.

For example, the Austrian National Library is housed today in what used to be the Viennese palace of the Habsburgs (also notable for Hitler's appearance there after the Anschluss to greet the crowds). As a copyrights library, it houses all the books published in Austria, but there are hardly any contemporary books in foreign languages. The Viennese educational bureaucracy still finds foreign books as challenging or as irrelevant as their more recent post-totalitarian East European colleagues. Austria is a wealthy country. Surely, the reason for avoiding foreign books is not constraints on the national budget.

Since scientific, academic and otherwise specialized literature often cannot be translated into various vernaculars, as there is insufficient market for them, it is usually published in the English language and then read universally. The absence of universal research libraries that make such literature available plays a decisive role in maintaining the isolation and consequent backwardness of post-totalitarian education institutes, and Austria finds itself in this group. Successful transition to democracy, free markets and thriving capitalism are not sufficient conditions for generating world class institutions of higher education because without foreign books, there can be no world class education and culture remains provincial.

East-Central European libraries and academic systems reflect the mutually reinforcing effects of the Counter-Enlightenment, nationalism and then 50 years of almost uninterrupted totalitarianism, which considered foreign-made knowledge an enemy and education as a means for controlling social mobility. This is another legacy of totalitarianism yet to be overcome in the Czech Republic.

The whole debate about the building of the National Library in Prague is symptomatic of this provincial approach. The debate is about the shell of knowledge, not its content; about a depository for books rather than about a library.

- The writer is the author of The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence: From Patočka to Havel and is completing a book titled The Legacies of Totalitarianism: A Political Theory of Post-Totalitarianism. He formerly taught at Palacký University in Olomouc and has held research fellowships at Central European University, Columbia University, New York University and Australian National University.

Aviezer Tucker can be reached at
features@praguepost.com