Public Librarianship in Communist Romania: Creating a Profession to Serve the Socialist Propaganda Cause

Şerbănuṭă, Claudia

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/103585 Copy

Description

Title

Public Librarianship in Communist Romania: Creating a Profession to Serve the Socialist Propaganda Cause

Author(s)

Şerbănuṭă, Claudia

Issue Date

2017

Keyword(s)

• Romania
• Public libraries
• Public library system
• Romanian communist state

Abstract

The Romanian communist state constructed a public library system as one of its national propaganda instruments. Within the context that encouraged the development of a public library national system, this paper presents the history of library and information sciences education programs and directions established during the communist era. Using oral-history interviews with librarians who worked in the public library system in the 1970s and 1980s, the paper discusses the effects these programs had on the professional knowledge and practices within public librarianship. During the last decades of the regime, public librarians employed alternative practices and resources in their education as the state's official training became limited and eventually obsolete. However, these alternatives created only a narrow professional-development opportunity for librarians. In spite of librarians' personal efforts, there was no significant change in the way that public libraries were defined and used by the communist society.

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press. The School of Information Sciences at Illinois. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Series/Report Name or Number

Library Trends 65 (4). Spring 2017

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/103585

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2017.0021

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2017 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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