Ihar Ivanou - Baltic and Slavonic libraries in Britain: their place in developing group identity and...

8/14/2019 Ihar Ivanou - Baltic and Slavonic libraries in Britain: their place in developing group identity and the life of migr

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Baltic and Slavonic Libraries in Britain


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Baltic and Slavonic Libraries

in Britain

Their place in developing group identityand the life of migr communities

Ihar Ivano


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am delighted to thank Inese A. Smith who supervisedthe research, for invaluable encouragement and support.

Thanks also are due to the Francis Skaryna BelarusianLibrary and Museum in London and its librarian, AlexanderNadson, as well as to Arnold McMillin, Guy Picarda, HelenMichaluk, James Dingley, Karalina Mackievi, Maria Coonick

and Pavel aco, for giving me the opportunity to imaginemyself a librarian. Thank you to Kenneth Kastytis Baublys, Drago Beresic,

Rta Bonner, Miron Dowbusz, Branko Franolic, Vida Gaspe-riene, Marita Grunts, Avo Hiieme, Zivile Ilgunaite, MilanKocourek,Juhan Parts, Ljudmila Pekarska, Linda Rabuzin, VeraRich, Krzysztof Stoliski, Jadwiga Szmidt, Sylva Simsova,

Aleksas Vilinskas, Zofia arek and Janet Zmroczek, for sharing

time and knowledge to support this research.This study became possibly thanks to the loving genero-

sity of Peter Rodgers.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction......................................................................11

Notes on methodology................................................................. 13Notes on terminology................................................................... 13

Historical background .................................................... 15

Second World War and displaced persons................................ 15

Polish immigration to the United Kingdom............................. 15

European Volunteer Workers (EVW) Schemes....................... 16Later immigration.......................................................................... 18

Building a community life and establishing libraries................ 19

Literature review.............................................................. 23

Reasons for establishing and supportingcommunity libraries ...................................................................... 23

Library collections......................................................................... 24

Community libraries users .......................................................... 25

School libraries .............................................................................. 26

Co-operation with public and other libraries............................ 28

Influence of the democratic transformations in the formerSoviet Union and the Socialist block.......................................... 29


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Baltic and Slavonic libraries in Britainin the course of history .................................................... 33

Before and during the Second World War................................ 33

Post-war developments................................................................ 33

Libraries in the 1950s-1970s........................................................ 35

Influence of the democratic transformations .......................... 37

Recently established libraries....................................................... 39

Collections of the Baltic and Slavonic libraries ..............43

The size of collections.................................................................. 43

The character of the community libraries collections............. 43Lending libraries................................................................................ 43Reference libraries ..............................................................................44

Significance of the collections..................................................... 46Lending libraries................................................................................ 46Reference libraries ..............................................................................47

Work practices of community libraries .......................... 51

Users and use ................................................................................. 51Lending libraries................................................................................ 51Difficulties in attracting new readers ................................................... 52The Polish Library POSK ................................................................ 53Reference libraries ..............................................................................53

Acquisition practices..................................................................... 54Co-operation practices ................................................................. 57

Classification and cataloguing ..................................................... 57

Being part of the community ...................................................... 58


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The organisation of community libraries ....................... 65

Affiliation and management ........................................................ 65

Workers and volunteers ............................................................... 66Budgets of community libraries .................................................. 67

Conclusion....................................................................... 71

Differences and similarities of community libraries ................ 71

Baltic and Slavonic libraries in the changing context............... 73

Bibliography....................................................................77

Appendix I. Descriptions of the surveyed libraries................ 81

Appendix II. Collections, work practicesand organisation of the surveyed libraries ............................... 101

Appendix III. (Abstract in Belarusian) ............... 111


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INTRODUCTION

This book is an abridged, revised version of my MastersDegree dissertation, Baltic and Slavonic Community Libraries inBritain after World War II, written at Loughborough Universityin 2005.

Central and East European countries had a shared

experience in their recent history: as a result of the Second World War, they were either included in the Soviet Union orcontrolled by it. By and large, all the post-war immigrants fromthese countries were political immigrants and refugees, whothey had left their countries unwillingly. This was a distinctivefeature of the post-war mass immigration from Central andEastern Europe to Britain, which produced active migrcommunities with strong national and political identities. This

study attempts to register and analyse the phenomenon ofcommunity libraries in their particular historical appearance Baltic and Slavonic libraries in post-war Britain.

In the words of the Curator of the Ukrainian ShevchenkoLibrary and Archive in London, [this] library is the biggestacquirement of the Ukrainian community in this country[authors transl.].1 This may sound unconvincing to those who

are familiar with public and academic libraries. However,community libraries exist for different reasons than public andacademic libraries. They are part of broader networks of people


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and institutions coming together to sustain a sense of belong-ing. These immigrants act according to what they perceive to bein the best interests of their homeland and people. Therefore,these groups choose and promote those values that best servethe ultimate goal of their existence: contributing to thesurvivaland flourishing of their nation and culture. Neither the ama-teurish character of community libraries, nor the possible biastowards a particular vision, should decrease the appreciation ofthe contribution of these libraries to sustaining the life of theirethnic groups. At the same time, any discourse on theselibraries must take into account the historical and cultural

context of the relevant ethnic group in order to perceive accu-rately the meaning of their work.

These libraries are part of a much broader picture thanjust collecting and lending books and periodicals; they are anintegral part of relationships and structures conditioned by anumber of factors, including ideology and mind-set. It wasintriguing to hear one young Lithuanians opinion that the post-

war immigrants did not trust compatriots coming from theSoviet or post-Soviet Lithuania who, in the opinion of the oldergeneration, would not be able to appreciate their values, effortsand achievements. The decision in the middle of 1990s to closedown the Lithuanian House in London, and the library locatedthere, was attributed to such mistrust. This person said withregret: They would be so useful for us now.

Community libraries are mostly invisible they are knownabout among compatriots; larger libraries may be known toresearchers. However, they are part of the social life in theUnited Kingdom; this needs to be recorded in order to developawareness of the diversity and complexity of the life of ethniccommunities, as well as of the diversity and complexity of theinformation needs of people living here. Ethnic groups may findsuch an analysis useful, as it will stimulate their appreciation of

their own achievements and the variety of their life. It is alsohoped that this research into Baltic and Slavonic communitylibraries will be of use to their workers and volunteers (among


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whom professional librarians are the exception rather than therule) through encouraging learning from each others experien-ce and through co-operation.

Notes on methodology

This research was undertaken in 2005. Organisations andindividuals from eleven Baltic and Slavonic groups wereapproached regarding information about their libraries. Twelvelibraries were successfully contacted, including four referencelibraries: the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum,the Latvian Documentation Centre, the Polish UndergroundMovement (1939-1945) Study Trust Library, the Shevchenko[Ukrainian] Library and Archive, and eight lending ones: theLatvian Welfare Fund (DVF) Catthorpe Manor Library, theLeicester Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain (AUGB)Library, the Leicester Estonian House Library, the LondonEstonian Society Library, the London Latvian Library, thePolish Library POSK, the Croatian Catholic Mission Library,

and the FACCET Trust [Croatian] Library. They representedsix out of the seven Baltic and Slavonic ethnic groups which

were identified as providing libraries. This list included all themain reference and lending Baltic and Slavonic libraries inBritain, as well as a fair number of small libraries of differenttypes (affiliated to a parish, old peoples home, members-onlyclub etc.). Data was collected by means of semi-structured

interviews, questionnaires and correspondence.Notes on terminology

The term community library will be used throughout thiswork. In scholarly literature it is used synonymously with self-help libraries and ethnic libraries; in comparison with the lattertwo, the chosen termunderlines social and cultural dimensions

of these institutions which is one of the central points of focusin this study.


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For the purpose of this work a community library isunderstood to be a collection of information materialsestablished by a particular ethnic group to serve the needs ofthis group and/or as a resource of information about thisethnos/country to others.

In literature the region of the countries of the formerSoviet Union, Yugoslavia and the Socialist block is described by

various terms. For convenience, the expressions Central andEast Europe and Central and East European countries arenormally used in this study. The Baltic States are Estonia,Latvia and Lithuania.

The words diaspora, immigration and exile are usedhere interchangeably to denote communities of those whocame to Britain in the aftermath of the Second World War.Some of them, especially people from the Baltic States, insistedthey were exiles, not immigrants.

Endnotes

1 Interview with Ljudmila Pekarska, the Shevchenko Library andArchive, London, 28 April 2005.


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HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Second World War and displaced persons

During the Second World War and in its aftermath, largemigrations of civilian and military populations occurred. Theredrawing of national borders at the end of the war displacedmillions more. At the end of 1945 some 2,500,000 displacedpersons remained in Central Europe where they happened to

be due to forced displacement or as voluntary refugees. Manyof them were from Eastern Europe either prisoners of war,or forced labourers, or escaping from the Soviet army. By theagreement at Yalta (1945), Soviet citizens were to be repatriatedby the Allies regardless of individual wishes. Non-SovietEuropeans were offered help in repatriation, but many stillrefused. By the end of 1946 there were about one milliondisplaced persons in Western Germany and Austria.1

Britain was one of the countries which received largenumbers of immigrants during the course of the war and in thefollowing few years.

Polish immigration to the United Kingdom

The major ethnic immigrant group comprised Poles. In1940, the Polish government in exile and almost 20,000 Polishmilitary evacuees arrived from France. From these soldiers thePolish First Corps was formed. Initially it was billeted in


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Even so, in November 1946, 354,252 refugees were stillin the two British Zones, in Germany and Austria.7 The successof the Balt Cygnet Scheme and continued labour shortages inBritain, especially in nursing, mining, the cotton industry, andagriculture, encouraged the government to extend its immigra-tion programme. Known as the Westward Ho Scheme it co-

vered more nationalities, and included men as well as women.

Table 1.Nationalities of European Volunteer Workers, 1946-1950.8

Nationality Number of EVWUkrainians 20,930

Poles 14,018

Latvians 11,832

Yugoslavs

Lithuanians 5,732

Estonians 4,114Hungarians 2,474

Czechoslovaks 1,336

Sudetens 1,319

Rumanians 800

Bulgarians 91

Stateless 1,137Other (incl. Belarusians9, Finns,Armenians etc.)

536

Volksdeutsche 1,2

Total

Single adults of working age or those without dependants werepreferred. The bulk of recruits, from diverse national affiliati-


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ons (Table 1), under this scheme arrived in Britain during 1947and 1948. The last ones arrived in the early months of 1950.

In addition, over 8,100 surviving members of the Ukrai-nian Division Halychyna, prisoners of war, were brought to theUK in 1947 from Italy, in order to avoid their forced repatria-tion to the Soviet Union.10 By the end of the following yearalmost all of them were granted EVW status or offeredemployment.11

In total by 1952, some 260,000 refugees had settled inBritain, mostly from Central and Eastern Europe. Roughly halfof them were Poles or persons with Polish citizenship.12 Not all

stayed in Britain for long e.g. 33,000 Poles preferred toemigrate to other countries,13 usually to the United States,Canada, Australia and the South American countries; the samehappened to all communities under discussion.

Later immigration

Mass immigration of East Europeans to Britain mostly

stopped in 1950. During the 1961 Census, the largest EastEuropean community registered in Britain were Poles or thoseborn in Poland almost 82,000; other large groups were thoseborn in then USSR (including the Baltic States) almost36,000, and those born in then Yugoslavia almost 9,000.14

Statistics on later immigration are only partial, as many ofthose arriving from the collapsing Socialist block and Soviet

Union often stayed in Britain illegally.15

War and ethnic clean-sing in the Balkans produced a large number of refugees, bothlegal and illegal. Between 1992 and 1996, 11,445 asylum appli-cations from former Yugoslavia and Albania were submitted tothe Home Office. Due the continuing conflicts almost all of theapplicants were allowed to stay in the country.16 The relaxationthe visa regime regarding the majority of Central and EastEuropean countries and the incorporation of most of them inthe European Union in 2004, have made coming to Britain


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even easier, so that presence of Central and East Europeans inthe British life is now more obvious than ever.

Building a community life and establishing libraries

Many of those who had to leave their country in 1944-1945, carried both a bitterness and determination to make greatefforts to see their own country free from political, cultural andideological domination or as in case of the Baltic States occupation by the Soviet Union. This appears to explain theenergy, creativity and dedication people invested in the collec-tive activities of their ethnic communities: The oppositionalprocess frequently produces intense collective consciousnessand a high degree of internal solidarity 17.

These immigrants almost immediately established theirown organisations of different kinds welfare (focused on helpto those who needed assistance in settling down in a newcountry, as well as to former soldiers and the elderly unable tosupport themselves), political (objecting to the situation in the

home countries and campaigning for change), religious, cultural(for preserving and developing national culture, traditions,language, as well as dissemination of knowledge about thisculture in the British society), educational (e.g. Saturday schoolsfor children to encourage usage of own language andstrengthen their ethnic identity) and others.

Libraries were an important part of these developing

communities. Very often community houses, clubs, schools,parishes would establish their own book collections. They werefilled with books people carried with them into exile amongtheir most treasured possessions and publications produced inexile, e.g. in displaced persons camps in Germany and Austria.

According to incomplete information from the Polish commu-nity in Britain, in 1948 there were 393 Polish libraries with109,108 volumes of books (i.e., 278 volumes average perlibrary). The Polish Ex-Combatants Association alone had 168libraries in their clubs.18 A Belarusian magazine wrote: As


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soon as the Belarusian Religious Centre in London wasestablished, the affiliated library was organised too, i.e. in 1947.Its collection was formed of books brought [] to Romebefore the last war and then sent to London, as well as of otherpublications appeared in the free world [i.e., in exile, I.I.][authors transl.]19. In 1945, the Welfare Association ofUkrainians in Great Britain made an attempt to organisecirculating libraries to facilitate reading of Ukrainian books byits [Associations, I.I.] members [authors transl.]20.

Endnotes1Tannahill, J.A.European volunteer workers in Britain, 1958, pp. 8-9.2Sword, K.Identity in flux: the Polish community in Britain, 1996, p. 23.3Ibid., p. 25.4Vernant, J.The refugee in the post-war world, 1993, p. 74.5Sword, ref. 2, p. 286Kay, D. & Miles, R.Refugees or migrant workers, 1992, pp. 49-52.7Tannahill, ref. 1, p. 26.8 Adapted from: Tannahill, ref. 1, p. 30.Vernant (ref. 4, p. 365) gives slightly different numbers whichinclude dependents of EVWs arrived to Britain 84,871 persons intotal, recorded as at 31 May 1951.9 Tannahill (ref.1, p. 14) remarks that many Belarusians adopted thePolish label in order to avoid deportation to the Soviet Union; or, iffrom Western Belarus, they had had the Polish citizenship until 1939and were automatically regarded Poles by the British authorities.Vernant (ref. 4, pp. 85-86) quotes the Belarusian exile sourcesestimating the number of Belarusians in the United Kingdom in the

beginning of 1950s as 10,000-15,000 persons.10Vernant, ref. 4, p. 365.11Tannahill, ref. 1, pp. 31-33.


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12Vernant, ref. 4, p. 364.13Kushner, T. & Knox, K.Refugees in an age of genocide, 1999, p. 221.14Great Britain. Census 1961. Summary Tables, 1966, table 10.15

Sword, ref. 2, p. 50.16Kushner & Knox, ref. 13, p. 367.17Spicer, E.H. Persistent identity systems. Science, 19 November1971, p. 799.18Szmidt, J. Biblioteki polskie we wspczesnym Londynie[Polish librariesin contemporary London], 1998, p. 24.19D. Belaruskaja Biblijateka i Muzej imja Francika Skaryny

adynienyja [Belarusian Library and Museum have been open].Boym liacham, 1972, 3, 1.20Pekarska, L. Biblioteka i Arkhiv im. T. Shevchenka v Londoni:do istorii stvorennya [T. Shevchenko Library and Archive: towardsthe history of its creation] [1-7]. Ukrainska dumka, 28 October 4November 2004, p. 2. The same article mentions a curious factrecorded in the documents of the Welfare Association of Ukrainiansin Great Britain that in 1948 the Association planned to spend more

money on its library in London than on maintenance of its centraloffice.


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LITERATURE REVIEW

Reasons for establishing and supportingcommunity libraries

An Australian librarian, Robert Apedaile, conducted asurvey among ethnic community libraries in the Melbournearea in 1991. In total 31 libraries submitted their responses.

Three reasons for establishing and supporting them were

regularly mentioned by respondents together or in differentcombinations: helping first generation migrants to adapt to a

new environment, preservation of the groups cultural heritage, ensuring that the ethnic identity of a particular

community is recognised by the wider society.

The second motivation in the authors observation isparticularly dominant in those communities who probablycame to Australia to preserve a way of life [] the Latvian,Lithuanian and Ukrainian communities, for instance, supportstrong self-help community libraries1. In other words, those

who found themselves in a different country for political orideological reasons are especially sensitive to preservingmeaningful elements which they recognise as part of theiridentity; therefore these communities are keen on supportingstructures and institutions which contribute to the preservation


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and development of their identity. In this context theApedailes observation, that some well-established communitiesin Australia have no extant libraries, is understandable.

According to Apedaile, all groups which do not have their self-help libraries can probably be divided into two broad streams:those who have no means and those that see no need2.

Inese Smith writing about the experience of the Latviancommunity in Britain explains that generally post-warimmigrants were not aware of public libraries and their services,and of the possibility of the provision of Latvian material bythese libraries. On the whole, the Latvians, like other

immigrant communities, had found that they had to provide fortheir welfare, be it social or cultural. Therefore, when theydesired literature in their own language, it seemed that the onlything to do was to organise their own libraries. 3

Sylva Simsova urges caution from too quick dismissal ofself-help initiatives and institutions including communitylibraries on the basis of their amateurish character and lack of

respectably high standard. She explains that each ethnic groupaims at institutional completeness making sure that it has itsown institutions for every facet of life. Therefore, theseinstitutions are less concerned with (and should not be judgedon the bases of) the efficiency of achieving their stated goals,rather than with their ultimate purpose to promote the ethnicgroup identity and to give each individual a chance to work outhis own problems of identity within the group. 4

Library collections

Apedaile observes that the value of community librarycollections does not depend on their size: some very smallcollections are important because of their concentration on alimited range of subjects; consequently, these subjects arecollected in remarkable depth. The author perceives the valueof ethnic community libraries mostly in their ability to provide


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substantial collections in languages other than English something which public libraries are not able to offer.5

Describing the character of the Latvian libraries in Britain,Marita Grunts points out that these libraries do not specialise inany particular subject field. Their aim is merely to provide someLatvian literature for the interested general reader. Most of theliterature available from these libraries is published in exile.6 Itappears, however, that the relative inaccessibility of books andperiodicals published in home countries and a lack of money tobuy them were not the only reasons why exile publicationsprevailed so heavily in the community libraries: describing the

Latvian Studies Centre (Latvieu studiju centrs) at WesternMichigan University in Kalamazoo (USA), Inese Smith remarksthat the Centres policy of collecting Soviet publications wasquite unusual for most Latvian libraries [] which tendedpurposely not to include anything published in Soviet Latvia. 7

Community libraries users

According to Apendaile, two categories of clientele wererepeatedly identified by the surveyed libraries: first generationmigrants and students.8 In a detailed history of the Shevchenko[Ukrainian] Library and Archive in London, Ljudmila Pekarskapoints out that the initial motivation of the organisers of bookscollections was to enable Ukrainians to read in their ownlanguage. Later, in the 1960s, the users of the library were

scholars and students of Ukrainian or Slavonic studies.9

Bothauthors indicate an important process: though the second andfollowing generations immigrants need and use bookcollections in their language to a much lesser degree than theirparents, grandparents etc., these libraries after decades ofdevelopment, gathering publications and documents oftenreceive new life as places to access knowledge about culturesand countries as they preserve materials rarely available frompublic and academic libraries. Sylva Simsova notes in thiscontext that local history libraries can make a valuable


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contribution by teaching ethnic groups how to collect andpreserve publications and archive materials which might be ofgreat demand in years to come.10

School libraries

A particular type of community libraries are those servingthe needs of mother-tongue schools. Their users are mainlychildren learning their parents language, their teachers andsometimes the parents themselves.

Surveying the library needs of mother-tongue schools inLondon in 1980, Pirkko Elliott found that only a tiny percent ofbooks in mother tongue (other than English) read by children

were borrowed from public libraries. The reason for that rarelylies in unwillingness of public libraries to provide a sufficientamount of non-English books for children. Often they have toprioritise their services as within one library authority there canbe mother-tongue schools in more than ten languages. Also,pupils age and abilities to use a mother tongue may vary greatly

even within one school, which makes the choosing of thesuitable literature to offer even more difficult. Among otheridentified problems negatively influencing the provision of non-English childrens books are the lack of good quality publicationsand a lack of language expertise among public librarians. Inaddition, some of the teachers were not aware of the kinds ofprovision that public libraries could offer. The collaboration of

mother-tongue schools and local libraries was not easy toestablish also due to a particular time these schools werenormally held in the evenings and at the weekends whenlibraries were closed or their services were reduced.11

Researching Polish libraries in London in 1996, JadwigaSzmidt surveyed all the currently existing libraries at SaturdaySchools for Homeland-related subjects (Szkoy PrzedmiotwOjczystych).12 Out of nine Polish schools in London, eight hadtheir own libraries all of them lending. However, their state

was pitiful: mostly old, unattractive and randomly collected


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books were stored on premises not intended as libraries. This ispartly due to a lack of purpose built accommodation they hadto use rooms at community clubs, parish centres or rent spaceat British schools. The absence of separate space for the securestorage of books, and comfortable for users, inhibited thecontribution these school libraries should have made toencouraging children and their parents to read in the mother-tongue. Another reason identified by the author for the in-adequate state of community school libraries was the lack ofmoney to purchase new, relevant and attractive editions; theavailable funds were just enough for purchasing the necessary

textbooks. However, attractiveness of the book collection iseven more important as the Saturday school pupils are specificreaders requiring corresponding literature. For the majority ofthem who were born outside Poland, many Polish classical

works are not comprehensible as they are written in an archaiclanguage and relate to themes that do not inspire [youngreaders] to make their way through the intricacies of Polish

which are in any case a struggle for them [authors transl.]13

.Perhaps, this may explain Elliotts findings of childrensreservations regarding reading in their own language: accordingto interviews with mother-language school pupils, booksabout [their] parents country of origin were the only categoryof materials where the mother tongue was preferred toEnglish14.

Szmidt suggests that finding appropriate premises andadditional funding which themselves are extremely difficultissues will not resolve all the problems of Saturday schools.Professional assistance in collection management andsupporting the services is necessary for these libraries tocontribute effectively to the teaching process and encouraginginterest in reading in the mother-tongue.15


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Co-operation with public and other libraries

The question of the best means of co-operation betweencommunity libraries and public libraries has been answered

variously. On the one hand, the Polish community in Britainhas been very persistent in ensuring that Polish books wereavailable from as many public libraries as possible across thecountry, as well as at other institutions such as hospitals. To dothis, the Central Circulating Library was established by thePolish community in London in 1948 and is still operationaltoday.16

The Latvian community, which is much smaller than thePolish community, has had a different experience. Inese Smithevaluating this experience suggests that public libraries role inincreasing awareness of small ethnic groups present in theirarea can be important; they can refer Latvians or otherinterested parties to the nearest Latvian organisations orlibraries, as well as supporting the ethnic groups activities, e.g.

with providing space for exhibits.17

In 1980, Marita Grunts wrote that Latvian libraries inBritain do not co-operate with each other [a]ll these librariesare like little isolated islands, least of all with other Britishlibraries. One of the reasons is the lack of library training orexperience amongst staff or officials of organisations to whichthese libraries belong; another reason a negative experienceunder the Soviet and Nazis occupations discouraging informal

initiatives and openness to a wider reading public.18

It is worthin this context noting that the situation started changing whenan information professional joined these libraries as a non-paid

volunteer: since 1984, Union catalogue of holdings in Latvianlibraries in Britain has been compiled bringing together info-rmation about the collection stocks of the Latvian libraries inthis country.19

According to Apedaile, cooperation of community libra-ries with public libraries in the Melbourne area was almost non-existent. Most community libraries firmly rejected the option of


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placing their entire collection or parts of collections withinpublic libraries. Some of them explained that to do so wouldnegate the whole purpose of the library20. This is understand-able if we take into account that community library collectionshave a particular meaning and importance for an ethnic group.

This meaning cannot be re-created by a public or any otherlibrary, because preserved publications, archives, items of thematerial culture etc. receive their special value from this ethnicgroup. These publications, documents, photographs etc. bear

witness to the peoples existence, its aspirations and struggles;in a way they communicate not simply facts, but the meanings

necessary for individuals and groups self-identity and for anethnic group the will to exist.

Influence on the community libraries of thedemocratic transformations in the formerSoviet Union and the Socialist block

It is not yet clear exactly what impact the democratic

transformations in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990shave had on community libraries in Britain and elsewhere. Inthe latest research21, Inese Smith and Aina trle found that themajor Latvian libraries in USA, France and Sweden have beenrecently closed and their collections were partly sent to Latvia,partly dispersed among other libraries outside Latvia. Thenumber of the community library users has decreased not only

due to the death of post-war immigrants and the assimilation oftheir descendants. The democratic transformations in Centraland Eastern Europe have made it possible to travel to thesecountries, buy new books, learn the language or conductresearch. This, for example, led to discontinuation of theLatvian studies programme at Western Michigan University inKalamazoo (USA) and the subsequent closure of thementioned Latvian Studies Centre (Latvieu studiju centrs)

which used to serve not only the academic needs of thestudents, but the wider academic and Latvian exile communi-


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ties. According to Smith and trle, [r]enewal of the indepen-dence of Latvia, for which exile Latvians had tenaciously hopedand worked for almost half a century [] had a fruitful, butsadly ironic result whole libraries were liquidated, but notdestroyed, being sent to Latvia22. In the current situation,Smith and trle conclude that it is a new duty for thecommunity librarians to make sure that the collections ofclosing libraries and dying immigrants are not discarded, but,

where possible, handed over to other places needing andwanting them.

Endnotes1Apedaile, R. Ethnic community libraries: a survey in theMelbourne metropolitan area.Multicultural Libraries Newsletter, 1993,

13(1), 14.2Ibid., p. 15.3Smith, I. A. Latvian community libraries in Britain.Journal ofMulticultural Librarianship, 1987, 1(3), 114.4Simsova, S. Multicultural populations: their nature and needs. In:Zielinska, M.F. & Kirkwood, F.T., eds.Multicultural librarianship: aninternational handbook, 1992, p. 29.5

Apedaile, ref. 1., p. 14.6Grunts, M.V.Latvians in exile in the free world, 1940-1980, 1980, p.21.7Smith, I.A. & trle A.Witnessing and preserving Latvian culture inexile: Latvian libraries in the West. [Unpublished draft, 27 July 2005].8Apedaile, ref. 1., p. 14.9Pekarska, L. Biblioteka i Arkhiv im. T. Shevchenka v Londoni: doistorii stvorennya [T. Shevchenko Library and Archive: towards thehistory of its creation] [1-7]. Ukrainska dumka, 28 October 4November 2004, p. 2 & 3-10 February 2005, p. 2.


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BALTIC AND SLAVONIC LIBRARIESIN BRITAIN IN THE COURSEOF HISTORY

Before and during the Second World War

Among the community libraries surveyed, only theLondon Estonian Society Library was established before theSecond World War. The Society started in 1921 and wassupported by the Estonian Embassy where the meetings wereheld, a separate reading room arranged and the library set up.1

In 1943 the Library of the Ministry of Religions andPublic Education was formed as the result of the merger of twolibraries belonging to the Ministry of Education and theNational Culture Fund of the Polish government in exile thatthen was based in London. The first collected textbooks and

teaching materials in Polish and English. The second was ineffect a collection of publications submitted to the NationalCulture Fund as the legal deposit by Polish publishers abroad;these were intended for handing over to the correspondinglibraries in Poland after its liberation.2 In 1945, the mergedlibrary adopted the name of the Polish Library.

Post-war developments

A steady growth in the numbers of Baltic and Slavoniccommunity libraries began immediately after the Second World


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War, when tens of thousands of displaced persons fromCentral and Eastern Europe started to arrive in Britain. Usuallythese libraries would be organised in clubs, parishes, centresand similar institutions. These places were where people,mostly with only a basic knowledge of English, would turn inneed for support and communication.

The roots of the Belarusian and Ukrainian libraries inLondon date from that period. Since its beginning in 1946, theUkrainian library has been part of the Association ofUkrainians in Great Britain (AUGB; initially, the Welfare

Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain). In the headquarters

of this organisation in London there was a reading room whichin 1946 was attended on average by 12 users daily. In thefollowing year, 1947, as the AUGB documents report, the

Associations Central Library and Archive were established.3The history of the Belarusian Library in London began in

1948, when the newly established Belarusian Catholic Missionacquired its own building in London. This new place was to

become a religious and cultural centre. The priest in charge ofthe Mission brought from Rome a small but valuablecollection of Byelorussian [i.e. Belarusian I.I. ] books4. Aseparate room for the library on the Missions premises wasdesignated as a study centre and reading-room for the youngstudents []. It served as a meeting place for the studentassociations [] and was used by a number of scholarsinterested in Byelorussian history and culture5.

For the Polish community, the task of preservingmaterials related to the Polish government in exile, to Poland asan independent state and to the contribution of the PolishCorps to the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War

was of great importance. Several institutions were established inthe 1940s which collected, preserved, published and enabledaccess to such materials the General Sikorski Historical

Institute, the Polish Research Centre, the Jzef PisudskiInstitute and the Polish Underground Movement (1939-1945)


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Study Trust.6 All of them institutions included referencelibraries primarily intended for researchers.

At the same time, the Polish Library mentioned aboveadopted the role of the major Polish public library serving thegreatly increased population of Poles during the 1940s. Theyneeded English textbooks and general reading in English,special technical literature which reflected their professionalengagements in Britain, as well as Polish books. Therefore, alending service was launched in 1945.7 The vast majority of thelibrary users were students of the Polish University College andit was logical that in 1948 the library became part of the College

and changed its name to the Polish University College Library.Although an academic library, it was still open to the public andeven started a postal lending service; in its peak two years,1950-1951, it sent 3,053 packages of books to users outsideLondon.8 In 1953, the Polish University College was closed andthe library was transferred under the authority of the PolishResearch Centre. In 1967, when it became part of the Polish

Social and Cultural Association (POSK), it adopted the name ofthe Polish Library POSK and has continued to act as the majorPolish lending and research library in Britain.

Libraries in the 1950s-1970s

All through the 1950s-1970s, new Baltic and Slavoniclibraries appeared where self-help centres with their own

premises were established. This was the case of the Ukrainianand Estonian libraries in Leicester, the London Latvian Library,the Latvian Welfare Fund Catthorpe Manor Library and theCroatian Catholic Mission Library in London. All these werelending libraries and were funded by their parent organisations.

A somewhat peculiar case is presented by a privateLithuanian Library (Lituanistin biblioteka) which belonged toRostislovas Baublys, a bibliophile and active member of theLithuanian community in post-war Britain. When he retired in1974, he dedicated his free time to providing a library located in


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the material destroyed in Soviet Belarus for political reasons;enabling free access to publications kept in the restricted accesscollections in the Soviet Union; and the promotion of thenational heritage which was suppressed in the home country.

In 1988, the Latvian Documentation Centre, in effect acentral Latvian reference library and archive, was launched.16

This was a time when some Latvian libraries started closingdown and post-war immigrants were leaving their collections ofpublications and documents as legacies. The centre has becomea clearinghouse for materials being sent to libraries in Latviaand the pillar of collaborative work of Latvian libraries, archives

and museums in the United Kingdom.

Influence of the democratic transformationsin home countries

By the 1990s, the Baltic and Slavonic communities weremuch weaker compared with the 1940s-1950s, when most ofthe community centres and libraries were founded. A natural

ageing of the first generation immigrants and their withdrawalfrom active participation in social activities, as well as theassimilation of their descendants were the main causes for this.In these circumstances, many clubs and community houses hadto be closed as they became underused and could not besustained from the shrinking funds of the migr organisations.In 1948, the Polish Ex-Combatants Association had 168 clubs

with libraries across the United Kingdom; in 1996 their numberdecreased to 2617; in 2005 to 1318. All Baltic and Slavoniccommunities have had similar experiences, and the process ofclosing down properties acquired by the first generation ofpost-war immigrants continues. The gap in worldview betweenold, post-war immigrants, and new ones coming to theUnited Kingdom from the post-Socialist societies aggravatesthese processes.

With the closing of community centres, their libraries areliquidated as well. Most often their collections are sent to the


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home countries, sometimes to the central libraries, sometimesto provincial public libraries or in the case of the Polishcollections to Russia, i.e. to the countries of the formerSoviet Union where strong Polish communities existnowadays19. The collection of the Rostislovas BaublysLithuanian Library was dispersed: some books were sent toLithuania; others, mostly novels, were donated to theLithuanian Embassy in London; the rest, academic titles, wereaccepted by the School of Slavonic and East European Studiesof University of London.20

Another Lithuanian library was closed around the same

time as Rostislovas Baublys library. It was located in theLithuanian House in London, where there was also a publishinghouse, Nida Press, the books of which were primarilydistributed among the members of a book club. The library wasestablished in 1951 by the Lithuanian Association in GreatBritain. Apart from Nida Press publications, it had other booksand periodicals, mostly published in the diaspora before and

after the Second World War.21

In 1980 its collection included3,000 volumes.22 Initially the books were catalogued andloaned out [] but with the passing years, less people used thelibrary. The influx of new Lithuanians were not interested inthese books over the years, the Lithuanian language had beenmodernised, new ideas had developed, so [] the collectiondid not attract new readers.23 After the closure of the library,its collection was stored in the Lithuanian Country Club,Sodyba, in Hampshire and currently it is not in use.24

On the other hand, there are signs that the situation for atleast some libraries is changing for the better. In 2002, theShevchenko Library and Archive was re-launched after severalyears of being inactive. It is led by a Ukrainian who came to theUnited Kingdom comparatively recently. Also, young Ukrainiansstudying in London are working for the library as volunteers.

The chairperson of the Estonian club in Leicester isoptimistic: young Estonians who recently came from Estoniahave started participating in the community events. Some of


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Endnotes1Estonian Embassy in London. Estonian community in the UK., 20.10.2003,

[accessed 10.08.2005].In 1869, a Czech-Moravian Readers Association was established inLondon, which subscribed to Czech-language periodicals and bookspublished in Prague and other European cities (notably Berlin). In1903, its library consisted of 143 books and made 149 loans.(Kuera, J.Djiny tlocvi[n] jednoty Sokol v Londn[History of theGymnastic Association Sokol in London]. ikov, 1912, pp. 5&8.)A library for Latvian sailors in London opened in 1906. Then, inLondon there was a small group of some 100 Latvians who came toBritain after the first Russian revolution (1905). It is unclear,however, when the library ceased to exist. (Grunts, M.V. & Smith,I.A. In the mirror of the past. Auzia-Smita, I., ed. LatvieiLielbritanij[Latvians of Great Britain]. 1995, p. 453.) Probably, therealso existed Polish libraries in Britain before the Second World Waras the Polish community was several thousand strong and, at thebeginning of the 20th century, had Catholic missions and schools inManchester and London. (Sword, K.Identity in flux: the Polishcommunity in Britain, 1996, p. 21).2Danilewicz Zieliska, M.Ksika i czytelnictwo polskie w WielkiejBrytani : szkice[The Polish book and readership in Great Britain: asketch], 1996, pp. 12-13.3Pekarska, L. Biblioteka i Arkhiv im. T. Shevchenka v Londoni: doistorii stvorennya [T. Shevchenko Library and Archive: towards the

history of its creation] [1-7]. Ukrainska dumka, 28 October 4November 2004, p. 2.4The Francis Skaryna Byelorussian Library and Museum, 1971, p. 4.5Ibid.6Szmidt, J. Biblioteki polskie we wspczesnym Londynie[Polish librariesin contemporary London], 1998, pp. 29 & 36-38.Suchcitz, A.Informator Studium Polski Podziemnej[Guide to the Polish

Underground Movement Study Trust], 1997, p. 160.7Szmidt, ref. 6, p. 47.8Szmidt, ref. 6, p. 49.


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9Juraine, A.M. In memoriam. Darbininkas, 7 June 1996, 81(23).10 Interview with Kenneth Kastytis Baublys, London, 16 August2005.11 Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861) Ukraines greatest poet andprophet of Ukrainian ethnic identity. Inclusion of Skarynas (ref.14) and Shevchenkos names in the titles of libraries is significantsince it reveals the perceived mission and role of these institutions inthe life of the migr communities and broader in the life of thewhole nation. Libraries, at least the largest ones, were perceived asone of the pillars of the intellectual and spiritual (in terms of moralityand aesthetics) survival and development of the ethic group and its

culture.12Pekarska, ref. 3, 11-18 November 2004, p. 2 & 20-27 January2005, p. 413Pekarska, ref. 3, 11-18 November 2004, p. 2.14 Francis Skaryna (c.1490-c.1551) the publisher of the firstBelarusian printed book, poet and humanist.15The Francis Skaryna Byelorussian Library and Museum, 1971, pp. 6-7.16

Smith, I.A. & trle A.Witnessing and preserving Latvian culture inexile: Latvian libraries in the West. [Unpublished draft, 27 July 2005].17 Szmidt, ref. 6., pp. 15 & 24.18 Mieczysaw Jarkowski letter to Ihar Ivano, 6 September 2005.19 Telephone conversation with Mieczysaw Jarkowski, the PolishEx-Combatants Association, 28 July 2005.20 Telephone conversation with Kenneth Kastytis Baublys, 3 August

2005.21 Aleksas Vilinskas email to Ihar Ivano, 19 August 2005.22 In the first 25 years of its existence (1951-1976) the library had 42readers; it operated a postal service 200 parcels with books weresent to readers. According to the records, however, most of bookswere borrowed just by two readers. (Barnas K.Britanijos lietuviai1974-1994 [British Lithuanians, 1974-1994], 1997, p. 197.) Statisticsfor the later period is not available.23 Vida Gasperiene email to Ihar Ivano, 5 September 2005.24 Interview with Zivile Ilgunaite, Sodyba, Hampshire, 16 July 2005.


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25 Interview with Juhan Parts, Estonian House, Leicester, 5 August2005. In his words, we [the older generation] have to bend as thetree bends in order not be broken by the wind [Estonian idiom, -I.I.]; we have to listen to the younger generation.26Studium Polski Podziemnej. Sprawozdanie z dziaalnosci w 2004 roku[Polish Underground Movement (1939-1945) Study Trust. Report2004]. [Unpublished].27 Telephone conversation with Linda Rabuzin, 26 July 2005.28Biblioteka Sveti Sava. Future., [n.d.][accessed 15.08.2005].


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COLLECTIONS OF THE BALTIC ANDSLAVONIC LIBRARIES: THEIR SIZE,CHARACTER AND SIGNIFICANCE

The size of collections

Among the surveyed libraries, the largest is the PolishLibrary POSK, a lending library. Its book and booklet holdingsinclude some 150,000 items and over 4,200 periodical titles.

The Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum(hereafter the Belarusian Library) and the Shevchenko Libraryand Archive are both reference libraries; their holdings includesome 30,000 volumes of books and over 200 periodical titleseach. The holdings of another two reference libraries, theLatvian Documentation Centre and the Polish UndergroundMovement (1939-1945) Study Trust Library include over 7000

volumes of books each. The size of the rest of the libraries collections all ofthese seven are lending libraries is between 500 and 4500

volumes.

The character of the community libraries collections

Lending libraries

All the surveyed libraries collect publications which byand large relate to the home country and the native culture of


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the people to whom the library belongs. For lending librariesthat predominantly or exclusively serve the needs of a particulargroup (club members, pupils and staff of a Saturday schooletc.), the matter of language is the decisive one. Theinterviewees at lending libraries routinely underlined that all oralmost all their holdings are in their mother tongues. Thisreflects the role these libraries have been expected to fulfil bytheir founders and users: to give access to publications in theirown language.

Lending libraries (except the Polish Library POSK1) haveconsiderably poorer collections of periodicals than books. It

reflects the difficulties these libraries have had withpreservation of newspapers and magazines and lending them.

Another reason may be the perception of periodicals assomething that loses its value rapidly. As small lending libraries

were not intended to serve researchers in the first place,collections of periodicals were not perceived as beingparticularly valuable to their core users. Also periodicals are not

cheap and require commitment to regular expenses choosingbetween books and periodicals, small lending libraries choosebooks.2

The acquisition policies of community libraries are notrigid. As their readership changes (e.g. the number of the users

who are British increases), the character of the collectedmaterial may change, too. Ultimately, this is the condition forsurvival and success of any library.3

Reference libraries

The Latvian Documentation Centre acquisition policy istypical for reference libraries. It collects:

all material in Latvian and about Latvia in otherlanguages;

all publications, ephemera and archive materialsrelating to Latvians in the United Kingdom.4


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The Latvian Documentation Centre, the Belarusian Libra-ry and the Shevchenko Library and Archive, i.e. reference libra-ries5 fulfil two essential functions for their communities:

preserving the national heritage, which includes(and possibly is emphasised, but is not limited to)the migr community heritage;

enabling access to the material (Latvian,Belarusian and Ukrainian, respectively) to allthose interested in researching the relevanttopics.6

These libraries actively collect publications relating totheir homelands in foreign languages as they may be of use toresearchers and others who do not speak the languages of thesepeoples. Such publications also have a certain symbolicmeaning to the diaspora communities, especially to all thosepeople who support activities for promotion of their cultureand encourage research in it. These publications contribute tothe perception of the meaningfulness of such support and the

value of a librarys efforts to serve the information needs ofnon-members of the ethnic community. This acquires a specialsignificance for those whose culture and language aresuppressed and history falsified which, to different degrees, wasthe case for all ethnic groups under discussion.

The three reference libraries mentioned collect archivematerials relating to the life of the diaspora: organisations

documents, personal archives, ephemera etc. Naturally theirfocus is on materials relating to the communitys life in theUnited Kingdom. For example, the Belarusian Library, the onlyinstitution of such kind outside the homeland, has in effect be-come a depository for the whole post-war Belarusian emigra-tion in the West.

The Belarusian Library and the Shevchenko Library and Archive also collect items of art and collectables and has

created museum collections that reflect these cultures.


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Significance of the collections

Since community libraries aim to serve particularcategories of users the value of their collections should be per-

ceived in relation to this. In the current study, these users aremainly people who came to the United Kingdom as a result ofthe Second World War. Hardly any of them had a real choice,as often this was the only option between life and death. Theyleft their countries in tragic circumstances and witnessed howthe post-war iron curtain cut them off from their own people.

They received frightening news about political and religiouspersecutions in their home countries and in the cases of someof the countries of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia of ethnic suppression. In this country immigrants had to dealnot only with the need to settle down and the pressure to assi-milate, but also with their experiences and memories and withthe changing realities in their homelands.

Lending libraries

In such a context, community libraries were not only theplaces where literature in mother tongue was available. They

were also places where certain kind of memories, experiencesand values were understood, appreciated and preserved those

which were often suppressed and denied in home countries. This partly explains why the collections of almost all thesurveyed lending libraries consist predominantly or even

entirely of the post-war migr publications. People read a lot,especially biographies and memoirs of compatriots in exile7, a

witness of the Leicester Estonian House Library recalls. Manyof these books were written in the diaspora; they were supple-mented by a large number of the national literature classics that

were reprinted by migrs repeatedly, beginning from thedisplaced persons camps in post-war Germany and Austria.8

Apart from relevance, there were other reasons why smallcommunity libraries collected predominantly or only publicca-tions appearing in the diaspora:


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Purchasing publications from the home country was difficult, too expensive or even impossible.For libraries in the West, the normal way of

receiving publications from Central and EasternEurope in 1950s-1990s was by book exchangethat only large libraries could afford.

Some libraries did not have resources for purcha-sing books; they could only rely on books donatedby well-wishers and free copies from publishers.

In some cases, there was reluctance to have to doanything with the Soviet authorities, their represen-tatives, or even to use books published by them.9

As a result, the diaspora publications constitute the coreof the collections in majority of the surveyed libraries. They

were published, actively collected and read as long as the firstgeneration immigrants were numerous and active. For them,these publications were relevant and meaningful.

Not many publishing initiatives (publishing houses and

periodicals) established by the post-war immigrants havesurvived until now; most of them disappeared as a result of theageing and death of their readers, supporters and authors. Balticand Slavonic migr publishing decreased sharply in 1980s;respectively, the library collections of the diaspora publicationsmostly consist of books published in the 1950s-1980s.10

Most of the lending libraries collections of the migr

publications are fragmentary. This reflects the difficulties theselibraries had to cope with: they were often left without adedicated person look after them and communication betweenthe diaspora publishers and other community institutionsincluding libraries was often irregular.

Reference libraries

The collections of the surveyed reference libraries aresignificant or even unique. The Polish Underground Movement(1939-1945) Study Trust Library has a comprehensive collec-


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tion of books relating to various aspects of the Home Armyand the Polish Underground State published before 1990. Mostof them appeared outside Poland and, together with a valuablearchive maintained by the Trust, offer a unique place forconducting relevant research.

The Latvian Documentation Centre and the ShevchenkoLibrary and Archive have fairly comprehensive collections of respectively Latvian and Ukrainian post-war migr publica-tions as well some earlier prints and developing collections ofmore recent publications from the diaspora and home countries.

From the beginning, the Belarusian Library has aimed to

build a comprehensive collection of Belarusian and Belarus-related publications. Though the migr prints are an importantpart of it, the majority of publications are from Belarus. Thecollection is up-to-date, though largely limited to the humanities;it also includes many rare publications hardly available anywhereelse in the West. During the 1990s when many Western librariesstruggled to receive books and periodicals from the former

Soviet Union, the Belarusian Library was kept posted with newlypublished material, including samizdat. Currently, this is one ofthe largest Belarusian library collections outside Belarus.

Usually reference community libraries collect thediaspora-related materials in a depth that no other institutionscould do. These materials do not fit in the collection policies ofeither public or academic or specialised British libraries. Libra-ries and archives in home countries did not collect them in theSoviet Union period either.


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Endnotes1 An exception among the surveyed lending libraries is the PolishLibrary POSK. This library has the largest collection of the Polish

material in the United Kingdom and is in many respects unique. Itoccupies a special place serving the Polish community as a publiclibrary and being a research institution and a depository ofdocuments and other archive materials. The spectrum of the materialcollected by the library is very broad; it has been defined in threeareas of collecting:

Main dictionaries, encyclopaedias, all migr publications,all the humanities related to Poland (published in Poland and

abroad), migr periodicals and those published in Poland,Polonica and all Polish publications produced before 1939; Archive documents, photographs and small prints related

to the migr community life; Museum manuscripts, documents, personal papers, etc.

(Szmidt, J. Biblioteki polskie we wspczesnym Londynie[Polish librariesin contemporary London], 1998, p. 59)2 From Marita Grunts email to Ihar Ivano, 22 August 2005: [D]ueto lack of funds, the [London Latvian] Library does not subscribe tonewspapers, but LNPL[Latvian National Council in Great Britain]pays for a Library subscription to two weekly newspapers BrvLatvijaand Laiks, and a reader donates The Baltic Times.All can beread in the Library.3 From Marita Grunts email to Ihar Ivano, 22 August 2005: Thecollecting policy of the London Latvian Library is to collect anything

published in Latvian, whether in the West or in Latvia, and also any-thing about Latvia and Latvians published in other languages. Sincematerial about the Baltic States usually includes information aboutLatvia this also is collected. Although most of the books in thecollections have been published in the West, over the past 15 yearbooks published in Latvia are rapidly growing in numbers. Transla-tions by foreign authors as a rule are not collected, but since latelyLatvian publishers publish mainly translations and readers ask after

them the Library has had to abandon this rule.4 Inese Smith e-mail to Ihar Ivano, 19 August 2005.


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WORK PRACTICES OF COMMUNITYLIBRARIES: USERS, ACQUISITION, CO-OPERATION AND COMMUNITYINVOLVEMENT

Users and use

Lending libraries

Most of lending community libraries are used by mem-bers of the founding organisation or users of the institutionwhere the library is located: club members, pupils, the parentsand staff of Saturday/Sunday schools, residents and staff of theold peoples home, parishioners etc. By and large they are openduring the opening hours of these institutions. All surveyedlending libraries are open to the public; in some libraries,however, restrictions on access and use are applied, e.g. if thelibrary is located on the premises of a members-only club.

The number of users of the libraries varies from a few toover one hundred. The readership of the majority of them isbecoming older and falling in numbers. This is not always anirreversible process, but depends more on new immigrants thanon the first generations descendants, who are rarely users ofcommunity libraries; it also depends on the person in charge of

the collection and the organisation responsible for the library.1The most popular kinds of books among users of lending

community libraries are fiction, memoirs, biographies and


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historical essays; also classical works of their national literature,which are especially attractive to older people.2

Difficulties experienced by community librariesin attracting new readers

Explaining why people of his generation do not use acommunity library, a descendant of the Ukrainian post-warimmigrants said that, despite learning Ukrainian for many yearsat Saturday School, it has not become their primary language mixed-marriage families, jobs, all aspects of society discouragethe use of the mother tongue. Reading the Ukrainian weeklyused to be essential for keeping in touch with the homeland.Not any more: the internet delivers news quicker and it isavailable in English.3

As more and more information become available on theinternet, this changes the ways people find information andhow and what they read. Community libraries and newspapershave lost the monopoly on information and reading materials in

their mother tongues. Generally books from Central andEastern Europe are more accessible and affordable than everbefore. Many people travel to their homelands regularly andbuy books there.

Another recently analysed threat to ethnic libraries, seenin the example of Latvian libraries, is closure as a result ofdecreased use by scholars who are now able to conduct their

research directly in archives and libraries in Central and EastEuropean countries.4Many newcomers to the United Kingdom from Central

and East Europe do not join the established community groupsand centres. Some of them come to Britain to master English,earn some money and return home. Speaking their own language

would in their view prevent them from accomplishing theseobjectives. Often, this is perceived as an opportunity to get toknow the world beyond ones own country and culture. Culturaldifferences are no longer perceived to be as important as when


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the ideological differences between the West and the East sogreatly influenced peoples outlook. Also, after the majority ofthe Central and East European countries joined the EuropeanUnion in 2004, their citizens were no longer restricted toparticular jobs and did not need any permits. As a result, theyrely less on help from anyone, including their communities.5

The Polish Library POSK

In spite of the negative aspects mentioned above, thenumber of the Polish Library POSK members has been

growing year after year, though there was not the sharpupswing after 1 May 2004 when Poland became part of theEU which was hoped for.6 The Library POSK operates alending service, a reading room and a room for researchers for

working with archive materials. Consequently, the library isused by the general public (mostly Poles) who borrow books,or read periodicals and work with the reference collectionsholdings in the reading room; and by researchers interested inPoland-related issues. In 2004, 1181 people were members ofthe library, among them 532 newly registered. They borrowedover 12,000 items. In the 1990s, almost all books published inPoland after 1945 were transferred to the lending collection andbecame available for borrowing. Most popular books somefiction, history, and childrens books are on the open accessshelves, the rest have to be ordered. The library was used by

149 persons for research in 2004, the majority from British andPolish universities. The most frequent themes of their research

were the history of Poland and the Polish army, literature andculture, emigration and presence in the United Kingdom.7

Reference libraries

The Polish Underground Movement (1939-1945) Study

Trust Library is used mostly by Polish researchers and studentsstudying the history of the Polish Resistance during the Second


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World War. Some fifty persons per year come to work thereand some 200 enquires are dealt with.8

The number of users of the Shevchenko Library andArchive is increasing since it was re-launched in 2002. Its mainusers are students of Ukrainian studies and researchers ofUkrainian history, art, music etc. 187 persons visited the libraryin 2004.9

The experience of the Belarusian Library is somewhatpeculiar. For years, it has had a resident librarian and tworooms have been dedicated to visitors who could stay and workthere. This made the library a popular place for long-term re-

search; a number of books and many articles have been writtenthere by researchers coming to the Library for weeks and evenmonths. This opportunity was especially valuable for scholarsfrom Belarus and other post-Socialist countries, mostly Poland,as they could have free accommodation and access to materialsnot always available in libraries in the homeland. Despite beinga reference library mainly aimed at researchers, it has recently

started attracting young Belarusians who for different reasonstemporarily stay in London. They find in the librarypublications which are illegal or semi-legal in a home countryruled by an autocratic government uncensored periodicals,books and music banned or restricted for distribution. These

visitors are encouraged to take back home duplicates of bookspublished in the diaspora or which are out-of-print or un-available from bookshops in Belarus for ideological reasons.

Acquisition practices

In the past, most Baltic and Slavonic communities hadactive publishers in the United Kingdom, USA, Canada,Sweden, Italy and some other countries. Only a few of themhave survived to the present day.

The post-war immigration has produced a vast array ofliterature fiction, biographies, political and historical essays,linguistics, religious publications, etc. However, most of these


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publications were not very profitable to their publishers: thecirculations were modest and sending out individual copies bypost was an inefficient means of distribution. A Ukrainian whogrew up in a family of post-war immigrants recalled that people

were generous donating money for books to be published. Itwas common practice for copies of these books to be sent toeveryone who thus sponsored them.10 Many of these books

would be passed on to a local community library. Also, books were often donated to community libraries by foundingorganisations and well-wishers. In addition, publishers andauthors, being aware of the importance of these libraries,

donated their books to the larger community libraries.11Relying on donations was insufficient for developing a

good quality collection. At least six of the surveyed librarieshave exchanged publications with other libraries, usually fromthe same ethnic community in the United Kingdom or abroad(the others could not provide the relevant information).

Even before the collapse of the Socialist bloc, the Polish

Library POSK received a large number of books (c. 2000 peryear data for 1969-1973), from Poland.12 This was unusual;most other Baltic and Slavonic libraries did not have stronglinks with the homeland until after the late 1980s.

Rostislovas Baublys, who organised a private LithuanianLibrary in London, established exchange links with the VilniusUniversity Library. In exchange for publications from the homecountry he sent Lithuanian migr publications and serialspublished in Britain.13

The Belarusian Library established an exchange with theLibrary of the Academy of Science of Belarus (then, BSSR Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic) in 1969, i.e. even beforethe library was officially open. It sent serials published in the

West in exchange for books and periodicals from Belarus. Though this was very expensive for a library not subsidised

from public funds, it was the only way to receive publicationsfrom the Soviet Union on a regular basis. All publishers in theUSSR published catalogues of forthcoming titles well in


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advance and, in the situation of a planned economy, had toadhere to them very strictly. For a long time, the BelarusianLibrary could be sure that it did not miss valuable publications.

This remained the case untilperestroika and glasnost createdloop-holes in the control over society and economic difficultiesprevented the state-funded libraries from fulfilling theirobligations to foreign partners. Because of the uncertainty ofsubscriptions and their high cost, libraries in the West had toreview the exchange agreements with libraries in the formerSoviet Union.14 The Belarusian Library also had to deal withthe fact that a large academic library in Belarus could not

supply samizdat and the number of uncensored publications which was steadily growing after 1988. The exchangeagreement was terminated c.1993 (well before large Britishlibraries did the same15 ) when a new partner for purchasingbooks and subscribing to periodicals was found, a non-governmental organisation.16

Currently, among the surveyed libraries, only the

Belarusian Library purchases most of its new acquisitions.17

The majority community libraries receive most of their newacquisitions as gifts from well-wishers, publishers or authors.

The Shevchenko Library and Archive and the Polish LibraryPOSK also actively exchange publications with libraries inhome countries18 and, in the case of the Ukrainian library, withthe British Library19. The Latvian libraries have a well-developed system for clearing book collections received fromindividuals or closing community libraries; the headquarters ofthis scheme is the Latvian Documentation Centre where allreceived books are sorted and allocated to other Latvianlibraries in this country or sent to Latvia. By and large,however, small community libraries are struggling with a lack ofresources for developing their collections with recent materials.


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Co-operation practices

As a rule only those libraries that employ staff, or aresupported by professional librarians, are engaged in ongoing

co-operation with other libraries and institutions. In somecases, this co-operation is not limited to book exchange, butinvolves the exchange of information, participation inbibliographic, research and publishing projects.20

A unique example of co-operation was building the unioncatalogue of holdings in Latvian libraries in Britain, whichmainly involved two librarians from the Latvian Docu-mentation Centre and the London Latvian Library. It started in1984 and the draft of the catalogue, which included the recordsof all Latvian libraries and book collections open to public, wascompleted in 1990.21

Among the surveyed libraries, only the Polish LibraryPOSK has had recent experience of co-operation with publiclibraries. The Central Circulating Library, part of the PolishLibrary POSK, provides a lending service to public libraries

across Britain. Public libraries contribute a small annualsubscription fee and pay for each borrowed book; this keepsthe service running and funds new book purchases.22 In 2004,25 libraries used this service, borrowing every six months 50 to400 copies of Polish books for their local users.23

Classification and cataloguing

Most of the surveyed libraries do not use any of theestablished classification systems, since a comparatively smallnumber of books can easily be divided into several generalsubjects; this is the practice of most of the lending libraries. Inthe Leicester Estonian House Library, books are locatedchronologically according to the date of acquisition. The PolishLibrary POSK has adopted the Dewey decimal classification.

The Belarusian Library has its own classification.Six lending libraries have catalogues of their monographicholdings; one is computerised, the rest are on cards or paper. In


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the library and what expectations the whole group has about it.In this respect, community libraries can be categorised accord-ing to their involvement in local ethnic community life. At oneextreme would be most of the small lending libraries which arealmost totally inwardly oriented: club, parish etc. At the otherextreme the Belarusian Library which is only peripherallyinvolved in serving the Belarusian community in Britain; thisdoes not mean that that this library does not contribute to thecommunity in its broader sense shaping its values, broadeningits horizons, bringing together compatriots from the homelandand the diaspora, offering information resources for Belarus-

related researches.Some libraries, especially the larger ones, participate in or

even organise talks, exhibitions and conferences. The Shev-chenko Library and Archive has traditionally been the pillar ofsuch activities in the Ukrainian community. Also the PolishLibrary POSK27 and the Belarusian Library28 have long lists oforganised events. The London Latvian Library participated in

the Baltic Focus exhibitions in 1987 and 198929

. In such a waycommunity libraries serve a variety of needs of the ethnic group educational, scholarly, preservation of ethnic traditions andpopularisation of the national culture among a broader society.

An important role in recording the communitys historybelongs to libraries which often are places of preservation anduse of the ethnic organisations and individuals archives andphotographic collections. For example, from the LeicesterEstonian House Library has originated four volumes ofEestlaskond Leicesteris (Estonians in Leicester) a chronicle ofthe Estonian community in Leicester compiled of shortmemoirs, newspaper cuttings and photographs.30 The history ofthe London Latvian School and Latvian Welfare Fund (VDF)London Branch has been documented by the London LatvianLibrarys librarian.31 Libraries, supported and used by their

communities, become places where memories, traditions andvalues are preserved and communicated.


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Endnotes

1 The Latvian London Library gives an encouraging example: with

the limited help of supporting organisations it manages to offer alending service to 130 registered users, organise educational andfundraising Library afternoons and a reading competition for theLondon Latvian School pupils. As a result, the library is used notonly by the first generation immigrants, but also by children andother adults who are primarily engaged in other activities (school,choir, folk dancing group etc.) at the Latvian Welfare Fund (DVF)London Centre, as well as Latvians visiting the United Kingdom. An

interesting idea has been introduced at this library which cannotitself afford subscriptions on newspapers and magazines: In recentyears the readers have, on their own initiative, started a periodicalsexchange system. They exchange Latvian periodicals they have readfor those not read. The system, operated by the readers themselves,works very well, explains the librarian. (Marita Grunts email to IharIvano, 22 August 2005.)2 Interview with Rta Bonner, the Latvian Welfare Fund (DVF)

Catthorpe Manor Library, 1 August 2005.[S]chool children borrow set books, mainly [about] Latvianlanguage, Latvian history and geography and material for theirspecial projects which can be anything about Latvia, its folklore etc.Visitors from Latvia search for topics or authors [who] wereforbidden during the years of [the Soviet] occupation. Men readmainly war books, military history, others classical literature. Womenread biographies, novels sometime even plays or poetry. (MaritaGrunts e-mail to Ihar Ivano, 22 August 2005.)Ethnic reader who wish [sic] to reinforce their feeling for the pasttend to read the classics because that is where they hope to find theroots of their own identity. Old people in particular tend to return tothe classics they read in their youth, discovering new meanings inthem. (Simsova S. Multicultural populations: their nature andneeds. Zielinska, M.F. & Kirkwood, F.T., eds.Multicultural

librarianship: and international handbook, 1992, p. 29.)3 Interview with Miron Dowbusz, the Ukrainian Club, Leicester, 3August 2005.


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4Smith, I. A. & trle A.Witnessing and preserving Latvian culture inexile: Latvian libraries in the West. [Unpublished draft, 27 July 2005].5Wightman, B. Re: Poles in London, Polish Embassy and others.Poles in Great Britain, Yahoo Groups, 1 August 2005, 08:12 GMT.6Szmidt, J. Sprawosdanie z dziaalnoci Biblioteki Polskiej POSK[The Polish Library POSK report]. Wiadomoci POSK, 2005, 53, 45.7Ibid., pp. 42-43.8 Conversation with Dr Krzysztof Stoliski, the Polish UndergroundMovement (1939-1945) Study Trust Library, London, 4 August2005.9 Ljudmila Pekarska e-mail to Ihar Ivano, 13 July 2005.10 Ref. 3.11 Apparently mos

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