|
|
|
|
Country reports Albania Belarus Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia Lithuania Poland Romania Slovenia Slovak Republic Croatia United States of America Speakers Organizational Committee Sites Nitra Banská Štiavnica Topolcianky castle Matica Slovenká and the Slovak National Library, Martin < Back |
MATICA SLOVENSKA AND THE SLOVAK NATIONAL LIBRARY, MARTIN
The maticas emerged and became widespread in the first half of the l9th century, a period of national revival for the majority of Slavonic nations, creating centers for emerging national culture and an institutional framework for arising nations. In August 1863, the Matica Slovenska was established in the town of Martin as a 984-member association which closely resembled the maticas of Yugoslavia. Quickly developing into academy, library, museum, cultural center, literary center, and publishing house, the Matica Slovenska began to unite Slovak intellectuals and coordinate their activities in science, literature, and education. After defeats for the Slovak national movement in the following decades, many began to consider the Matica Slovenska the central hope for cultural emancipation of the Slovak people within Hungarian lands at that time. However, with the political union of Austria-Hungary in 1867 came stronger attacks on Slavonic national movements. Activities of the Matica Slovenska were forced to a halt in 1875. Before that time the Matica Slovenska had concentrated on cultivation of the language as a basic source of national identity, and from 1863 to 1875 standard Slovak was stabilized and refined by the Matica; it evolved the most substantially in its history. Education for both children and adults was another important goal, and in this period a great part of its output as the largest Slovak publisher was devoted particularly to agricultural education. In 1919, among the first legislative acts of the newly-established Czechoslovak Republic was the restoration of the Matica Slovenska. In this new form, its local scientific branches became an ad hoc academy of sciences, and concentrated on investigating and publishing unknown literary and historical texts. Soon after, it also began to operate as the national library and institute of library sciences, and strongly influenced the further development of public libraries throughout Slovakia. The Slovak National Library of the Matica Slovenska is divided now into several departments, the largest of which is the Library of the Matica Slovenska itself, with current holdings at nearly four million books. The Bibliographical Department oversees a system of recording, processing and distributing information on Slovak books and magazines. The Department of Automation investigates library-bibliographical and other documentary systems from the perspective of automation, and also acts as a research and computer processing center of the Slovak unified library system. The Publishing Department produces non-periodical publications of every department, as well as composite books and magazines. 
In the future, the Matica Slovenska's chief endeavor will be to manage
the modern-day explosion of information processing and storage needs. After
improving the automation of all library-information systems, all the Matica's
departments will eon- tribute to restructuring the institution into a modern
center of Slovak cultural, linguistic, and literary information.
|