Libraries of the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade – Responding to the Challenges of Our Time

Abstract

Libraries of the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade are extremely rich in funds and entirely unique in Serbia in terms of their number, quality and age of materials, as well as their professional profile. Based on numerical and value indicators, the collection of the above-mentioned libraries, with its overall fund of 898.200 units, represents the fifth library collection in Serbia, after those pertaining to the National Library of Serbia, University Library “Svetozar Markovic”, Library of SASA and Matica Srpska. Library and information activity of the Faculty of Philology takes place in 18 separate seminar libraries, developed in accordance with the linguistic principle, which means that their organization is decentralized, since each library belongs to a particular department of the faculty. In addition, the faculty offers adequate conditions for studying the rich library funds and for the research work within its reading rooms, thus enabling study of the history and structure of Serbian and foreign languages along with historical and comparative philology.  Being aware of the necessity of modernization of already existing research capacities and infrastructure and by recognizing the need for redefining and establishing new scientific and educational contents at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade, we have formed a Digital Library of the faculty and we are diligently working as to further develop the Museum of the faculty. Digital Library of the Faculty of Philology provides almost free access to numerous publications of the faculty, particularly those from conferences held at its premises, but also rare and old library materials, which are essential for further studies in the respective domains. The activity of the Museum of the Faculty of Philology should contribute to the study of history of philology through thematic exhibitions and modern multi-media presentations of cultural heritage, thus giving an insight into the valuable documents and artifacts in the possession of the faculty. Moreover, we are constantly seeking new ways as to provide access to electronic resources to our students. The latest agreement was achieved with the Russian State Library, whereas we enabled our students to access the Virtual Reading Room of the mentioned library, the only one of this kind in our region. This implies attainability of over one million texts in full, and at the same time, the access to the particularly important, in terms of postgraduate studies, 800,000 doctoral dissertations. Each student will have his/her own virtual reader cabinet where the texts he/she reads will be stored. To conclude, the Faculty of Philology, as an ideal environment for creating future place of philology in digital age, will continue to strive to create modern conditions for the study and promotion of philology science, motivate a greater number of students to continue philological studies at the master’s and doctoral levels, encourage its researchers for the continuous improvement of their knowledge and development of their research, which will ultimately give crucial impetus to the further improvement of philology, literature and culture studies in Serbia.