Using the title of the book of John Tosh¹, without pretensions to consider myself a connoisseur of his rank, I am still giving myself the right, as someone who deals with the history of books and libraries, to speak about the visible tendencies related to the history of Serbian librarianship.

Teaching, for years, History of Book and Libraries at the Department of Library and Information Science of the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade, I can state, with a large degree of certainty, that history is not among the favorite disciplines of Serbian youth, nor they, coming to college, know enough of it. It seems that we, who remember more, being traumatized by contemporary history, have transferred to them, if not our confusion regarding the historical events since the Second World War, then the idea of the futility of one area of knowledge that, anyway, is being shaped by - winners. On the other hand, strong tendencies of globalization have a certain aspect of action that almost equates dealing with the history with nationalism... Therefore it is not surprising that even when they know the facts, they have no knowledge of the context - nor are they willing to deal with it much.

Things are different with the category of librarians, heterogeneous and divided by various interests. First, a small number of them deals with the history of books and libraries. But while the history of Serbian books has great research stronghold among literary historians, linguists, and even culturologists, library history is not in such an easy position. Outside the library profession there are very few people who deal with it, and within the profession, very few have relevant knowledge of the historical method and research techniques. And finally, there is even fewer researchers and studies that enable consideration of the history of local libraries in the context of social and cultural history of the Serbs, on the one hand, and global library history, on the other. Together with a number of monographs which follow chronological development of some of the Serbian libraries, today we also have a series of biographies of prominent individuals, but we do not know, for example, how many public libraries were there in Serbia between the two world wars; inconsistency in interpretation of relations between the social and public libraries makes the years of foundation of some of the public libraries problematic, to say the least; we do not have the clear picture of the overall achievements of Serbian librarianship after the Second World War; we know little about the professional association, except that it exists for more than 60 years; we do not have a lexicon of famous librarians; we do not try to disprove the terrible accusations which charged us for being a nation who had behaved vandalistic toward someone else's book and libraries.

The history of libraries reveals that they form at the level of economic development of society that provides support of libraries, and that economic and political stability of the community represents special convenience for their development. Furthermore, libraries are, always and everywhere, reflection of the dominant social values, mirror of democracy, particularly in relation to education and informing. In other words, they are exactly the same as the relationship of the community towards knowledge and, more specifically, towards certain levels and types of knowledge. ² In this sense, there is no distinction between capitalist and socialist librarianship, as there is not a black and white image of any of the two. Successful and less successful library and information systems differ in the percentage of participation of libraries in scientific, educational, economic and cultural life of a community, and this percentage is responsibility of the state (which creates and implements a certain cultural policy), local government (or the central institution of libraries) and - librarians (professionals and the management).

Writing, a few decades ago, his Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn did not have in mind librarianship as a field of knowledge, he did not mention library history, nor, of course, dealt with the situation in Serbia. Considering the development of science in general, he, however, sent a great guideline for further action to librarians, as persons who act in a field that in a certain way has pretensions to be considered scientific: "(...) nothing depends upon a definition of science (...) nor are questions like: Why does my area fails to move forward in a way that, for example, does physics? suitable for an agreement on the definition (...). These issues will cease to be a source of concern, not when the definition is found but when the groups which now doubt their own status, come to an agreement about their past and current achievements".³

My belief that researched, systemized and synthesized history of libraries is one of the fundamental pillars for a change in the position of libraries in Serbia, as well as for a change in attitude towards knowledge, education and informing the citizens, is inspired by the Kuhn’s standpoint according to which the future is built only on the basis of a clear image of what we have done, what we are doing now and what are our competencies to do so. This image is not easy to get, because young scientists in our field are growing up slowly, and the profession itself is ambivalent about the formal education system and scientific research. But the human need to understand the past, monitor the development of phenomena, explore the unknown and steal it from oblivion, is stronger than the current political (in)suitability of history or the current difficulties of our librarianship to constitute itself as a profession or a scientific discipline. Welcoming the appearance and recent publication of several historical studies that illuminate development of libraries at the Serbs in a new way, in the Theme of this issue of Čitalište we point out, among other things, the richness and diversity of potential research topics.

¹ Џон Тош, У трагању за историјом (Београд: Clio, 2008).
² Gordana Stokić, Ka filozofiji bibliotekarstva: Džesi Šir u teoriji i praksi bibliotekarstva 20. veka (Pančevo: Mali Nemo, 2002).
³ Tomas Kun, Struktura naučnih revolucija (Beograd: Nolit, 1974), 222-223.

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