Saša Madacki
Univerzitet u Sarajevu
sasa.madacki@unsa.ba

doi: 10.19090/cit.2019.35.15-19
No. 35 (November 2019), p. 15-19

The Scent of Rain: The Personnel Policy of Transitional Librarianship
in the Hilly Balkans

Summary

In this paper, the author presents an analysis of personnel policy in the libraries of the Canton of Sarajevo viewed through the perspective of the theory of magic realism as the only possible framework for explaining the employment phenomenon in the library profession. He gives a diff erent reading of the data collected in a systematic survey of the state of libraries in primary and secondary schools in the Canton of Sarajevo, through the prism of the Strategy of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions for the period 2019–2024. Being a librarian in the Balkans in the 21st century implies fi rst and foremost the survival skills: socially marginalized and rejected by other professional communities, librarians seek to create a stimulating environment for the implementation of the values contained in the abovementioned document. Analyzing the personnel policy in primary and secondary schools in the Canton of Sarajevo, the research team states that recruiting (un)professional staff is one of the most controversial and perhaps most complex issues when it comes to the position of school libraries.

Keywords:

libraries, personnel policy, school libraries, Bosnia and Herzegovina, magic realism

Submitted: 15th October 2019
Correction to the manuscript: 28th October 2019
Accepted for publication: 30th October 2019

The Scent of Rain: The Personnel Policy of Transitional Librarianship in the Hilly Balkans by Saša Madacki is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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