Gordana Stokić Simončić
gordana.stokic@fil.bg.ac.rs

Anđela Stošić
andjela.stosic@fil.bg.ac.rs

Univerzitetu Beogradu
Filološki fakultet – Katedra za bibliotekarstvo i informatiku, Beograd

doi: 10.19090/cit.2022.40.39-50
No. 40 (May 2022), p. 39-50

Lјubica Marković – Builder of the Library Profession in Serbia

Summary

In the history of Serbian culture, the period between the two world wars was marked by the increasingly widespread engagement of women as writers, artists, creators of the social environment, but also as clerks in the cultural institutions. Libraries in Belgrade – the National, the University, and the Public – were among the first to open the door for female employees. In a relatively short time, they paved the way to the gender-balanced structure within the library profession.
This paper analyzes the professional contribution of Ljubica Marković (1895–1947), a professor of Yugoslav literature and librarian at the University Library in Belgrade. Ljubica Marković was among the first university-educated women employed in the libraries of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. For the whole 20 years, she was managing the complete processing of Yugoslav and other Slavic books in the University Library. She was one of the founders and a board member of the Yugoslav Library Association (1931–1939). Her contribution to the completion and publication of the first Bibliography of Books by Female Writers Printed in Vojvodina, Serbia, Southern Serbia, and Montenegro by the End of 1935 was significant. She was an active member of the Association of University-Educated Women, particularly interested in the development of the feminist movement in our country.
Ljubica Marković was certainly a person whose work has connected the developmental paths of librariаnship and feminism in our region. The bibliography of her works consists of almost 80 units – seven separately printed papers, two edited books, and 70 articles published in periodicals, dealing primarily with women’s literary work, but also with literature in general, librarianship, and the development of feminism.
Like most of the professionals who were founding the Serbian librarianship throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Ljubica Marković as well did not get the deserved place among the builders. Moreover, her contribution to the development of the library profession has never been researched or critically considered. Therefore, the authors of this paper endeavored to make at least an initial step in this direction. The main sources for this research were the documents from the Archive of the University Library Svetozar Marković in Belgrade, the published works by Ljubica Marković herself, as well as the memories of her colleagues.

Keywords:

Ljubica Marković (1895–1947), librarian, Belgrade University Library, Yugoslav Library Association, Association of University-Educated Women, feminism, Serbia

Submitted: 18th January 2022
Correction to the manuscript: 3rd February 2022
Accepted for publication: 7th February 2022

Lјubica Marković – Builder of the Library Profession in Serbia by Gordana Stokić Simončić and Anđela Stošić is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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