Goran Trailović
Gradska biblioteka Pančevo
goran@biblioteka-pancevo.org.rs

doi: 10.19090/cit.2024.44.43-55
No. 44 (May 2024), p. 43-55

The first Lending Libraries in Pančevo:
on the Occasion of 100 Years of Establishing the City Library

Summary

The City Library and Museum was founded in Pančevo in 1924. It worked successfully until the Second World War, had stable financing, relatively professional staff and numerous readers. In the period between the two world wars, it was one of four active city libraries in Vojvodina and one of seven in the whole of Serbia.
Based on the available literature and source documents, the author tried to shed some light on the prehistory of the City Library of Pančevo, to answer the question of why it was not possible to establish it earlier, to determine the earliest date when the first lending libraries could be founded, and to establish their connection with the City Library of Pančevo. The conclusion was that possibly the first reading rooms and libraries were formed at the beginning of the 19th century, at the earliest. Then, the Austrian Empire finally banished the Ottoman army from the Pančevo region and it was possible to start with the continuous economic, social and cultural development of the city.
The author paid attention to the library of the German-Banat Frontier Regiment which was one of the biggest and best-organised libraries in the years immediately before dismantling the Military Frontier (Kraina) in 1872. On the eve of the dismantling of the Frontier, after various Serbian cassinas and reading rooms, the library of the Serbian Orthodox Church Municipality was founded. It was a landing library, too, and very important for Serbs in Pančevo.

Keywords:

public libraries, Pančevo, Vojvodina, Serbia, history, 18-20th century, the Vojlovica monastery, the library of the German-Banat Frontier Regiment, the City Library and Museum

Submitted: 4th April 2024
Correction to the manuscript: 18th April 2024
Accepted for publication: 20th April 2024

The first Lending Libraries in Pančevo: on the Occasion of 100 Years of Establishing the City Library by Goran Trailović is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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