Library as an Educational Institution 1918-1968: Construction of the "New Human" as a Discontinuity in Continuity

Abstract

The historiographical study analyses libraries as institutions that work with the collective memory of the nations in which they are located while educating all inhabitants. Libraries represent one of the crucial institutions of modern Czechoslovak society. This study focuses on their research from the perspective of the anthropology of institutions. Within the framework of Czechoslovakia, it analyses three stages of historical development: 1918–1938, 1938–1948 and 1948–1968. The study seeks to uncover anthropological patterns that implicitly shape the structure, meaning and methods of functioning of libraries and their social order. It also explains why libraries were essential institutions for Masaryk's Czechoslovakia and the totalitarian communist state. The study shows libraries as an institution with a high degree of historical continuity and, at the same time, discontinuously changing from a place of education for democracy into a means of propaganda and indoctrination.