Academic Libraries in Poland University of Warsaw Library as an Example of Library Transformation in Post-Communist Poland

This article examines the complex changes that have occurred in Polish academic libraries, especially the University of Warsaw Library (UWL), after the fall of communism in 1989.Shortly afterwards, thanks to grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, an accelerated transformation in all library practices began. In preparation for automation, the authority file was created, introducing the process of applying international standards in bibliographic description in a new climate of interlibrary cooperation. The Library of Congress classification and access to open stacks were introduced for the first time in Poland in a newly constructed UWL building. A crowning achievement of the transformation is the first Polish union catalog, Narodowy Uniwersalny Katalog Centralny [National Union Catalog], NUKAT, launched in 2002