Public Scientific Libraries in Poland in the 20th century (until 1990). Origins. Status. Organization

The author described of this article described the process of isolation of a subgroup of municipal scientific libraries from the larger group of public ones. First public libraries with scientific functions were created on the Polish territory at the beginning of the 20th century and in the 1920s. In the 1960s, after discussions that lasted for over ten years, 8 big public libraries formally got the status of scientific libraries, which was confirmed in the the Library Act of April 9th, 1968. However, due to lacking detailed regulations and appropriate funding, proper functioning of public scientific libraries was hindered in the time of the People’s Republic of Poland