The book collection of the National Museum Library in Kraków comprises over 135,000 items, including more than 114,000 books and 20,500 periodicals. 1 It is expanded through purchases, donations and exchanges with nearly 200, mainly European, museums, libraries, art colleges and associations. As a result, the Library holds a representative collection of exhibition catalogues and the collections of other museums, particularly Polish ones.
It serves primarily as a resource for MNK staff in the scholarly study of artefacts. The reading room is also open to other museum professionals, researchers and students, exhibition curators and MNK exhibition guides, as well as anyone interested in art and the Museum’s collections. It houses an extensive reference collection comprising basic dictionaries and general and specialist encyclopaedias, armorials, biographical and linguistic dictionaries, bibliographies, art history textbooks, and museum guides. It also contains statutes, exhibition and collection catalogues, and periodicals documenting the Museum’s publishing and exhibition output. Access to the collection is facilitated by an online catalogue available on the Museum’s website. It contains information on over 63 per cent of the collection – books, journals, electronic documents and music materials. Publications on the history of the Museum held in the Library have been digitised and are available in digital libraries – the regional Małopolska Digital Library and the international Europeana. The Library also compiles specialist databases, accessible via the internet – a Bibliography of the contents of collective works in the MNK Library (since 1980), Publications by MNK staff, and a Bibliography of publications on art historians, museum professionals and collectors.
From the computers in the reading room, you can search licensed external databases:
Card catalogues are also available: an alphabetical catalogue of books and journals, a reference collection catalogue, a systematic catalogue (organised according to the Universal Decimal Classification), and a topographical catalogue (of exhibitions and collections). The latter two were discontinued in 1993 when the development of computerised databases began.
The MNK Library in its current form has existed since the 1950s.
However, its history dates back to the 1880s. It was at this time that the Museum’s Board recognised the need to collect “publications dealing with monuments on Polish soil” and handbooks to assist museum staff “in evaluating works”, allocating funds annually for their purchase. The profile of the book collection, defined briefly but accurately at the time, remains almost unchanged to this day. It consists of Polish and foreign books and journals covering the fields represented in the Museum’s collections, ranging from specialist bibliographies, encyclopaedias and dictionaries, through handbooks and overviews of the history of art, military history, numismatics, conservation and museology, to discussions of specific topics. The collection of periodicals is also extensive, comprising many rare titles across all the aforementioned fields. Chronologically, it covers works published after 1800, referred to as ‘modern prints’ to distinguish them from ‘old prints’.
The thematic scope of the current book collection has also been influenced by donated, and less frequently purchased, private libraries or parts thereof, which have found their way to the Museum since the 19th century. Although the character of each has been shaped by the diverse, and sometimes wide-ranging, interests of their owners, they can be grouped into several thematic collections.
The largest and most significant is the donation by Feliks Jasieński, which partly comprises works relating to the history of culture, art and crafts of the Far East. These include biographies and lavish albums devoted to Japanese artists, as well as catalogues of the most famous European collections of Japanese and Chinese art and crafts, published in the first quarter of the 20th century. These are supplemented in this regard by books donated by Edward Goldstein. Meanwhile, the numismatic publications—many of them unique—including a substantial collection of foreign-language journals, belonged to eminent collectors and historians of the history of money and medallic art: Emeryk Hutten-Czapski, Antoni Ryszard, Władysław Bartynowski, Marian Gumowski and Lech Kokociński.
Also significant for the Library are the artists’ book legacies: MNK Wyspiański2 (with historical works and source publications that served as inspiration or a factual basis for the playwright’s literary and artistic output), Olga Boznańska (with exhibition catalogues and literary works by contemporary authors dedicated to the painter), Józef Czapski (with publications relating to the artist’s wide-ranging interests – art, literature, philosophy, history and politics, rich in commentary – evidence of close reading) and Józef MNK Mehoffer3
(with catalogues of the artist’s exhibitions). The collection in this regard is supplemented by exhibition catalogues of Kraków artists – Janina Kraupe-Świderska, Julian Jończyk and Lucjan Mianowski. Also significant is the collection of books bequeathed by former Museum staff: Władysław Janiszewski, Kazimierz Buczkowski, Helena Blum, Maria Gutkowska-Rychlewska and Zdzisław Żygulski Jr., including publications acquired with a view to cataloguing specific works from the Museum’s collections.
Historical collections or parts thereof belonging to the Library have been discussed in the works of: Maria Kocójowa – on the collection of E. Hutten Czapski, Anna Gruca – on the library of MNK Wyspiański, and Jolanta Sopińska – on the Polish-language books of J. Czapski.
1 Figures as at the end of 2015.
2 MNK Wyspiański’s book collection and two others (formerly belonging to Prof. Leon Płoszewski and to Ryszard Sielski and Maciej Mikołajczyk) associated with the artist are on loan to the MNK Szołayski House, where the artist’s work is exhibited.
3 The library of Józef, Zbigniew and Ryszard MNK Mehoffer is on loan to the Józef Mehoffer House.
Compiled by: Halina Marcinkowska – MNK Library, hmarcinkowska@mnk.pl
