Boehm to head National Library

Prague, Dec 17 (CTK) - Tomas Boehm, former CEO of the Czech branch of the Ringier media enterprise, will be the new director of the Czech National Library (NK), in accordance with the recommendation of a commission of experts which Culture Minister Jiri Besser will respect, his spokesman told CTK Friday.

He did not say when Besser will appoint Boehm in the post.

Four candidates took part in the competition for NK director. Apart from Boehm, they were former ministerial official Blanka Koubova, Grand Biblio magazine editor-in-chief Jaroslav Cisar and architect Eva Heyworth.

The present NK director, Pavel Hazuka, did not seek reappointment.

The commission in charge of choosing the new director mainly enquired into the candidates' ideas concerning the ongoing reconstruction of Prague's baroque palace Klementinum where the NK is seated, and the construction of new NK depositories on the outskirts of Prague.

The candidates also presented their ideas of the NK's development and financial management until 2016.

Boehm, born in 1961, is a graduate from the Prague's University of Economics (VSE). He also studied in London.

In the 1990s he worked in several companies as a consultant. Later he became financial director of Creditanstalt Securities.

On the turn of the millennium he became financial director of Ringier Czech Republic. He headed the company from 2001 for five years.

In recent years he has worked as a financial and media adviser and also focused on crisis management.

The NK historical seat's reconstruction and new depositories, a project worth 3 billion crowns, have come under criticism recently. According to some media, the NK management has not presented the project's complete budget as yet.

Architects, for their part, complain that no regular competition for the baroque palace reconstruction was launched.

Others mind the reconstruction definitively burying the chance of a new NK building being constructed after the design with which Jan Kaplicky's studio won an international competition a couple of years ago.

It was over his promotion of the Kaplicky project that then culture minister Vaclav Jehlicka sacked Vlastimil Jezek as NK director in September 2008. Hazuka, former head of the PNP literary museum in Prague, replaced him without any competition.

($1=19.003 crowns)