Prague, Nov 24 (CTK) – The Culture Ministry wants to change the Czech Republic into “a country of libraries” within its concept that also revives the plan to build a new seat of the National Library (NK) in Prague, daily Lidove noviny (LN) wrote on Thursday.
According to the ambitious plan, brand new seats of the key scientific libraries will be constructed and the existing municipal and local libraries will be modernised, LN says.
The paper points out that the project of a new NK seat in Prague after the design by renowned architect Jan Kaplicky (1937-2009) was shelved several years ago.
Kaplicky’s blob-shaped building dubbed “octopus,” which won an international contest in 2007, had a number of supporters and opponents among politicians, experts and the public and it became a political issue eventually, in which everyone wanted to meddle. One of its sharp critics was former president Vaclav Klaus, the paper adds.
Nevertheless, the NK urgently needs new premises since the capacity of its current seat in the Baroque Klementinum former Jesuit College in the historical centre of Prague is not adequate for millions of books. This is why most of them are stored in a facility on the outskirts of the city from which they must be transported to Klementinum per order, LN says.
Moreover, after the ongoing reconstruction of the Baroque complex, the capacity of the NK will decrease by one-third there, LN adds.
It seems that the government has finally heard the librarians’ call for a modern and spacious NK seat. On Wednesday, the cabinet approved the concept with the aim to assess the efficacy of the current costly repairs of Klementinum and the construction of the NK’s new building. However, it will most probably not be based on Kaplicky’s original project, LN writes.
Apart from the NK’s new seat in Prague, the project of “a black cube” as a seat of the Moravian Silesian Scientific Library in Ostrava, north Moravia, is taken into consideration again. The angular building with a daring black facade, designed by Ladislav Kuba and Tomas Pilar, evokes black coal, that is mined in the locality.
The project for one billion crowns was scrapped by the regional leadership headed by Social Democrat (CSSD) governor Jaroslav Palas a few years ago, but the new coalition in the Moravia Silesia Region formed after the October elections has taken it up again, LN writes.
It says a modern library is not just “a collection of dead books” stored on shelves, but a living institution that works rather as a community centre where people can meet, listen to music, play video games and work in a team on joint projects. Ageing library buildings often do not serve all these purposes.
The concept, which Culture Minister Daniel Herman (Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) submitted to the government, is to change this all over the country.
“A decisive condition for changing the libraries’ services and increasing their capacity and quality is the corresponding space and technical equipment,” the ministry says in the new concept.
It also promotes the construction of a new scientific library in Olomouc, north Moravia, and the Vysocina Regional Library.
Besides, a methodological centre will be established in support of the construction and reconstruction of these libraries. It will be associated with the Moravian Land Library in Brno, LN writes.
