A Polish-Lithuanian list of entries of national libraries is being created

Common history, common heroes, common cultural legacy – all of this linked Poland and Lithuania for centuries, and is finding his reflection in the literature of both nations. Thanks to the cooperation of the Polish National Library and the National Library of Lithuania soon a list of geographical and personal entries will be created in Polish and Lithuanian.

Representatives of the National Library of Lithuania met in Warsaw with employees of the Polish National Library, in order to discuss the principles of the creation of the new, Polish-Lithuanian set of geographical and personal entries. After presenting the principles of creating sample entries used at present at both libraries, it turned out that they enable the cooperation of both teams without making modifications in procedures functioning at present. A shared set of entries will allow the users of libraries to cross search for geographical terms and proper names in Polish and Lithuanian.

“We are waiting now for the first, preliminary set of entries from our friends from Poland. This will be circa 600 entries. When we receive it, we will create the Lithuanian variants. As national libraries we want to prepare the sample list which will be used also by other libraries”, says Jolita Steponaitienė, director of the centre of Forming and Development of Information BNL.

The cooperation between Lithuanian and Polish national libraries has already been going on for decades. The committee of Education, Culture and the Common Cultural Heritage of Poland and Lithuania made the decision to start working on the Polish-Lithuanian set of entries on the sitting in Vilnius in 2014. The next meeting of the working team will take place in Vilnius in 2015, and until then work will be continued online.

The National Library of Lithuania was established in 1919 in Kaunas, as the Central National Bookshop. In 1963 it was moved to Vilnius. Since 1988 the library has the name of Martyna Mažvydasa, the author of the first book in the Lithuanian language, and from 1989 it has the status of the national library.

Adapted from: bn.org.pl, inf. wł.