Literary games of the employees of the Scientific Library of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences: 1938 name day greetings for Karol Piotrowicz

The paper is a preliminary study for the biography of Karol Piotrowicz (1901–1940), a respected historian, Jagiellonian University professor, academic activist and a publisher. Since 1931 to 1939, he has also been the Director of the Scientific Library of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences; he successfully managed and modernised the Library. In Summer 1939, he was called into the Polish Army, and after the September Campaign was taken into Soviet slavery. In April 1940, in Kharkov, together with hundreds of other Polish prisoners, he was murdered by Russians. He bereaved wife and two daughters who stayed in Krakow.

Among the Karol Piotrowicz’s family documents kept by his grand daughters Teresa Wolska and Elżbieta Wolska, there are still some personal documents of Piotrowicz which will by donated to our Library in the future. Now we present the edition of one of these papers. It is a humorous work by some librarians, Karol Piotrowicz’s employees, given to him for his name day on November 4, 1938. It consists of 10 pages and contains a bibliography of works allegedly written by the library employees which is light-heart and full of allusions, accurately pointing at their professional interests as well as private passions and even weaknesses. The following pages contain short poems, anecdotes, humoresques and riddles. The author is not given but it may be assumed that the text was mainly created by Władysław Ogrodziński, a writer and a culture activist who became famous in the post-war period.

Such literary games practice was known among that time librarians and archivists. Some similar works written in the Jagiellonian Library or Ossolineum have also survived. The small miscellany presented here is not only a moving piece of work and a preliminary study for Karol Piotrowicz’s biography but also an interesting example of a bottom-up culture of our Library in the 1930s.

The paper is a preliminary study for the biography of Karol Piotrowicz (1901–1940), a respected historian, Jagiellonian University professor, academic activist and a publisher. Since 1931 to 1939, he has also been the Director of the Scientific Library of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences; he successfully managed and modernised the Library. In Summer 1939, he was called into the Polish Army, and after the September Campaign was taken into Soviet slavery. In April 1940, in Kharkov, together with hundreds of other Polish prisoners, he was murdered by Russians. He bereaved wife and two daughters who stayed in Krakow.

Among the Karol Piotrowicz’s family documents kept by his grand daughters Teresa Wolska and Elżbieta Wolska, there are still some personal documents of Piotrowicz which will by donated to our Library in the future. Now we present the edition of one of these papers. It is a humorous work by some librarians, Karol Piotrowicz’s employees, given to him for his name day on November 4, 1938. It consists of 10 pages and contains a bibliography of works allegedly written by the library employees which is light-heart and full of allusions, accurately pointing at their professional interests as well as private passions and even weaknesses. The following pages contain short poems, anecdotes, humoresques and riddles. The author is not given but it may be assumed that the text was mainly created by Władysław Ogrodziński, a writer and a culture activist who became famous in the post-war period.

Such literary games practice was known among that time librarians and archivists. Some similar works written in the Jagiellonian Library or Ossolineum have also survived. The small miscellany presented here is not only a moving piece of work and a preliminary study for Karol Piotrowicz’s biography but also an interesting example of a bottom-up culture of our Library in the 1930s.