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Library

The library of the community cultural centre was established parallel with the establishment of the cultural centre itself in 1869. Donated financial means were used to purchase books and newspapers and the first reading room was set up in the cell of Vratsa's "Sveto Vaznesenie" ("Holy Ascension") Church. After the Liberation of Bulgaria, the library experienced an upsurge, as with the help of the intelligentsia of the day and the alert members of the guilds Library's stock was enriched by books popular at that time, newspapers, and magazines.

The year 1887 enters Library's annals with a new Library Statute providing for all matters concerning the organisation of library activities.

Atanas Belmustakov – elected librarian in 1889 – introduces a new element in Library's functioning, namely the postulate that the books the Library acquires should correspond to the educational and cultural demands of the day and the administrative and craftsman's nature of the town itself.

The role and importance of Cultural Centre's library between the years 1930-1944 are eloquently portrayed by the words of Vlado Boboshevski, then Editor of "Chitalishtno Delo" newspaper: "There is hardly a soul who has been born or has lived in Vratsa that has not crossed the threshold of this treasure house where the gold of human thought, the tune of human heart, and the yearnings of human soul have been stored. The library of "Razvitie" Community Cultural Centre makes one of the greatest treasures of Vratsa and the region…"

As new services for the readership get introduced, Library's successfulness keeps on increasing at a gradual pace. There get set up a mobile library, books get brought on the spot in various enterprises and institutions. The first cultural events aiming at the popularisation of literature – book discussions, disputes, etc. – get organised.

"Razvitie" Community Cultural Centre's modern-day library possesses of 126 000 volumes. It is subdivided into four sections: for adult readers, children's section, section of reference and bibliography, and section of acquisition, processing, and cataloguing.

The Section for Adult Readers occupies four halls: The first one is open for free access and contains literature from all fields of knowledge. The hall is equipped with two computers – one connected to a local area network, and one to the Internet. The second hall provides space for the depository for Bulgarian and foreign fiction, classics, auxiliary school literature, and protected book stock in need of special storage conditions. The third and fourth halls accommodate the literature of the specialised branches of knowledge that has been issued before the year 1970, library's old volumes, and the periodicals of the reading room (as required by the law for storage of periodicals).

For the purpose of facilitating the young readers, the Children's Section of the library is housed in a beautiful and spacious hall on the ground storey of the Community Cultural Centre's building. The organisation of the documents follows the distribution of the readers into several age-groups: 1st group (1st-2nd classes), 2nd group (3rd-4th classes), and 3rd group (5th-7th classes). The fairy-tales, both Bulgarian and foreign, the thematically interrelated titles, game-books, comic books, literature in foreign languages (English, French, German, and Russian) all occupy their own separate book shelves. Section's stock of books includes also encyclopaedias, dictionaries, and reference books to be read on the spot as in a reading room. Two computers are installed in place – one connected to a local area network, and one to the Internet – for informational and referential use by the readers.

The reading room of the Community Cultural Centre secures free access to all its dictionaries, encyclopaedias, reference books, handbooks, and specialised literature of all branches of knowledge. A separate room serves to store library documents – fiction, classics, arts books – published before 1970. Similar to the other library sections, two computers are installed in the reading room – one connected to the local server of the library data-base, equipped with the latest processing and cataloguing modules (Library's Inventories), and used for processing the newly acquired books; the other one connected to the Internet and equipped with reference software providing access to an electronic version of State Gazette, Ciela 4 (Bulgarian legislation electronic database), and an electronic version of the "History of Bulgaria" encyclopaedia.

The library is attended by excellent professionals devoted to meeting every need of the readers.

Library's book stock is distributed in such a way as to guarantee quick and easy access and an identical manner of servicing and self-servicing of the readers. The quality of Library's services gains by the good material-technical equippedness and the purchased modules. The librarians keep in constant touch and receive continuous feedback from the readers, and also maintain high level of professional competence, thus retaining the role of the Community Cultural Centre as a leading cultural and illuminating institution.


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