20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

Libraries in a society of knowledgeCristina PopescuFaculty of Letters,University of Bucharest – BucharestMircea Eliade considered that: ‟If one can create philosophy by simplepower of thought, culture needs materials. The lack of these materials i.e.the lack of rich libraries, could be fatal to us. It could turn us into a countryof smatterers”. The words of the great Romanian historian of religions pointout the importance of libraries for the development of a nation’s culture andimplicitly for a nation’s progress.Without writing down the words of our forerunners and withoutpreserving the documents that certify our past, we would probably beforced to start our researches again and again, drowning ourselves into thewaters of a perpetual aimless beginning.The fact that we enjoy knowledge today and that the history ofmankind is available to us is the result of preserving and making good useof information along time and irrespective of space.Libraries and culture have simultaneously developed, following thesame stages, the same periods of blooming and decay, of glorification andgoing into shade. Libraries and culture cannot be defined one without theother as they are positioned at the same knowledge level and interconnectedby a cause-effect relationship. In fact, libraries are a mirror of progress,while culture reflects assimilation of information acquired in libraries. Thehistoric role of civilizations is acknowledged by means of documents thatcertify their value. As consequence, libraries are institutions that confervalue to civilizations at cultural level, over time.The latest two decades have brought extraordinary changes at social,economic and institutional levels and for all education sectors. Althougheducation, especially academic education is quite resilient to change,incredible mutations have recently emerged in that field too, due totechnological development and globalization.