SZKICE O DZIEJACH BIBLIOTEKI ZAŁUSKICH

eaders from Warsaw and those living outside Warsaw; attendance at the reading-
-library and the number of loans; readers' selection); attendance to readers' inquiries,
reference service rendered by the Library (answering inquiries relative
to history, genealogy, law, bibliography and bibliology); scientific and literary
criticism in the brothers Załuski's circles; communication and transport within the
Library environment; aid given by the brothers Załuski to scientists and scientific
institutions. Then follows a description of the structure and social composition of
the Załuski Library environment, and organization of work (hierarchy of librarians,
ways of recruiting them, qualifications and duties).
Chapter two discusses scientific and literary institutions (planned or those
that existed associated with the Library: competitions (held in the years 1746,
1753, 1766), scientific societies, readers' societies (projects and carrying out in the
years 1748—1755), scientific meetings in the Library's building, schools, publishing
companies, book auctions (1761, 1762), periodicals and the printing house.
Chapter three describes the Library's buildings (Marywil 1738—1745, and Danilowicz
tenement-house 1745—1795; assessment of the location of the latter;
description of the site, and the exterior and interior); dependence of the scope
and type of the Library's activities on seasons; inner life of the Library (contentions
and tensions between the cofounders and among librarians); legal problems
of the foundation (different projects of both brothers as regards the kind of their
foundation; circumstances under which the Library was taken over by the Jesus
Society; the legal status of the Library in the years 1761—1773).
Chapter four presents various hypotheses explaining the reasons for which
the brothers Załuski put off the inauguration celebration.
The essay is supplemented with two annexes. In one of them the collections
of the brothers Załuski are described (book stock, sculpture and picture gallery,
collection of drawings, numismatic collection, cartographic collections, natural history
collections, mathematical collections, astronomical observatory). The other annexe
contains an index of the authors of works that arose at the initiative, on the basis
of the library collections or owing to a financial aid of the brothers Załuski and
J.D. Janocki.
The following detailed findings the author considers most important:
1. The establishment that a low attendance at the reading library cannot be
a measure of the power of influence of the Załuski Library, because it mainly
lent books to be taken out, and its activity was not limited to book lending;
2. The characteristics of the social composition of the Library's circles. Among
the 640 persons who had a scientific contact with the brothers Załuski, or their
collections, national elite predominated (state and church dignitaries, canons,
monks). About 50% of them were clergymen. Townspeople represented a relatively
small proportion in the Library circle.
3. A hypothesis concerning the plans and role played by the Piarist, Antoni
Wiśniewski, in the Marian Academy (1753).
4. J.A. Załuski's description of an unknown society of readers (list of members,
structure, list of publications read).
5. A hypothesis that J.D. Janocki prepared handwritten news-sheets which
circulated in the Library.
6. A hypothesis that the cause of difficulties with the inauguration of the
foundation was, among other things, political illwill towards the brothers Załuski
and the outlook intolerance, characteristic of the Saxonic period, and xenophobia
and distrust of science.
Translated by \Mieczyslaw Kwieciński
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