Department of Old and Rare Books and Books on Belgrade – Local History Department

Head of Department: Milanka Babić Vukadinov
Library Staff: Ljubica Ćorović, Lidija Tontić, Marija Ivanović, Anđela Ivanić Matić, Tanja Anisijević

On the initiative of the vice-president of the Municipality of Belgrade, Dr. Milosav Stojadinović, the collection of all kinds of materials about Belgrade began in 1929. Funds were formed on the basis of which on January 11, 1931, one of the city’s oldest cultural institutions was officially opened: the Library and Museum of the City of Belgrade. Since 1935, the Library and Museum have been located in a building at Zmaj Jovina 1, which, on the occasion of the centenary of the Belgrade Municipality, was adapted, renovated inside and out in 1940 and inaugurated as the first City Cultural Center of Belgrade.

After the Second World War, the Library, the Museum and the Historical Archive of the City of Belgrade stand out as special organizations. The building is becoming too small for all the collections. Gradually, the Historical Archive, Periodicals Fund, General and Children’s Fund of the City Library moved out of it. The oldest books and books about Belgrade, collected since the founding of the Library, remain under the same roof, as they did seven decades ago.

Today, the Department of Old and Rare Books and Books on Belgrade holds more than 40,000 copies of library materials whose main theme is Belgrade, or Belgrade is mentioned in some significant context. Included are literary and scientific, domestic and foreign works about the city, travelogues, documents, monuments, address books, yearbooks, calendars, works on economic, communal, urban and social issues, publications of city organizations…

Special attention is paid to the Holdings of old and rare books, which contain editions printed until 1918, whether they were printed in Belgrade or outside of it.

The collection of manuscripts includes 543 manuscripts, on approximately 4,000 pages and consists mostly of correspondence, literary works, political and historical writings, court documents, autobiographies of the 19th century, etc.

The cartographic collection of the Belgrade City Library consists of about 200 cartographic documents created from the end of the 16th to the middle of the 19th century – in all three basic printing techniques. Printed from woodcuts, copperplates and lithographic stone, most of them are colored by hand. The largest part of the collection is based on a gift from Rista and Radmila Aćimović.

The photo fund contains over 2,000 photos of old Belgrade, important events and historical figures that marked the life of the city.

The professional activity of the Department of Old and Rare Books and Books about Belgrade – Native Department is based to the greatest extent on library processing and the formation of professional documentation, research and lexicographic work, bibliographic processing of library materials, as well as on the selection of titles for publishing activity.

The result of the bibliographic work is summarized in two volumes Materials for the bibliography of Yugoslav and foreign books about Belgrade (published in 1974 and 2003). The diversity of the register in question allows a comprehensive insight into the contents of the collection of books about Belgrade.

Two-volume monograph Streets and squares of Belgrade, published in 2004-2005. exhaustively and documentedly processes the names of 2,363 Belgrade streets, as well as their distribution and the history of changes in their names until the middle of 2004. The monograph is illustrated with about 800 illustrations and is the result of many years of lexicographic work in the Department of Old and Rare Books and Books about Belgrade of the Belgrade City Library.

In the publishing activity of the Belgrade City Library, which began in 1933 with the publication of Illustrated History of Belgrade by Marija Ilić Agapova, the Native Department was included in 1967 with the book Belgrade in the XIX Century from the Works of Foreign Travel Writers; and continues by collecting Selected works of Marija Ilić-Agapova (2002).

The phototype edition of the monograph from 1757 attracted special public attention: The life of the imperial general and famous engineer Mr. Baron Doxat de Morez executed on March 20, 1738 in Belgrade with a description of certain events in the then war against the Turks, 2006 . years.

In the same year, another reprint was published, this time Memorials of the Society for the Beautification of Vračar 1884−1909.