About the library

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In accordance with the research focus of the Institute of Contemporary History, the library is conceived as a workplace with a special library resource for the political, social, economic and cultural history of the Czech Republic, Czechoslovakia and the Slovak Republic from the end of the 1930s (some also from the founding of the republic) until now.

The library systematically collects, processes and makes accessible Czech and, selectively, foreign monographs and periodical publications in printed and audiovisual forms for the history of the pre-Munich republic, the period of occupation and resistance, building socialism and the first crises of the political system, the period 1967-1969 and the following normalization, events of 1989 and the post-November development. The following is also represented: the problems and questions of Czech and Slovak and Czech/Czechoslovak and German relations, human rights, opposition and dissent movements under the communists, history of Czechoslovak Jews, Czech/Czechoslovak exile 1939-1989, European integration, minorities; and, selectively, literature on the history of sciences, questions of international relations (mainly in the Cold War period), general world history and problems of historiography, political science, philosophy, sociology, history of literature and cultural heritage.

The book stock (35,000 fascicles) comprises not only books published after 1990, but also those printed in the first republic, under the communist regime and those published in exile. The library also keeps widening its book stock.

The library has currently five Czech and two Slovak subscribed dailies, 149 Czech and 109 foreign scholarly journals and annual bulletins (yearbooks). A special part of the library resource is a collection of 60 titles of exile magazines. There are over 800 titles of periodicals all told. Dailies are transferred to microfilm.