Library of the Centre for Classical Studies

Opening hours: Tuesday and Wednesday 9AM–6PM (on other days by appointment)
Tel.: +420 222 828 301 (reading room)
knihovna@ics.cas.cz

Librarians:  Mgr. Marta Hoffmanová  (hoffmanova@ics.cas.cz)
                 Mgr. Petr Dolejš (dolejs@ics.cas.cz)
                 Mgr. Zdeněk Dvořák (dvorak@ics.cas.cz)

The collection of the Library of the Centre for Classical Studies (library regulations are available here) encompasses books and periodicals numbering more than 60 000 volumes, including handbooks, encyclopaedias, dictionaries, editions and databases concerning many branches of the humanities: classical philology and classical studies, Medieval studies, philosophy, patristics, theology, church history, political history, history of arts and culture of the Middle Ages etc. The library collection also contains all works made for hire by the Centre staff. Among the exceptionally important publications kept in the library and regularly expanded and supplemented are, apart from foreign monographs, comprehensive series of ancient, early Christian or mediaeval authors in modern, often bilingual editions (Bibliotheca Teubneriana, Loeb Classical Library, Les belles lettres, Sources chrétiennes, Corpus Christianorum). The library subscribes to more than 70 Czech and foreign scholarly journals (the list of all the periodicals available in the library can be downloaded here). Being a prominent specialised library in the Czech Republic, it serves university students, researchers and general public and, through international interlibrary loan service, also other libraries in the Czech Republic and abroad. Its collection has recently been enlarged through gifts of important collections, e. g. a library of the historian Jiří Spěváček, the cultural historian of Czech Middle Ages Pavel Spunar, or the French historian Jean-Pierre Vernant. The library contains a reading room, registered readers are allowed external loans of selected publications. In the library it is also possible to buy the publications and CR-ROMs created by the Centre’s researchers or published by the Centre.

The library developed from a modest collection related to the activities of the once Commission for the Dictionary of Medieval Latin in Czech Lands at the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts, the initial core of the would-be Centre. Since the establishment of the Cabinet for Greek, Roman and Latin studies in 1953, the library is an integral part of the institution. Its collection was soon greatly enlarged by books from libraries of grammar schools teaching classical languages, history and culture, which were abolished at the time. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the collection is purposefully complemented and systematically classified with regard to branches of knowledge. In the reading room and room of Greek and Latin authors, the readers have access to more than half of the collection. The remaining books are either delivered immediately from a storage room, or on request from the depository of the CAS in Jenštejn. The sister library of the Centre’s library is the Library of the Institute of Philosophy of the CAS.

 


Catalogues

Since 2014, the books in the Library of the Centre for Classical Studies are catalogued in the system ALEPH. The titles processed so far may be accessed via this link:

Library of the Centre for Classical Studies

For the time being, it is possible to search for documents processed before 2014 in a Tinweb catalogue. The data are now revised before being implemented in the more modern system ALEPH. The Tinweb catalogue may be accessed via these links:

search
authors
titles
periodicals (the users are advised to look for the shortcut ABB018 in the list of document owners)


New books acquired by the Library

The list of new books acquired by the library:
in the period January-August 2017 in .xlsx format is available here.
in the period September-December 2017 in .xlsx format is available here.



Electronic information resources accessible from the Library of the Centre for Classical Studies

Researchers and visitors of the Centre for Classical Studies may for research purposes use the following electronic information resources in the library’s study room (employees may access these pre-paid databases from the Centre’s computer network):

Full-text databases for the humanities

Bibliographic and citation databases

Encyclopaedias and dictionaries