As a reaction to the catastrophic flood, which also hit the building of the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague and destroyed its specialist library, our French archaeologist colleagues got themselves mobilized and arranged Operation Biblioprague, in the course of which more than 5000 books have been gathered.
The collection was organized by the Institut national de recherches archéologiques preventives (French National Institute for Rescue Excavations) and the Institut national d´histoire de l´art (French National Institute of the History of Art). More than 30 institutions took part in the collection, including research and documentation centres, museums, university and department libraries, regional culture centres and not least private donors.
Amongst the biggest donors are la Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l´Homme (Aix-en-Provence), l´Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris, rue d´Ulm), la Bibliotheque d´Art et d´Archéologie – Jacques Doucet (Paris), la Casa Vélasquez (Madrid), le CEREP-Centre de recherche et d´étude du patrimoine (Sens), le centre archéologique européen a Bibracte (Mont Beuvray), le fonds Kahil-Ginouves (Nanterre), DAPA – direction de l´architecture et du patrimoine and the Adpf-erc publishing company in Picard, and Errance.
Participants in the overall campaign of organization, its technical and financial arrangement and the transport of the books to Prague, from its inception till the present time have been – the Council of Europe, the Embassy of the French Republic in Prague, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the French Ministry of Youth and Education, the French Ministry of Culture and Communication and the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Paris, l´Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Institut de France), Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), la Maison de l´archéologie et l´etnologie René-Ginouves (MAE) and Maison des sciences de l´Homme (MSH) and UNESCO.
On Friday 28. 2. 2003 the books were handed over and deposited in the central store of the Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Jenštejn. On that occasion, a press conference took part in the Institute of Archaeology in Prague.
Nanterre, France, 25. 2. 2003
Fig. 1. Before departure – books in front of the Maison d´archéologie et etnologie.
Fig. 2 N. Schlanger (MAE a INRAP)
