A few days ago a fire broke out in the basement of the National Library in Tirana. Although the definitive extent of the damage remains unknown, it is certain that a part of the library’s books, mainly published after the 1990s, has been damaged by fire or water.
Director of the National Library Persida Asllani declared that the archive with rare books and manuscripts has not been damaged.
We are speaking of books that can be in a foreign language or in Albania, books that are borrowed by readers, but I believe these can be recuperated.
Meanwhile, Deputy Minister of Culture Zef Çuni declared that Russian publications has been damaged. A full damage assessment is expected once the situation in the National Library has returned to normal.
Promises about the National Library
For years scholars have expressed their worries about the deplorable situation of the National Library. A part of the building has been turned into a bar or has been otherwise “privatized,” while for years no significant infrastructural investment was made into its storage or archive spaces. The underground levels where the collection is stored are too small and do not provide the right conditions for the storage of the material.
In 2013, Minister of Culture Mirela Kumbaro expressed her concern in front of the Education and Public Information Committee about the scandalous situation inside the institution.
The state of the National Library is scandalous. Urgent interventions are needed to create new spaces.
In August 2014, the recently nominated director Persida Asllani promised that she would take initiative to restore the building and reappropriate the “privatized” parts of the building.
A few months later, in February 2015, Asllani announced to the press that she had start the process of reappropriation.
The good news is that the National Library will be given spaces which will allow us to overcome this standstill. The process has started from the negotiations we undertook until the technical process of studying the physical and engineering conditions of the building. I see that it will need time, not just a part of the state budget, but the government has presented this restructuring of the spaces and the concept as one of the projects to be invested in and supported by the EU. I still cannot speak about numbers.
But on December 20, 2015, at the occasion of the 95th anniversary of the National Library, Asllani, Minister Kumbaro, and Prime Minister Rama repeated their promises for the reconstruction and reappropriation of the privatized spaces as if the process had never started. Asllani stated:
I have a dream, […] about a renewed, dignified library, not only in the way in which it works as regards the information and wealth that is offered by our national culture, but also dignified in its own spaces, the working and reading environments.
While Prime Minister Rama, who donated an album with his own sketches, declared:
We will do for the National Library what has not been done for the last 25 years together. We are fully engaged in this process and will return to the Library the piece that was amputated from it by the barbarism of the transition culture.
