Belgrade » Beograd | 59 Ukupne elektronske resurse Biblioteke dnevno koristi oko 20.000 virtuelnih korisnika, dok čitaonice dnevno koristi i do 1.000 ljudi / The Library's total electronic resources are used on a daily basis by approximately 20,000 virtual users, while the reading rooms are physically used by up to 1,000 people per day of 1,424 Cyrillic manuscripts and charters from the 12th to the 17th centuries, a cartographic and graphic collection of 1,500 items, a collection of 4,000 magazine titles and 1,800 newspaper titles. Also perishing were a significant and insufficiently studied collection of Turkish documents on Serbia, incunabula and old printed books, as well as entire correspondences of important personalities from the cultural and political history of Serbia and Yugoslavia. All inventories and catalogues of the National Library also vanished.” Do you today possess modern techniques to ensure preservation? “We are of course carrying out digitisation.Thatwas even started by my father's generation. The Library's electronic catalogue contains about two and a half million entries.The Library's total electronic resources are used on a daily basis by approximately 20,000 virtual users, while the reading rooms are physically used by up to 1,000 people per day. In a certain sense, this library of ours is amonument to that destroyed library.” How do you feel as the guardian of such a treasure; did you ever dream that you could be such a guardian? “It never even crossedmymind. Books are written out of nostalgia for a home in outer space. There you will find your sorrows and desires, thoughts that pass through your head, as well as your faith and some kind of beauty, andmodesty and sincerity... Books help you to find the place where your heart is buried and to discover your secret name. It was in this very library that I wrote part of my notes on the Hungarian Secession movement that found its way into my book “Tesla: A Portrait With Masks”, published in 2008.” Are you writing a new book? “I'mwriting a novel about the life of awoman called Ozana Bolica. The novel begins in the Venetian Perast of the 17th century, with a pirate attack and kidnapping. It continues in Tunisia, then moves to colonial America. It culminates back in Perast. That was an epoch of encounters between Descartes, Baroque, persecuted witches and religious wars, piracy under state protection [privateering] andmass slavery. It was then that the system of world trade was established. The word modernity was then created or renewed, whatever that means. The novel will be called The Song of Three Worlds.”
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