Registration of the Polish Collections Abroad – with special consideration for our threatened heritage – the endangered heritage in particular (2006-2015)

Abstract

Political changes which have been started in the beginning of the ’90 resulted negative way on the situation of Polish collections abroad. Department for the Polish Cultural Heritage Abroad [presently: Department of Cultural Heritage Abroad and Wartime Losses] of Ministry of Culture and National Heritage noticed this increasing trend and launched in 2006 the Programme „Registration of the Polish Collections Abroad – with special consideration for our threatened heritage”, which was connected with previous efforts directed on creating the directory on Polish libraries abroad in the period 1938-1948 (published: 2005). The main purpose of the Programme „Registration of the Polish Collections Abroad…” became collecting information on the Polish written heritage abroad, dispersed, very often not known and forgotten, and – specifically in recent years – endangered. The results of the query from the period 2006-2008 were published in 2009, whereas the results of the similar efforts from the period 2009-2015 were published in the end of 2016. The paper presents the activities mentioned above and their conclusions and is meant on the one hand to somehow summarize the Programme of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and on the other to set the directions for the future registration efforts and fields of the more detailed research.