Ideological Themes in the Publishing Offer of the Polish Librarians’ Association Until 1956

Abstract

The article comprises an analysis of 58 compact publications published between 1946-1956 by the Polish Librarians and Archivists’ Association and later the Polish Librarians’ Association for the presence of ideological themes. The author points out the kinds, character and volume of the ideological interpolations and conducts an assessment of the studied publishing offer. A method of qualitative-quantitative analysis of the accumulated material has been used, which aims at answering the following questions: 1. How rich was the publishing output of the Polish Librarians’ Association between 1946-1956?; 2. What kinds of interpolations can be observed in the publications of the Association from that period?; 3. How should the presence of ideological themes in the publications of the Association be assessed? Based on the conducted analysis, it has been established that there are three levels of ideological themes’ presence in the publications of the Association in the studied period. The most works - 28 carry some ideological themes, whereas 12 were openly based on the Socialist ideology. The presence of these fragments was most likely motivated by the desire to receive a positive opinion of the censorship department, although it is not out of the question that it also originated from personal reasons and political leanings of the authors. The examples presented in the article prove that the librarianship could be written about in the strongly ideologized times in a not politically-engaged way - 18 of the studied works were not referring to the ideology at all or did so in a small way