Back    HE CENTRAL AGRICULTURAL LIBRARY (CBR) -- is the main scientific library that collects, edits, stores and offers books, periodicals and specialized publications on agriculture, forestry and food processing industry as well as builds the databases on the Food Economy Information System (SIGŻ), the Agricultural Research Information System (SIBROL) and AGRIS PL (bibliographic subbase in AGRIS FAO database). Furthermore, it carries out sophisticated informational and publishing activities. The CBR was set up under the November 12, 1955 Polish Government resolution and is headquartered in the building of the former Warsaw Museum of Agriculture and Industry, rebuilt after World War II. The CBR has two regional branches in Puławy and Bydgoszcz, owing to which it became a direct continuator of the over 160-year library work of such institutions as the Agronomical Institute at the Warsaw Marymont district (IAM), the State Scientific Institute of Rural Economy (PINGW) in Puławy (with its division in Bydgoszcz) and the Warsaw Museum of Agriculture and Industry. The IAM scientific library, that at the beginning had 150 volumes of agricultural literature, numbered 1,159 books in 3,306 volumes at the end of the 45th year of the IAM operation. In the last period of the IAM operation, its library acquired 3, 900 volumes coming from private collections of Michał Oczapowski, well-known scientist and farmer, and from those of the former Warsaw Gimnazjum Realne, a kind of a secondary school teaching youth mathematics, chemistry and natural sciences in the Kingdom of Poland (1815-1918). When agricultural colleges were re-organized in the Kingdom of Poland, all their collecitons were transferred to Puławy where the Technological, Agricultural and Forestry Institute started working from 1862. After various ups and downs, the Institute survived till 1918. In Poland between the two world wars, the Institute was turned into the State Scientific Institute of Rural Economy. The Bydgoszcz Agricultural Institute was established in 1904-1906 after in 1902 the Bydgoszcz Municipal Council had obtained permission from Prussian authorities for the Insitute to start working. It is also in this city where agricultural libraries started to be organized. Already in 1906, those libraries had a total of 1,700 volumes. From 1921, the Bydgoszcz Agricultural Institute became a division of the Puławy-based PINGW. Libraries of the PINGW branches survived the Nazi occupation of Poland. They did not lose much of their collections, while library collections of the Museum of Industry and Agriculture, that carried out diversified activity in Poland between the two world wars, were totally destroyed in mid-September 1939. The museum's library and its building burnt down entirely from Nazi incendiary bombs. Already in 1944, the PINGW library resumed its work in Puławy. The library of the Bydgoszcz PINGW division started working in this town. A library started to be organized in Warsaw at the beginning of the 1950s attached to the Central Agricultural Institute (CIR), coordinating the work of independent specialized research institutes set up after re-organizing the PINGW. At the end of 1950, library collections of the CIR Documentation and Publications Department numbered as many as 537 volumes. The decision was made in March 1951 to set up the CIR scientific library made up of the scientific library of the former Puławy-based PINGW, the library of the former Bydgoszcz PINGW division and the new CIR library that was being set up in Warsaw at the time. The work was run by the Team of the CIR libraries which also started gathering the possibly complete collections of both Polish agircultural literature and more valuable foreign output on this subject. These steps warranted the establishment of the CBR in 1955 to serve broad circles of readers from allover Poland. Thus, the Warsaw-based CBR took over collections of the Puławy and Bydgoszcz libraries as well as part of the collections of the former Pomological College at Ursynów near Warsaw and of the libraries of the Warsaw and Łódź Universities. Back

 
© Centralna Biblioteka Rolnicza, 2003