Professional paper
The history and the work of the “Croatian Reading Room of the village of Gornji Kuti”
Karmen Delač-Petković
; Strojarsko brodograđevna škola za industrijska i obrtnička zanimanja, Rijeka
Abstract
On November 22nd 1936 in the village of Gornji Kuti, the municipality of Brod Moravice, in the north of Gorski Kotar, sixteen villagers founded the “Croatian Reading Room of Gornji Kuti – Gorski Kotar”. By founding the reading room with the lending library they wanted to enrich and make the life easier both for their fellow villagers and themselves. However, the Reading Room soon outgrew the aims of its founders – it became the centre of the cultural life of the entire Brod Moravice area and had extremely positive impact on raising the level of literacy among the population and on popularization of books. It had a high quality work programme, organized events, lectures, and exhibitions. Several clubs were organized, such as drama club, chess club, and tamburitza band. Also, its high quality cooperation with the elementary school from Brod Moravice is worth mentioning. The number of members has been constantly growing so today the Reading Room acts as a public library for the entire municipality. Despite numerous problems in its work (continuous relocations of the library holdings, problems with authorities, censorship, insufficient financing, aging of the members, dilapidated building), the Reading Room has survived to our days due to hard work, self-sacrifice and dedication of its members, mostly volunteers. During 2006 and 2007 the Reading Room has celebrated the 70th anniversary of its work with a range of cultural activities and the publishing of a commemorative booklet. As a unique institution of its kind, the Reading Room has been awarded several times and it deserves a better support of the community in the realization of its future plans, the priority being the construction of a new building. The task of all of us, both the volunteers as well as professional public, is to preserve the Reading Room for future generations.
Keywords
Croatian Reading Room of the Village of Gornji Kuti – Gorski Kotar; Gornji Kuti; municipality Brod Moravice; cultural and educational institution; volunteering
Hrčak ID:
22605
URI
Publication date:
7.5.2008.
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