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The Pilsudski Institute’s library comprises nearly 23,000 volumes, complementing the archives and providing a rich source of information for researchers. Its Electronic Catalog (OPAC) is available online; currenly it contains about one-third of the collection and is continuously updated.  In the early years of the
Institute the library consisted mainly of books donated by the various wartime agencies of the Polish Government: the Polish Information Center in New York and the Ministry of Information and Documentation in London. Many of the publications came from Polish publishers in America, such as Roj and Promyk, from the
Polish Literary Institute in France, from Gryf and the Polish Literary Foundation in England. Donations of book collections from politicians, veterans and community leaders were and still are the main source of books in the library. This is how the Institute acquired the collections of Ignacy Matuszewski, Lucjusz
Kupferwasser, Waclaw Jedrzejewicz, Gen. Tadeusz Kasprzycki, Gen. Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Ambassadors Jozef Lipski and Michal Sokolnicki, Senators Tadeusz Katelbach and Edward Kleszczynski and historian Wladyslaw Pobog-Malinowski.This is also how the library acquired a unique volume, The Accomplished Senator by Wawrzyniec Goslicki published in London in 1733. It is the fourth edition of a work that was first published in Venice in 1568. Because of limited space the library has to be very selective, concentrating on the history of Poland from 1863, as well the history of Poland’s neighbors, primarily Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Germany. There is a rich representation of Poland in exile. Books on Jozef Pilsudski, the patron of the Institute, are an important part of the book collection, with titles published in Poland and elsewhere. Worth mentioning are a biography in Arabic by Mustafa Aleksandrowicz published in Cairo in 1936, an Italian biography by Leonard Kociemski published in Rome in 1936 and a Czech biography by T. Lubaczewski published in Prague in 1936. Also included is a manuscript of a journal for the period from January 15, to May 12, 1935, kept by Marshal Pilsudski’s aide-de-camp, Aleksander Hrynkiewicz. The library catalog is now being computerized and since June 2010 is available on the Institute’s website. Duplicates are offered to other libraries in the region, as well as to the National Library of Poland in Warsaw, the Jagiellonian Library in Cracow and Polish Academy of Sciences. Once a year the Institute holds a book fair, which is becoming more and more popular in the New York area. |
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