Snejana Ianeva – The Librarian with Mission
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nikola Kazanski
Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
„Me, poor man, my library
was dukedom large enough“
William Shakespeare The Tempest
I was born in 1951 in the small Bulgarian town of Svishtov (on the right bank of the Danube river) and my whole professional experience has been acquired at the Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences where I am still working as a chief information officer and a specialist in scientific information, bibliography, bibliometrics, scientometrics and culturology.
Prior to 1989 I was responsible for the international exchange of publications with USA and other Western countries (the largest one in Bulgaria) and started an unofficial research on the impact of the American library theory and practice in Bulgaria. In those times it was, to say at least, implausible and point-blank really dangerous...
The occasion for this was provided by my father Dr. Ratcho Kazansky (1909-2006), an associate of Academician Nikola Mihov and a close friend of Professor Todor Borov, who told me a story about the emblematic and unique (!) publication by an American library specialist in Bulgaria at that time, namely – Cole, Dorothy Ethlyn. Graduate Theses Accepted by Library Schools in the United States from July 1938, to June 1945. // Annual of Bulgarian Bibliographic Institute, Vol. 1, 1948, pp. 346-380. Because of it, the edition had been prohibited and the editors were ostracized…
After 1990 I was free to continue my studies focusing on the activity of the Open Society Foundation in the Bulgarian librarianship. The succinct results of them are in the publication: Krastev, Dincho and Nikola Kazanski. Democracy and Libraries: Modernizing and Rebuilding Bulgarian Libraries with US Support, 1990–2014. // Library Trends, Vol. 63, # 4, Spring 2015, pp. 756-765.
Invaluable assistance and exceptional support in all my investigations was rendered by Mrs. Snejana Ianeva, a longstanding Director of the Information Resource Center at the US Embassy in Bulgaria after 1992. From the very beginning we found ourselves on common ground and did understand each other easily. Like her only just after 1990 I could freely apply for any kind of competitions and as a result, I have the possibility of specializing at the British Library, Bibliothèque nationale de France, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Denmark, Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (NATO grant), Biblioteca Academiei Române, European University Institute in Florence, College of Europe in Bruges, Geneva Institute of International Relations, etc.
I was especially impressed by Snejana Ianeva with her unostentatious competence combined with exceptional modesty and absolute efficacy – something quite unwonted for my native country which I do know very well in worst and in relatively good times…
I would like to give some significant examples of our longstanding collaboration. I was searching for information about one distinguished, but absolutely unknown in Bulgaria, American bibliographer A.G.S. Josephson (Aksel Gustav Salomon, 1860–1944). I already had a detailed data about him except his portrait. Then I contacted Snejana as a source of the highest authority but taking into consideration her all-absorbing commitments as a respected President of Bulgarian Library and Information Association I doubted that she could spare the time for this arduous enquiry. But incredibly soon (in out-of-office hours!) she ferreted out an exceptional photo (here attached) of the John Crerar Library Staff (1914) which became for me one of the symbols in her sacred memory. Nevertheless, she warned me specifically to ask permission from the University of Chicago, but I arranged the matter thanks to my colleague and friend, the fantastic librarian Joe Lenkart from the Slavic Reference Service at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Within the lapse of time, I have realized more and more, what an important event it was for all of us, Bulgarian librarians and users, the inauguration of the American Cultural Institute (American Information Center) in Sofia from the very beginning of 1990s. It was a real window not only on the democratic Western countries, but also on the world as a whole. At the time there was no Internet and Bulgaria was in a grave economic crisis and prolonged financial collapse.
To perceive the real dimensions of the importance and to outline the phenomenal scale of the pioneer activity of the American Information Center which master mind and Deus ex machina was in practice Snejana Ianeva, it is indispensable to make a little historical reference because almost thirty years have passed since then.
Before the democratic changes in 1990 by reason of good command of several foreign languages and an excellent library training which I have acquired from such masters as Elena Kirova, Bozhana Bozhinova-Troyanova, Iskra Mihaylova, Lyuben Atanasov, Ani Gergova and Zornitsa Popova, I have been assigned to carry out the acquisition of all Western scientific literature in the framework of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. I tackled the task with the due diligence and until nowadays the Academy encompasses the largest and richest collections of foreign scientific literature, especially American one. I still remember that only when the French President François Mitterrand visited Bulgaria in 1989 one could go relatively free in the Institut français, but no one dares to visit the American reading room… In 1990 started the library of Das Goethe-Institut, in 1991 The British Council and a year after the American Information Center was established. But while in the former three was offered freely literature and audio-video products, in the latter the prominence was given to the reference books and methodical training which are indispensable for Bulgaria in the new conditions of democracy and free market economy.
I have a perfect recall of the opening of the American reading room in Sofia on 31 of May 1993. The library collection initially consisted of 5 000 volumes, but for the first time in Bulgaria encompasses the most advanced information products like databases Periodical Abstract on-disc database (with bibliographic records and annotations of articles from more than 1 000 periodicals) and General Periodicals on-disc database (full-text articles from more than 300 periodicals). Here was the first in the country connection with the World Wide Web Internet and through it with other American information databases. In the library was adopted the information retrieval bibliographic system Data-Trek and activated one of the first email namely USISE This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Since my Central Academic Library was the first one with Internet among Bulgarian libraries, we have the possibility to access directly to the library of the American Information Center and of course to its omnipresent leader Snejana Ianeva.
In the framework of the AIC a number of seminars, workshops and later videoconferences on the management and organization of libraries with participation of leading specialists and professionals from USA, were carried out. A specialized textbook in English for librarians was compiled. By virtue of the Anglo-Saxon atmosphere at the Center and owing to the professional communication with Snejana Ianeva I did succeed to achieve quite high score on my TOEFL test.
Namely Snejana Ianeva had special merit and services for the realization of the sharing of experience between American and Bulgarian librarians and library institutions. On her initiative have been developed activities related to the establishment of partnership between libraries in Bulgaria and USA as American-Bulgarian project for library exchange. This idea was supported by the US Department of State and relations between 18 libraries from both countries have been established.
Especially significant for me personally was the day of 5th of May 1995 when the American Center organized a seminar with main lecturer Professor Marianna Tax Choldin, founding director of the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on the subject Library Collections, Access to Information and Intellectual Freedom. Its topic was directly related to the problem of the censorship and the libraries. This was an extremely pressing problem then in Bulgaria where for the first time we had to deal with the so-called “closed” and “special” collections with banned and incriminated literature… It was again Snejana Ianeva who made a very appropriate introduction to this so special topic, closely affecting a great number of problems from professional and universal nature. The кnow-how acquired in this seminar helped me a lot for my presentations on the censorship in Bulgaria during my specializations at the British Library, Bibliothèque nationale de France, National Library of Denmark, Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, etc.
Snejana Ianeva was one of the rare representatives of Bulgaria at the inauguration of Bibliotheca Alexandrina in 2002. Prior to this she was among the originators of the community Friends of the Library of Alexandria. At that time was paved the way for Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov to become a member of its Board of Trustees in 2016.
The qualities of Snejana Ianeva as a renaissance personality were made known completely in her capacity of President of the Bulgarian Library and Information Association. I shall not particularize all her achievements on these duties which are well known. I would like only to share how very often, at the consecutive presentation of some successful project, in an informal converse with me, she partook, even in a facetious way, her deep impressions of the long association with the American library theory and practice. These were for me inestimable lessons which I will remember for the term of my life.
She was really and truly a Librarian with Mission, which she realized in a large measure, although she could contribute more and more… As José Ortega y Gasset pointed out “The mission of the librarian ought to be, not as it is today the simple administration of the things called books, but the adjustment, the setting to rights, of that vital function which is the book.”
I have never been one of the closed or inner circle of Snejana Ianeva, but I will never forget the divine taste of the pancake tart which she regaled us during the professional forums at the American Information Center in Sofia, where she acted as inspirer, manager, moderator, performer, mistress and nothing less than a priestess of our library mysteries.
Let’s always remember her this way…
Aksel Gustav Salomon
Crerar Library Staff