Books of the 19th-21st centuries

Among the most valuable works in our book collection are the prints from the Lwów (Lviv) Ossolineum (the so-called Lwów Collection). This part of the collection has been classified as a National Library Collection and is subject to special protection. It consists mainly of literary texts, monographs and academic studies, sources of cultural, political and economic history of Poland, as well as encyclopaedic and dictionary publications, editions of source collections, articles and many miscellaneous items from the field of interest.

The library is mainly stocked with publications in the humanities, either about Poland or related to Poland. For this reason, during the communist period, the library was interested in publications by Polish publishers in the West: Instytut Literacki and Editions Spotkania in Paris, as well as Aneks, Puls, Polonia Book Fund Ltd, Polska Fundacja Kulturalna (Polish Cultural Foundation), Kontra, Veritas, Orbis w Londynie, which at the time were not licensed for distribution in Poland. They were collected with the tacit approval and sometimes in defiance of the prohibitions of the authorities of the time, and were only made available officially in exceptional cases, with the special permission of the management and under supervision, as so-called prohibita.

The storehouses also contain copies from numerous donations. Particularly valuable donations have been received from Władysław Bartoszewski - among others, a book collection with a valuable collection of Warsaw conspiracy prints from the Nazi occupation period, Aleksander Okruciński - a collection of science fiction and fantasy literature, Halszka Vincenz - polonica (Poland related items) from the German language area, or Mikołaj Ossoliński's collection of works by German authors on relations between our nations and states. Also noteworthy among the donated copies is the collection of poets Tymoteusz Karpowicz or Tadeusz Różewicz, as well as the book collection of Warsaw insurgents Maria and Kazimierz Leski.

All these publications are made available only on-site in the Main Reading Room and to a limited extent. Outside the Ossolineum, only prints published after 1950 are loaned to authorised visitors.