FORMING AND DEVELOPING LIBRARIES IN THE CITY OF LESKOVAC

Abstract

The half-century attempts at the formation of reading rooms and libraries in Leskovac, since the accession to Serbia under the Treaty of Berlin, to the creation of the Leskovac Public Library and Reading Room, were preceded by a long-lasting process of literacy, as a pre-requisite for the creation the need to read. The first serious reading movement appeared in Serbian communities on the territory of present-day Vojvodina, then in the independent Principality of Serbia, which after 1878 appears as the first modernizer of the newly-formed regions. The tradition of the city library that was created before the First World War by pooling small funds, is being continued by the Public Library “Radoje Domanović” in Leskovac.