Political implications to the development of the first National Bibliography of Kosovo

Abstract

A paper given at the "Universal Bibliographic Control at the crossroads: the challenges of unifying IFLA bibliographic standards" Satellite Meeting, organised by the IFLA Bibliography, Subject Analysis and Access, and Cataloguing Sections. In small countries like Kosovo, which have gone through many political and cultural changes, developing a national bibliography has been an almost impossible mission for a long time. Now, the National Library of Kosovo is developing the Bibliography of Albanian Books 1912-1999, a process that requires an enormous energy, due to political and cultural circumstances that have tagged along the publication of Albanian books and Albanian authors for almost a century. The difficulty to develop a National Bibliography of Kosovo appears in the background, because the Bibliography of Albanian Books Project is certainly not equivalent to the National Bibliography of Kosovo. Accordingly, this article will reveal historical, professional and technical processes involved in developing the Kosovo Albanian Book Bibliography and discuss professional and technical matters around the development of the National Bibliography of Kosovo, by analysing professional issues, political implications, cultural and linguistic diversity and legal infrastructure as a communicative regulator between the Library and publishers.