What can the Depository Library offer Estonian associations abroad?
In early 2023, the National Library of Estonia began offering the services of the Depository Library. The Depository Library will continue offering the same services as before joining the National Library but these services will be more modern in the future.
What does the Depository Library do?
Its name contains one of its main tasks: keeping a depository of books and other documents and making them available. The collections contain publications in Estonian but publications in other languages are also collected and issued. There are no limits on genres, subjects or formats. The main thing is for the item to be well preserved.
Looking behind the scenes of the Depository Library, maintaining the depository and exchange collections is an important part of the everyday work of the staff. The first, that is, the depository collection admits foreign language literature that should be preserved. The second, or exchange collection admits all used books, magazines or other publications in Estonian and other languages, which are left over from cleaning out your bookshelves. While you can donate books to both collections, you can only take some for yourself from the exchange collection. Publications in the depository collection can be borrowed or used on the spot.
In this article, we are introducing the opportunities of this exchange collection because while the collection is not the largest in number of documents, it is one of the most important instigators and promoters of book exchange in Estonia.
We are cooperating with Estonian communities abroad in two ways. Used brochures have come to us from across oceans. The Foreign Estonian Museum VEMU in Toronto and the Estonian Archives in Australia in Sydney have contacted the Depository Library to give a new dignified life to their surplus books.
Anyone wishing to donate documents they no longer use can do so, both institutions and people. The majority of submissions is actually made up of publications donated by private individuals, but our collections are also supplemented by publishing houses that sometimes send books still smelling of the printing house. The Depository Library accepts books from publishing houses that have not been sold, and they are in high demand in book collecting campaigns where they are handed out to book lovers.
Signe Heiberg
National Library of Estonia
