I've returned to Prague after two weeks in Germany with My Sibling, and have wrapped up acquisition of a couple more photos for the book--one historic view of Smíchov, and one a photo of Toyen and Nezval that had not previously been digitized. So... some progress in that realm, although less than I'd like. And then I was also able to get a couple of much-wanted works that Christie's had auctioned--for anyone who needs images auctioned by Christie's, the procedure is to contact the auction house and they will forward the request to Bridgeman Images to fulfill. (I don't think one can do this directly through Bridgeman as they may not have the images prior to one's request, but I didn't ask about that.)
Settling back down at the library--which is where I do much of my work since I can work on multiple projects at once there, have wifi, and be out of the flat rather than sequestering myself--this morning I found myself taking the role of traffic director. As I prepared to enter the cloakroom area, I noticed a young woman attempting to communicate with the man at the somewhat inappropriately named Reception desk. (It is indeed a reception desk, but not an information desk and its staff are not multilingual as far as I can tell.) She kept saying "Library" and he responded, appropriately but not very usefully, "Knihovna." Whether or not she grasped that he understood what she had said was beside the point as there was no other information. Consequently, I stepped up and inquired if I could help.
As it happened, she was indeed looking for the library and wanted the reading room. I said that she would need to get a library card, as to the best of my knowledge this is the case. She was a bit put out and said she thought it was open to the public. I said that it is, but one needs a library card, which is not expensive. (It did not, unfortunately, occur to me that perhaps the city library would serve her purposes equally well; it is, after all, right across the street from the national library.) I provided some further information about getting a library card and said that once she had one, she would present it to the reception desk so that, I suppose, they can track usage, and that the main reading room would be just past his desk. She commented, with some annoyance, that "Nobody here speaks English!"
I was somewhat surprised, as this part of Prague is simply crawling with Czechs who can speak English. The library is situated in Old Town, which is where every tourist goes, and therefore over the past twenty or so years the shop employees have become quite proficient in our new
lingua franca (a term I use with irony). I said, therefore, that actually quite a few people here speak English.
She did not look convinced, but went off in the direction of the library card application forms. I then found myself helping, or at least attempting to help, a woman who was trying to find where to buy tickets to see the building. I don't actually know where one does that but I knew that the staff in the next room were better equipped to assist than the cloakroom attendant, who has laryngitis and speaks no English.
I like to be able to be helpful, but I found myself rather irked by the first encounter. It is true that learning to use the Národní knihovna is a bit challenging for non-Czechs even now that some of the brochures and forms are in English, but I don't see why someone should expect that everyone in a foreign country should know English, especially in a country where a significant percentage of the population finished school before English was offered as a foreign language. Using the reading room at a national library (in whatever country) generally requires at least a rudimentary knowledge of that country's language(s). Do people arrive at the Library of Congress and expect to walk in and hang out in its reading rooms and speak only, for example, French to the staff? There are certainly staff at the LOC who know French, but they are not everywhere.
Having made this commentary on the state of things, I will now proceed to look at
Filmová Praha of 1923 in the hope that it will prove useful for a conference paper I am presenting in the fall.
