Hey, hey, hey!
After waiting for the breakdown service guys to come for a car emergency, I'm now home with heaps of postcards. I'm so happy about this particular postcard - the newest addition to my collection. It comes from a new country (and one of the hardest countries to receive a postcard from) in my list - MOLDOVA - and was sent by my good friend Maia, who is a noted media practitioner in Chişinău, the capital. I could not believe I now have in my hands two postcards from two new countries- Kazakhstan last week, and Moldova this week. What a joy!
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| The National Library of Moldova, nearly two centuries old. The statue in front of the building is of the poet, Vasili Alecsandri. |
Founded in 1832, the National Library of Moldova is the largest in the country. The building looks impressive, no? But what till you see what's behind that massive pillars!
Its fund amounts to 2.5 million books stacked on 50 kilometers of shelves. Over the 170 years of its existence the library has accumulated an exclusive encyclopedic collection that includes traditional documents (books and diskettes) and other sources of information like compact disks and cassettes. Besides books the library fund includes over 4500 magazine names, 2500 newspaper names, and nearly 60 manuscripts dating back to the 18th century. Old books fund has 13 thousand volumes and approximately 2000 periodicals exhibited in over 20 different collections. Annually 16 to 17 million readers that go over one million storage items visit the National Library. It is attended by 500 readers and signs out three thousand publications daily. Most of its employees have higher education and are very familiar with bibliography and librarianship. (More info here.)
Moldova (Republic of Moldova) is a country in the southeastern part of Europe, landlocked and bordered by Romania and Ukraine. In the past, Moldova was a part of Russian, later on, Romania, and then back to Russia again. It is only in 1991 that Moldova declared itself an independent state, as a result of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I am so interested about Moldova's interconnection with Russia and Romania that I did a little digging about its political history.
The state language of Moldova is Moldovan/Romanian while Russian is also widely-spoken there, both as a first and second language.The interconnected history of Moldova, Romania and Russia is complex, to say the least. In the 19th century, Moldova was called Bessarabia and was ruled by the Russian Empire. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Moldova briefly declared independence from Moscow, before joining Romania. As part of the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop (aka Hitler-Stalin) Pact that carved up Eastern Europe into Soviet and Nazi spheres of influence in 1940, Moldova became part of the USSR, with the eastern part allotted to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. (More details here. Here is another link to an interesting article of Moldova's geopolitical history. And for a quick glimpse of Moldovan history, here's a chronological timeline of events.)
I do love libraries! All those books and knowledge and history contained in that space. Wonderful!
Getting postcards from obscure countries is like scoring gold! It's even harder leaving it to the Postcrossing Fates! :P
The country has had a turbulent history, its a fascinating part of the world. Love libraries, and that one sounds as though you could spend days in there.