Philobiblon

VOLUME VIII, IX
2003 - 2004

Contents

Abstracts

PAUL RICOEUR:
CULTURE, COMMUNICATION, AND CREATIVITY: AN UNUSUAL REVIEW OF RICOEUR

Tamás TÓTH

 The article intends to discuss the place and role of the recognized French philosopher Paul Ricoeur in contemporary philosophy and culture. The author's assumption is that Ricoeur has grown into one of the most influential and productive thinkers of the 20 th century. In order to ground his statement, the author wishes to present, in what he calls an "unusual review", the main features of the Ricoeurian life-work, especially for a non-French audience. The various chapters of the article examine the relevance of the author's assumption about Ricoeur's importance, by considering and classifying the French philosopher's work in the context of the history of philosophy, by tracking the beginnings of Ricoeur's philosophy, or by re-interpreting the philosopher's theoretical achievement.

FREEDOM AND CENSORSHIP IN ROMANIA. THE BEGINNINGS

Adrian MARINO

 Following the decades of his activity of a literary historian, or rather a historian of literary ideas, Prof. Marino has turned after the 1989 Revolution to the history of political ideas and ideology, a subject of his concern long before, but which he was hindered to freely pursue by the communist regime. His new research bears the title Freedom and Censorship in Romania, the first volume of which discusses the beginnings of the tradition of liberal thinking in Romania in the 18th century. The present article puts forward the initial phases of this work, outlining the theoretical framework of political thinking and freedom in the historical background of 18yh century Romanian culture. The article was first published in Romanian in the periodical Observatorul cultural (The Cultural Observer) 134 (17.09. - 23.09.2002).
 

NOAH'S ARK, OR MEMORY AS CULTURAL HERITAGE

Sidonia NEDEIANU GRAMA

 The text reviews one issue of the French journal EspaceTemps, entitled Transmettre aujourd'hui. Retour vers le future, and having as its subject matter the problem of cultural transmission and inheritance in the widest sense. The journal review is in fact an opportunity to discuss the problem of cultural heritage as a relevant issue in contemporary historical thinking. The overall presentation of the volume is followed by a detailed discussion of some of the major articles in the issue, signed by prestigious historians and philologists like Patrick Garcia, Jean Davallon, and Philippe Lejeune, as illustrative for the whole issue. The presentation also gives way to continuous reference to outstanding works in the field by Pierre Nora, Paul Ricoeur, or David Lowenthal.

THE BROKEN TRADITION. TRADITION'S MODE OF BEING BETWEEN ALIENNESS AND FAMILIARITY

István FEHÉR M.

The paper presents and characterizes certain aspects of the hermeneutic question related to tradition's mode of being, also addressing the subject of translation. The hermeneutic task, that is, the interpretation of texts handed down from the past, is realized on the account of two considerations: insight into the essence of historicism, and belief in the importance of tradition. The pivotal issue of the article is the discussion G. Figal's recent formulation, that "the relationship of hermeneutics to tradition is not a self-evident but rather a broken relationship". In the author's approach, hermeneutics' special place is defined "in-between" alienness and familiarity, but also between enlightenment and traditionalism.

CARE ETHICS AS APPLIED ETHICS: TOPICS FOR FREEDOM

Mihaela FRUNZĂ

This article proposes to find a substantial ground for articulating a common view of care ethics as liberal (applied) ethics. The author proceeds by presenting and discussing different approaches to the problem of care ethics, starting from the pioneering work of Carol Gilligan in this field (In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women's Development, published in 1982). Then she goes on commenting the philosophical notion of care, with reference to relevant theories as preliminaries of an ethics of care: Foucault's ethics of self-care, Kant's idea of ethics as a universal principle, and Heidegger's idea of ethics as an ontological principle. In the following, the author confronts care ethics with feminist theories, trying to settle its place in its relationship with liberal ethics or the ethics of justice, opting at the end for an integrative pattern of care ethics as an applied liberal ethics.

MATERNAL MORTALITY IN A CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL BACKGROUND

Ştefan PETRA

Maternal mortality rates are still surprisingly high, varying from country to country, according to their level of development, from 25 to ...700 maternal deaths at 100,000 live births per year. And yet, this index is not well known, in statistics the most frequently used is "infant mortality". Maternal mortality occurs at a unique, particular moment of human life, when a child is born. This moment is closely linked with the individual's life within the society. It is the expression of a demographic behavior, of the personal wish to have children, which is also an answer to the social context. Maternal mortality depends on the one hand on genetic factors, on the general state of health, or on the problems which may occur with pregnancy, and which can lead to complications and even to maternal mortality. On the other hand, maternal mortality depends on an "underground" factor at least as important as the first, which is connected to the socio-economic conditions such as: poverty, poor accessibility to health services as well as the underprivileged condition of the woman, her discrimination which is still present, to variable degrees, but practically all over the world. The risk factors of pregnancy, including those of maternal mortality can largely be avoided by medical methods of supervision of the pregnant woman, prevention of possible complications and a permanent pre-natal care. We must not forget the socio-economic methods, less used, but which can yield basic solutions, and an important decrease of maternal mortality in the longterm.

RUMANIENDEUTSCHE KINDER- UND JUGENDLITERATUR 1944 - 1989 VORBERICHT ZU EINER BIBLIOGRAPHIE

Annemarie WEBER

 The study - published here in German - analyzes by interdisciplinary means (German studies, sociology, history, political science, etc.) not only German literature in Romania "destined" for children and young people in the communist period, but the whole cultural-literary phenomenon of the German minority in Romania. The research thus renders problematic anew the concept of "German literature from Romania" (rumäniendeutsche Literatur) and its destiny in the different periods of the history of Romanian communism, along with that of publishing houses and periodicals, etc. In the following, the very concept of "literature for children and the young" is analyzed in detail, with special attention to its sociological, historical, ideological, and of course political aspects. The whole process of communist politization, ideologization, and instrumentalization is browsed through, which concentrated its special attention exactly over this social category, and these kinds of publications.

CENSORSHIP AND FISSURED TIME

István KIRÁLY

Censorship in the countries of the ex-communist bloc had a distinctive feature which separated it from censoring practices of primarily Western liberal democratic cultures. This distinctive feature is the fact that in these cultures and countries the subject and public analysis of censorship was itself censored. In this situation, the people of this region have particular reasons to approach the problem of censorship as one of high actuality. This is what this article attempts to do, by a careful and sharp situation analysis, reviewing the latest books on the topic of censorship published in Romania, and with repeated reference and connecting to Adrian Marino's work, Cenzura în România. Schita istorica introductiva (Censorship in Romania: An Introductory Historical Outline), 2000.

COMMUNIST CENSORSHIP IN THE 20TH CENTURY: TRANSILVANIAN PRESS AND BOOK PUBLISHING IN THE SHADOW OF CENSORSHIP

Gábor GYÖRFFY

 "The control and interdiction of the written word is as old and civilization itself." This is the idea which opens the article discussing in a consistent and detailed manner the history of communist censorship in Romania. The paper begins with a sketch of the origins and typology of censorship, followed by the historical and analytical presentation of communist censorship. Following the historical preliminaries, the uses of censorship in totalitarian regimes are discussed, with special reference to the situation of Transylvanian Hungarian culture "in the shadow of censorship".

CENSORSHIP. A WORLD ENCYCLOPEDIA

Florina ILIS

 The text is a review of the four-volume encyclopedia of censorship, edited by Derek Jones, as a result of an international collaboration, and published in 2001. The work was born out of an always timely interest in censorship, as the editor argues, since it is a relevant topic in every time, even when liberal democracy seems to impose itself as a political system in many regions of the world. Following a step-by-step presentation of the structure and topics of the encyclopedia, the author rests on the issue of censorship in Romania, as reflected in various entries of the four-volume work, emphasizing the importance of choosing Adrian Marino as the author of the entry on Romania.

THE NATION-STATE AND MULTICULTURAL POLICIES

Sandu FRUNZĂ

 The article proposes to investigate the possible models of coexistence of majority and minority groups in Romania. Such an attempt requires an outline of minority status and characterization, which the reader finds ready on the first pages of the article. In the narrower framework of the minority-problem the focus of the paper is religious minority as a community, and the possibilities of the construction of a minority religious identity within a nation-state. This discussion implies the consideration of all the possible relations between religion, state, and nation, also going into the role of the nation-state in ensuring the conditions for practicing religious identity and freedom, both in the case of majority and minority religious communities. In the context of an emerging new type of public sphere, based mainly of communities and not so much on states, the Churches, and thus religious communities are believed to have a crucial role - argues Prof. Frunză drawing on the work of Peter van der Veer. In the context of the relations between religion and the nation-state, it is repeatedly shown that it pertains to the state’s duties to regulate the position of religious communities in general and religious minorities in particular, because "the ambiguity maintained by not adopting a clear law of religious cults and religious freedom gives birth to frustration and divergent positions". Then, Romania's case is put forward, asking the question whether in Romania the nation-state could respond to the need of cultural and religious minorities to assert themselves by dialogue. As a natural direction of this question, one finds a considerable discussion of the relationship between religious cults and the option for democracy, the answer to the question being that there is no significant correlation between these two factors. The analysis of the case for Romania ends with the conclusion that "we must not forget that one of the major premises of European integration is that << those existing collectives that define themselves as communities of solidarity, respect, and moral values will continue the process of cultural reproduction and will not abandon their identity. >>"
 

MOMENTS IN THE DESTINY OF ROMANIAN CULTURE IN COMMUNISM: THEATER AND FILM

Monica GHEŢ

 By the irony of fate, one of the most coherent protests against the totalitarian system before 1971 was articulated in the language of theater and cinematography - argues the author of this article. She offers a historical-analytical review of theater and film creation before 1971, focusing the discussion around two main issues: the re-theatralization of the theater, that is, the attempts to relieve the theater performance from ideological constraints; and the battle for the image, presented in aspects of Romanian film between 1960 and 1970, a pioneering period in Romanian cinematographic art.

PRESS AND CENSORSHIP IN BESSARABIA: 19TH AND THE BEGINNING OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Maria DANILOV

The article presents the situation of periodical publication in Bessarabia beginning with the territorial takeover in 1812, as part of the Russian Empire, gradually forced into a social-political integration or assimilation. The author presents all the attempts to found a periodical on the territory of Bessarabia, based on historical evidence and archival research, starting with the first Imperial publication in 1854 of a Governmental Bulletin. Romanian publications in Bessarabia had a new chance of existence only at the beginning of the 20th century, after the Revolution from 1905, when an impressive number of new publications left the press.
 

CENSORSHIP AND THE INTERDICTION OF ROMANIAN BOOK CIRCULATION IN TRANSYLVANIA BEFORE 1918

Mircea POPA

 Prof. Popa's article discusses the problem of censorship in a literary historical approach, connected to the censure practiced in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the second half of the 19th century. The end of the Revolution of 1848 brought drastic measures for Romanians from Transylvania; their journals were interdicted, any initiative for publication was hindered or made almost impossible by the Austrian censure, which also inhibited the literary communication between Romanians in Transylvania and outside the Carpathians. The negative effects of a much too severe censorship are presented on the basis of excerpts from literary and archival sources, such as the biography and correspondence of eminent figures of 19th century Romanian writers inside and outside Transylvania, or certain archival evidence found in the Viennese archives (reports about censored schoolbooks, blamed of having contained improper formulations). The reference to these reports, though not very lengthy, may well be considered a literary historical stronghold of the article.

HETEROGLOSSIA IN KAZUO ISHIGURO’S THE REMAINS OF THE DAY
Éva ZSIZSMANN

 Bakhtin's theory of the dialogic nature of novelistic discourse is in fact a paradigm of freedom, the freedom of speech, especially. The present paper deals with Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, The Remains of the Day (1989) from the point of view of novelistic dialogue or heteroglossia. Starting from Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia it explores the parodic stylization of incorporated languages in the novel, with special focus on the butler's confession as a double-accented, double-style hybrid construction. The novel is shown to be a parodic representation of Englishness. The paper also examines the mechanism of hiding and revealing in the context of the butler's construction of identity and maps character zones, showing how fragments of character speech are filtered through Stevens's speech which is in its turn appropriated by the author's voice.

THOUGHTS ON CENSORSHIP AND THE FREEDOM OF THINKING IN EARLY MODERNISM. AN EXAMPLE FROM THE HISTORY OF IDEAS: JOHN MILTON’S AREOPAGITICA

Béla MESTER

The purpose of this article is to map the possibilities of free individual thinking (and hence the freedom of reading) in what the author calls a typographic society; that is, a society in which every reader has the right to produce and interpret texts, and the power over the minds and interpretation is taken over by censoring instances. This investigation is achieved by the analysis of a 17th century text, John Milton's Areopagitica. The author reveals Milton’s ideas about the freedom of reading, connected to the concept of Christian freedom, and related to it, his thoughts on censorship, which he perceives, according to his Protestant tradition, as coming from the Papacy. The results and also the failures of Milton's line of argumentation are both presented, and the article ends with the actualization of Milton's ideas for contemporary freedom of thinking.

LOOKING TO FOREIGN COUNTRIES: COMPARISON OF UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES IN SWITZERLAND AND ABROAD

Dr. Wolfram NEUBAUER; Dr. Alice KELLER

 The authors are Director and Head Collection Development of ETH Library Zurich. The article maps the emphatic differences that any librarian or library user may find between university libraries in various parts of the world. The focus groups of the comparison are the university libraries of English-speaking countries vs. German-speaking countries, with special reference to the situation in Switzerland. The issues compared are fund-raising, cooperation between libraries, and the importance of library buildings and opening hours.

INFORMATION SOURCES IN LIBRARIANSHIP, HELD BY THE “LUCIAN BLAGA” CENTRAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY CLUJ: A SPECIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY. AUTHOR’S VIEW

Ana Maria CĂPÂLNEANU

 The elaboration of the bibliography of Information Sources in Librarianship in the "Lucian Blaga" Central University Library was motivated by a need of information in librarianship, and the conviction that librarianship is dependent on information consistency and its thorough use. On the basis of this research stands the literature of library science in the collections of the "Lucian Blaga" Central University Library, sorted in seven main classes, with an alphabetic arrangement of authors and titles within each. Each bibliographic reference was accompanied by a set of descriptors, for a manifold accessibility of the information.

BRANCH LIBRARIES - SPECIALIZED LIBRARIES

Gabriela MORĂRESCU

G. Morarescu's article is a significant account of the branch libraries or the "Lucian Blaga" Central University Library - libraries that serve the departments of the “Babeş-Bolyai” University. The organization, services, collections, and personnel of a branch library is presented in connection to those of a specialized library, which comprises documents specialized in narrow fields, and offers services to a very specialized group of users. From the detailed presentation of the entire organizational system of a branch library, most notable is the discussion of the special place and role of a branch librarian (as compared to that of a general librarian), who, similarly to a specialized librarian, must be a professional both in information and library science, and in the department's special field of research.

PRESENT-DAY SITUATION OF LIBRARY STATISTICS IN ROMANIA (CENTRAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES)

Adriana SZÉKELY

Following a short overview of the situation of library statistics in Romania for about the last 10 years - "usually carried out on a daily, quarterly, and yearly basis, out of inertia and (job) obligation" -, the paper discusses the recent directions, standards and regulations adopted in library statistics. Generalized statistical evaluation started with the year 2000, and was followed, a year later, by joining the LIBECON 2000 Program, initiated by the European Union. This process is being presented in details as the principal concern of the article; the discussion ends with a case study, which compares the statistical situation of the large university libraries in Romania, supported by a set of charts in attachment.

DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES OF ELECTRONIC INFORMATION ACCESS SERVICES IN THE MULTIMEDIA ROOM

Carmen CRIŞAN

The Multimedia Room of the "Lucian Blaga" Central University Library, Cluj, was founded in April, 2000, and has been offering electronic information access services ever since. The paper presents the problems that the Multimedia Room had to confront with in the 3 years of its existence, problems of both technical and financial nature. The Multimedia Room has been offering access to scientific databases, CD or DVD supported materials free of charge, as well as taxed Internet access, printing or scanning services. The efficiency of these however depends on several factors: the budget allocated by the Library, the process of decision in favor of the adequate database acquisition, and the technical possibilities of the network supporting them. It is the analysis of these terms that the paper mainly focuses on.

IMPLEMENTING MARKETING IN THE “LUCIAN BLAGA” CENTRAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY CLUJ

Erika MOLNÁR

The article presents the guidelines of library marketing activity based on a fictive example - the creation of a database containing the doctoral dissertations sustained at the Babeş-Bolyai University Cluj. After the discussion of the main steps to be taken when promoting such a product, the author presents the previous attempts for marketing the publications produced in the "Lucian Blaga" Central University Library, as a basis for a future systematic marketing process.

MAINTENANCE AND PRESERVATION OF BOOK COLLECTIONS IN THE "LUCIAN BLAGA" CENTRAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY CLUJ-NAPOCA

Monica STOICA; Adriana SZÉKELY; Lenuţa POP

The paper presents the situation of general collections of the "Lucian Blaga" Central University Library, Cluj-Napoca. It is structured according to guidelines referring to the short history of the library, the presentation of the rooms for deposit and reading, sanitation methodology applied in the library, preservation problems in the case of the branch libraries, and, finally, it outlines the directions of a preservation plan on an institutional level. Following a sketchy presentation of the most important dates in the history of the library, the organization and structure of the library’s reading and deposit rooms are described in detail. Thus, the interested reader may follow how the reading rooms are placed on the three levels of the building, and how the closed access stock is organized in the closed deposit. Further on, the authors present the ways and means of sanitation of the building, the methods and material used for hygiene. The discussion of preservation problems is completed by three case-studies, referring to cases of serious problems, in the branch libraries of the Faculty of Mathematics, Law and Letters. Finally, the authors outline the purpose of collection preservation, and also draw attention on the two objectives of a general preservation program, regarding preventive and active collection preservation.

ROMANIAN PUBLIC LIBRARIES SITUATION: A RADIOGRAPHIC VIEW OF THE YEAR 2001

Doina POPA

The period between 1998-2002 was one of major changes for library statistics, data collection, development of performance indicators, and their better evaluation and use. This situation accounts for the assessment of Romanian public libraries from the perspective of the year 2001. The state of public libraries in Romania is presented and analyzed from various points of view, from general characterization to the analysis of statistic indicators of resources, document acquisition, facilities and services, and many more aspects of library activity.

THE COMMUNITY INFORMATION CENTER, OR: THE LIBRARY - BEYOND EDUCATION AND ENTERTAINMENT

Georgeta DODU

The Community Information Center - the first of its kind in Romania - was created in the framework of the "Octavian Goga" County Library Cluj, in 1996. G. Dodu's article follows the process of creation and functioning of this service from the reasons that asked for its coming into being to possibilities of its improvement. The "voice of the time" - the emergence of information society - places libraries in front of new challenges. In this context the main role of public libraries becomes information, beyond education or entertainment: "the public library represents the local center of community information". The article argues that this necessity accounted for the creation of a community information service also in Cluj. The service in Cluj was created within the framework of a PHARE project, parallel with a similar one in Pest Megyei Konyvtar (Pest County Library), Szentendre, Hungary. The article follows up the initial stage of the project, and goes on with the presentation of the Center as it is today: its placement, the personnel, the infra-structure, and the types of information it holds. In addition, some problems connected with the work of the Center are also identified. The presentation is followed by the evaluation: the success of the Center is shown by the performance indicators of a sociological survey in 1999. Still, the author argues, the service is not yet adequate, there are perspectives for improvement: the organization of a full reference service, in which community information would only comprise a small part, is a better solution for the future.