Public Librarianship in Communist Romania: Creating a Profession to Serve the Socialist Propaganda Cause

The Romanian communist state constructed a public library system as one of its national propaganda instruments. Within the context that encouraged the development of a public library national system, this paper presents the history of library and information sciences education programs and directions established during the communist era. Using oral-history interviews with librarians who worked in the public library system in the 1970s and 1980s, the paper discusses the effects these programs had on the professional knowledge and practices within public librarianship. During the last decades of the regime, public librarians employed alternative practices and resources in their education as the state's official training became limited and eventually obsolete. However, these alternatives created only a narrow professional-development opportunity for librarians. In spite of librarians' personal efforts, there was no significant change in the way that public libraries were defined and used by the communist society.