U.S. Central European Agricultural Library Roundtables
In 1990, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a major U.S. foreign policy initiative was to support the emerging democracies in Central and Eastern Europe. Because most of these countries had agriculturally related economies, US Department of Agriculture (USDA) became closely involved in the rebuilding effort. As part of the effort, we at the National Agricultural Library (NAL) initiated a program to work with these central European agricultural libraries to help provide an information infrastructure for the agricultural community. With a grant from USDA’s Office of International Cooperation and Development, NAL was able to initiate a program to work with agricultural libraries in central Europe.
Our funds enabled NAL to fund per diem for foreign participants. Lack of sufficient funds required the participants to pay for their own transportation. The effort began in the fall of 1991, when NAL hosted a 2-week workshop with representatives from six countries – Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia. Later, participating institutions had expanded to include also Albania, Belarus, Croatia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, and Russia.
The resounding success of this first workshop was continued by future meetings, namely:
- October 4-9, 1992, Budapest, Hungary (hosted by Hungarian National Agricultural Library).
- September 21-24, 1993, Warsaw, Poland (hosted by the Central Agricultural Library).
- September 26-30, 1994, Slovak Republic (hosted by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information on Agriculture– Nitra).
- Fall of 1995, Prague, Czech Republic
It was rewarding to see progress, even small, from year to year – with limited funds. The progress mostly had to do with technological increases. However, in this memoir, I would like to write about Poland because it is the most interesting.
When I met him, Jerzy Razinski he had risen to become The Librarian at the Polish National Agricultural Library which was at time in Warsaw. His story is both inspiring and tragic. He was born to serfs (abolished in Poland in 1864). His parents could not raise him so gave him to their master. He never knew who his parents were; however, the master raised him as his son.
Backup a bit.
Arriving in Warsaw early, my staff Pam Andre and Keith Russell went to old spare which had been bombed out in World War II but had been rebuilt as it had been before the war. In an amber shop, I bought my wife Pat, a piece of amber on a chain for about 2,900,000 zlotys, I left the price tag on so that she would know how important she was to me – in those days it amounted to about $20 US dollars.
Afterwards, we 3 had dinner. The Polish menu had an English translation. One item was noted “wild and house animals.” We chose something else!
Our meeting was held at the Polish National Agricultural Library. It was in an old, beautiful big house with bookshelves in strange places including the balcony which had been used for the orchestras. Next, entering this memoir is Barbara Piasecka Johnson who had graduated in Warsaw with an M. S. in Art History. She left Poland for the U. S. in 1968 with $100 in her possession. She was hired as a cook in John Seward Johnson (of Johnson Wax fame) home. She became his mistress and eventually his wife. When he died, she was the primary beneficiary of his will or $400 million (in 2025 dollars amounting to $1.26 billion).
Barbara wanted for her collection of art, the “old, beautiful and big house” where the agricultural library was and offered to build a new agricultural library for Poland. Land was bought and surveyed. She changed her mind and decided not to build the new NAL after all and at the time of our meeting, everything was up-in-the-air.