In February 2007, The Institute of the Contemporary History of the ASCR co-organized a seminar which was the finale of a Bohemian-German project which began in 1999. A comparison of European law and rules valid during the post-war period and linked to German minorities was the aim. Law and regulations in Poland, Hungary, France, Denmark, Belgium, Yugoslavia and Italy were also analyzed. and Oldřich Tůma.
In this issue, we feature two articles on the 120th anniversary of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Arts. The first, written by Luboš Velek, director of the Masaryk Institute and Archives, describes several predecessors of the ASCR. In his article, Antonín Kostlán of the Institute of the Contemporary History focuses on the origin and development of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (1952-1992), which comprised research institutes, a learned society and a body of academicians and corresponding members. and Luboš Velek.
We feature an article on the history and the present of the Oriental Institute’s library. With over 200,000 volumes (including periodicals andmanuscripts), it ranks among the largest libraries within theCzech Academy of Sciences. It is divided into the General Library, Chinese Lu Xun Library, Korean Library, Tibetan Library, and John King Fairbank Library. Its collections include mainly publications on the history, literatures, languages, religions, and cultures of the countries of Asia and Africa. The Chinese Lu Xun library holds a special collection of Chinese books (about 67,000 volumes). The Korean Library presently holds more than 3,500 volumes. Its older part is mostly of North Korean origin. Thanks to generous gifts from the Korea Foundation, its collections were considerably enriched with South Korean publications in 1996 and 1997. and Jan Luffer a Veronika Danešová.