Any patron that ventures to stack 2 level might notice the sign for the Polish Heritage Collection. It consists of five rows of shelves full of books in English and Polish and covers all topics related to the history and culture of Poland. There is also a substantial number of books about the history of Polonia, as the Polish American community is customarily called. One can ask why such concentration of books in this particular area? Why in our library? And finally, why a separate collection? The answer to the first question is obvious to anyone who ever browsed the New Britain phone directory, or the directory of any other Connecticut town. Even the untrained eye will spot an unusual number of names ending with -ski, -cki or -icz. Our city itself is often jokingly referred to as "New Britski". People of Polish descent constitute about 30 percent of its population, and for the whole state the number is close to 10 percent. Poles started settling in Connecticut in the 1870s and by the 1890s had established several vibrant communities. The first Polish parish, St.Stanislaus, was built in Meriden in 1891. As did other ethnic groups, Polish Americans created many organizations, societies and clubs that served as a self- help structures as well as a way to cultivate ethnic heritage. That leads us to the answer to our second question. In 1974 the Polish American community used the occasion of the 500 anniversary of Copernicus' birth to celebrate its ethnic pride and to show its community's accomplishments. A group of activists from the Connecticut Division of the Polish American Congress - an umbrella organization for many Polish American groups - decided to donate a small collection of books about Poland to CCSU Library to mark the Polish American presence in the state. This was soon followed by an ambitious plan to create a Polish Studies Program at what was then Central Connecticut State Collage. Prof. Stanislaus A. Blejwas was hired as the program coordinator. Since 1975 courses in Polish history and culture, as well as Polish American studies have been continuously offered at our university. They have been supplemented by hundreds of lectures, concerts, and cultural events organized for CCSU students and the general public. Through all those years the Polish American community generously supported the Polish Heritage collection by numerous gifts and donations. Elihu Burritt did its share in the collection's development, buying new academic titles available on the American market. Currently the Polish Heritage Collection holds close to 13 thousand monographs. The history of Poland is still its strongest suit, but Polish literature, including English translations of it, it is also well represented. The changes that have taken place in Poland have had an enormous impact on publishing in that country. With the creation of political opposition in 1970s, followed by the Solidarity movement in 1980s, the gag of official censorship has been broken and many subjects considered "tabll" or too sensitive were included in open national debate. Our library used the opportunity to fill gaps in the collection. One example of a "newly" discovered area of research is ethnic relations in Poland, Polish-Jewish relations in particular.

The collection is still a separate entity in the Library, mostly by tradition, but it is a regular circulating collection, uses the same classification system (call numbers) as the rest of the library and is fully searchable in CONSULS. So, at least a t the conceptual level, it is fully integrated with our general collection. What makes it distinct is not only it's large number of books in Polish, but also a significant number of titles that would have been considered more appropriate in large research library - older titles, ephemera, pamphlets, monographs on very specialized narrow topics, collections of source materials, special editions, etc. Such in-depth collecting is in part a function of a large ratio of gifts - the library gratefully accepts practically all donations that are relevant, and it is also a conscious choice. In some areas we are one of the few libraries in the country interested in acquiring materials. For instance, our Library actively collects all Polish American imprints - books, serials published by presses and publishing houses owned by Polish Americans. Our collection has an additional role as reference source for another "Polish" institution located in our library: Connecticut Polish American Archive and Manuscript Collection. More about this archival collection in the next issue of this newsletter.