The Library of the Department of Oriental Languages, Literatures and Cultures (Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Oriental Philology groups) currently has 19,760 books and 555 titles of journals in many world languages, mostly Arabic, Turkish, Persian, English, Russian, French, German and Serbian.
The Fund is classified according to areas of language and literature studies into the Arabic (A), Turkish (T), Persian (P) and so-called miscellaneous (R) categories, and it is distributed by numerus currеns under separate call numbers.
All the books that are recorded in the inventory book have been catalogued, and their data can be found in several types of catalogs, both classic and electronic.
As a special fund, the library owns the legacy of Professor Fehim Bajraktarević, PhD., which numbers 3,391 books, the library of Professor Marija Đukanović, PhD., with a total of 225 titles (247 books), as well as books purchased from professor Ljubinka Rajković, PhD., which are included in the main fund.
From its founding in 1926 to 1991, the library has kept 4 types of classic card catalogs: the catalog of authors – titles, subject, UDC – professional catalog, and a topographic one for internal purposes.
The analytical processing of journals relevant to the Department is also carried out. For a period of time from 1991 the books were inventoried and catalogued in the electronic library program “Pergam”.
For those records, a conversion to the new “Cobiss” system has been made and this system has been completely in use since 2003.
Since then, all new books have been recorded and catalogued in the library program “Cobiss”, and thus the Library of the Department of Oriental Studies, as one of the libraries of the Faculty of Philology, entered the system of the virtual library of Serbia (www.vbs.rs/cobiss).
By accessing this program, for the first time, library users can search the online catalog through www.vbs.rs/cobiss. The need for students to use the library is increasing year by year, in particular with transition to the Bologna way of studying.
Library users are students and employees of the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade, but due to the specific nature of the hard-to-reach fund in the field of oriental studies, its users also include scholars of the scientific institutes and the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, as well as foreign universities. Other users can use the Library fund exclusively in the reading room with some personal document.
Dictionaries, encyclopedias, grammar and rare books are exclusively for work in the reading room.
Currently there are 2 librarians working at the library:
Snežana Genčić – Senior Librarian, Arabist, and Jelena Anić – Turkologist. Both graduated in the relevant groups of the Department of Oriental Studies and passed professional librarianship exams at the National Library of Serbia.
The library is located in the annex between the first and second floors of the building in Knez Mihailova 40.
Working hours with users are in 2 shifts: 10AM-1PM and 2.30PM-5.30PM.
The reading room is open from 08AM to 7PM.
The reading room has 30 seats and 4 places for using 2 computers.
E-mail address: maktaba@fil.bg.ac.rs
Phone: 011 2021681