Library

The library is intent on the history of the Iberian peninsula and on the history of Latin America, partly also on the history and the culture of the United States and the contacts between the United States and Latin America. Since 1999, the library has a name The Library of Simon Bolívar.

The principle founds of the library were the books of the inheritance of one very important Czech etnograph and linguist Čestmír Loukotka (1895 - 1966). He dedicated, principally, to the studies of the Southamerican Indians and to the classification ot their languages. The other man, whose book inheritance was the base of the library, was Jaroslav Kuchválek. These inheritances are nowadays just a small part of the library.

The acquisition of the monographies is made partly as the change for the annuals Ibero-Americana Pragensia or for the monographies published by the Center. The other monographies are the gifts of the different institutes (The Spanish embassy in Prague and the embassies of the Latinamerican countries in Prague). This way was how the library was given in 1992 and also later the books published for an occasion of the 500th anniversary of the discovering of America. In 1998, the library got a big gift from the foundation MAPFRE America Colection MAPFRE 1492, which is throughly complemented with another books about the history of the hispanic world. The foundation TAVERA gave the collection of 36 CD - ROMs Biblioteca Virtual in 2000: Clasicos TAVERA content the classical works about the history and the culture of Spain and Latin America. There is a contract between the Center and the Institute of Romance Studies about the interchange. For this reason, all the beletric books are sent to the Institute and interchanged for the books focused on the history and the culture.

The acquisition of the serials is made exclusively as the interchange for the mentioned annual.

The founds of the library consist of:
The monographies
The maps and the atlases
The serials

The offprints

The library founds consist of more than 6000 monographies, some tens of the maps, 250 titles of the magazines (from them 30 most important alive serials fom the Hispanic and Anglo-Saxon regions) and 1300 offprints.