The idea of foundation of the University Library appeared the same year when Dzemal Bijedic University was founded. The opening ceremony of the University Library was organized on 27th November 1980, which was a significant step in development of the University, but also of the city of Mostar.
University Library was located in the Lenjinovo šetalište/Lenin’s Promenade (previous Youth Center). The available space covered ca 630 m2, with two reading rooms with over 150 seats. Until the nineties of the 20th century, the University Library grew into a modern library and information center.
During the aggression of HVO (Croatian military forces) in Mostar in 1993, the University Library was completely destroyed. The building itself, and the entire Library collection was lost in the blaze, and ruins of the building remained until present day only to remind us that Mostar has been a city which appreciated knowledge and science.
The war years interrupted work of the University Library, and it was re-established in the academic year 1996/97, in the Rectorate building (the campus in the North Camp), in one room of 60 m.
During these days, the library collection was made mostly out of donations and gifts, among which the most important ones are those from the District of Mostar, SOROS, Paderborn, WUS and others.
In October 2000, the Library moved to a new, adapted space, with better conditions for work. In the new premises, the Library organized its work in line with librarian standards and regulations.
University Library infrastructure
Today the University Library operates in a space of 250 m2 in the University campus. It has a reading room with 80 seats, a department for processing of library materials, a storage, and a department for work with the Library users. The Library owns over 30000 library materials units, an alphabetical register of authors and titles, a catalogue of publications in foreign languages and an online catalogue.
In 2008, the University Library became a member of the COBISS system and the Virtual Library of B&H, which enables automated processing of the Library collection and an online catalogue available at www.cobiss.ba.
Library materials and collections
The Library has over 30000 material units. The Library users have at their disposal 20 journals from social, technical, pedagogical, literary and other fields, among which some are in te English language.
The Special Collection consists of magister theses and doctoral dissertations from Dzemal Bijedic University, but also from other universities in B&H. In 2010, the Library presented a part of this Collection to the scientific audience through a Bibliography of doctoral and magister theses of the Dzemal Bijedic University of Mostar: 2000-2009. Promotion of this Bibliography, together with an exhibition of its works, marked the 30th anniversary of the University Library.
The Archival Collection is made of monographs and serial publications published by Dzemal Bijedic University. In this way the entire University publishing activity is collected in one place and it is presented in the online catalogue of the Library. It is planned to complete the second phase of this project in the near future, so that the online catalogue offers a photograph of the cover page and the contents of the book, together with already existing bibliographic information on the book.
The Collection of Old and Rare Books consists of the books published before the year of 1950.
Serial publications by the University have been presented analytically in the Library catalogu, which means that the bibliographical records have been made for published scientific papers for the following University journals: Istraživanja, Educa, Sportski logos, Collected proceedings of the Faculty of Economy and the Review for Law and Economy.
The University Library users and employees
Users of the University Library are students and employees of Dzemal Bijedic University of Mostar, but also other interested researchers, high-school students and citizens of Mostar and beyond. Users have at their disposal the entire Library collection and services of inter-librarian loans with other B&H libraries.
Three employees work in the University Library. Two of them have university degrees. They were trained and licensed for the work in the COBISS system, and they work on professional librarian jobs. One employee has a high school diploma and she performs manipulative jobs in the Library.
At the beginning of 2015/16 academic year, the University Library automated the process of borrowing of the books too, and in this way completed its librarian operations in the COBISS system.
Cooperation with other libraries
The University Library has established cooperation with National and University Library of B&H, Library of the Academy of Science and Arts of B&H, the Bosniak Institute in Sarajevo and national libraries in B&H.
In 2005 the University Library became a member of the NATO Library.
In 2015 the Library started cooperation with the Slavic Institute of the National Library of the Czech Republic. Published monographs from the fields of Linguistics, Literature and History, as well as serials published by the Dzemal Bijedic University are also part of the collection of this Library.