Archives of the Unit for Research and Documentation of Literary Culture at the Institute of Polish Philology of the University of Rzeszów

Abstract

This paper is aimed at collecting the most important information about specific archives kept at the Unit for Research and Documentation of Literary Culture at the Institute of Polish Philology of the University of Rzeszów and at their characterisation. The tasks of the Unit include collecting and obtaining materials, archives and writers’ book collections. Activities of the Unit refer also to the literary culture of the Rzeszów region. All collections are now kept at the Unit for Special Collections of the Library of the University of Rzeszów. The archives of the said Unit contain works of emigration writers and new items are added successively to the collection, which contributes to the continuation of research concerning literature written in exile. It is a priority for the Unit to carry out the research, gather information and popularize publishing activities. Archives of the Unit for Research and Documentation of Literary Culture give us invaluable biographic, literary, historical and cultural material. The growing archives may serve as evidence that there is a need to investigate the emigration. The obtained and catalogued archive collections include the ones of: Professor Florian Śmieja, Jan Darowski, Józef Wittlin and Professor Kazimierz Braun. The archives of Józef Wittlin and Kazimierz Braun are available on CDs. Special Collections include also fragmentary archives with fragments of Wit Tarnawski’s collection, Professor Andrzej Busza’s collection, Bogdan Czaykowski’s collection and Józef Bujnowski’s archive.