Official website: https://www.mkk.si/eng/

Kranj City Library is one of ten Slovenian central regional libraries. It is responsible for the development of library services in Gorenjska region with 82.000 inhabitants. 25% of them are the Library members but the borrowed books reach more than twice as many readers. Kranj City Library, built as an immense cultural center in 2011, is not just a book rental, but much more. It is a splendid place of social interaction, learning activities and many interesting events. At least 1.500 people visit the library daily. The library’s mission is to be a driving force of literacy, education, culture and social progress.

Cultural heritage in Slovenia

Slovenians take culture as nation’s basic element, as a pride and heart of the national identity. Culture has a special place in Slovenian history, as it helped Slovenia to shape their national identity and to form an independent state. As declared by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia “cultural heritage is a testimony to our existence and an opportunity for the further development of our national community. We conserve cultural heritage in an integrated manner and promote it as a resource for economic, social and local development”. Policy and the Registry of Slovenian Cultural Heritage is managed on the national level by the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia. This is the institute that performs professional and administrative tasks in the field of conservation of immovable and associated movable and living cultural heritage. Slovenians are also involved in international relations on cultural heritage. In this sense in 1991 Slovenia was among the founding countries – initiators of the European Heritage Days event.

The Slovenian cultural heritage range is colorful and diversified. Even though Slovenia doesn’t have so many monumental buildings, they are rich in interesting ethnographic and ethnological heritage. Rural architecture, original small settlements and houses, kozolci (hayracks), religious heritage and picturesque town centers are the most visible features of preserved past. Movable cultural heritage is promoted by about sixty museums and by numerous museum collections. The biggest museums are the national general museums in Ljubljana: the National Museum of Slovenia and the Museum of Contemporary History of Slovenia, specialized museums (ethnographic, technical, natural science museum) and regional museums all over Slovenia. In the region of Gorenjska, the central institution of this kind is Gorenjski muzej.

National websites

Ministry of culture: https://www.gov.si/drzavni-organi/ministrstva/ministrstvo-za-kulturo/

Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia: https://www.zvkds.si/sl/o-nas

Regional portal Kamra: https://www.kamra.si/en/

Kamra collects digitized local cultural content from libraries and other local cultural institutions. Digital content is thus available through one single place and is created by the most competent organizations in their respective fields. Kamra provides them with free infrastructure and also trains new partners, so they can present digitized content of mostly local significance and publish it on the internet. The content stored on Kamra is presented in the form of stories with supporting narrations, corresponding digitized objects and meta data. Kamra allows users to discover stories that are significant, interesting and in local community’s interest. These may include introductions of local authors and other noteworthy people; documents and photographs of significant local association; postcards from different time periods; local works of art, biographies of the authors and exhibitions; famous buildings, the stories of people who lived there. Users can now access the content that was previously hidden in libraries’ storage rooms, archives and museums, associations’ archives or even in the drawers of schools’ staff rooms. Web portal Kamra is managed by the Public Library Celje, which works in close contact with regional libraries where the regional editorial boards are based, and also The Slovenian Public Libraries Association. The content on Kamra is also available through the European digital library Europeana: http://europeana.eu.