SEEMP Preserves Zagreb Edition of Croatian Newspaper

April 25, 1983 issue of Borba

Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Contact: 
Judy Alspach - jalspach@crl.edu
Program: 

SEEMP microfilmed the years 1971–88 of the Zagreb edition of Borba from the collection held at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The resulting 63 reels of microfilm are now available for lending from CRL.

This is a significant run of the rare Zagreb edition of the official daily Party newspaper of former Yugoslavia. Although the main Belgrade edition was published in Serbo-Croatian (Cyrillic or with alternating Cyrillic and Roman pages), the Zagreb edition is entirely in Croatian. 

The University of Illinois was the only subscriber within the PL-480 program to the Zagreb version of Borba, although other participants received the Belgrade edition. The PL-480 program authorized the Library of Congress to use US-owned foreign currencies, acquired from the sale of US agricultural products to developing countries, to purchase books, periodicals, and other materials for other libraries and research centers in the United States. After the Yugoslav PL-480 program ended in 1972, the University of Illinois continued its subscription through 1988, to maintain stewardship of this rarely held title.

Analyzing the differences between the Zagreb and Belgrade editions of Borba has been fruitful for linguists and students of Yugoslav language policy, media scholars, and students of politics and social policy, especially in Croatia. Although limited access to the scarce Zagreb edition (compared with the general availability in North America of the Belgrade edition) has hampered the potential for such studies, this acquisition should help remedy this imbalance.

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