| After its relocation to the present site in 1999, the Zadar Public Library has become a favourable and pleasant daily meeting place for over one thousand users – the centre of the local community in which over 400 events take place each year and which is constantly in the focus of media attention. The Zadar Public Library has been included in the good practice guidelines of the European Community, acting as a Croatian model of a contemporary public library.Zadar's Research Library is the second largest Croatian institution of this kind after the National University Library in Zagreb. It was founded in 1855 by local professor and benefactor Petar Aleksandar Paravija, and was originally in the Loggia on Narodni trg, moving into the present building, an attractive yellow building which used to be a barracks. It's the bedrock upon which not only Zadar's rich cultural and educational life rests, but also that of Croatia. Zadar was for a long time the administrative centre of Dalmatia, under many colonial powers. The documentation kept here, and in the Historical Archive (near St Dimitri's church) is the seed of knowledge of much of Croatia's legal and political past. |