Ms. Liliana Kontny, the ASC’s Main Librarian, is retiring at the end of this year.
She began her career as a librarian at the University of Warsaw in 1988 (prior to that, she had spent ten years teaching Polish at a primary school). For the next decade, between 1988 and 1998, she worked at the UW Main Library’s Department of Scientific Information and Documentation (Oddział Informacji Naukowej i Dokumentacji BUW). Ms. Kontny then transferred, in February 1998, to the ASC where she became the Head Librarian.
Ms Kontny has a Masters in library science and is known for her organizational and management skills. Under her careful guidance, the ASC Library has been run impeccably; it also underwent a number of key transformations to maintain its reputation as a strong, modern American Studies library and a great research environment at the University.
Its growing American Studies collection has been carefully curated by her and her team and consistently shelved by the Dewey Decimal classification. In the 1990s the library pioneered in implementing the then-state-of-the-arts all-library computer VTLS system. In the more recent years, the ASC Library again undertook a giant effort of switching from the VTLS to the all-University VIRTUA (a process that the ASC librarians have only recently completed). In all of these changes and reforms, Ms. Kontny’s dedicated service has been instrumental. She has led the ASC library to become a highly valued element of the University of Warsaw library system.
Ms. Kontny has always been very professional, energetic, and conscientious. On December 13, 2022, the ASC Librarians, the Faculty and the Staff held a retirement get-together to honor her for professional accomplishments and her service.
We want to thank her for being a great colleague and wish her all the best for this new chapter in her life.
