„Ја у клин, он у плочу“: сукоби запослених у Народној библиотеци у Београду између два светска рата

In this paper the author analyzes the cases of conflicts in the National Library in Belgrade in the interwar period. In the years between the two world wars, this institution struggled with numerous problems, the most important of which were modest financial means, inadequate space, and insufficient number of employees. Just like today, the work of the library depended mostly on the expertise and dedication of the employees. Since the very founding of the library, its staff has consisted of highly educated, respectable, versatile intellectuals. As such, they represented a minority in the society of that time, but despite their superb qualities manifested in the field of literature, librarianship and other sciences, they also had some characteristics of ordinary people: quarrelsomeness, vanity, stubbornness. Some of them had quarrels with each other, while some were merely sinecurists. Conflicts, which existed in the library as in any other organization, had a negative impact on interpersonal relations in the institution itself, as well as on its reputation and the reputation of its employees. From the point of view of modern management practice, the greatest responsibility lies with the manager whose task is to manage conflicts, which is hardly possible if he himself participates in them. The findings presented in the paper show that, although libraries today seem to operate in new circumstances, organizational problems as well as human characters are not much different from those of more than 80 years ago.