IAML Poland Celebrates Maria Prokopowicz's 100th Birthday

We have received the following from Hanna Bias of IAML Poland:

The Polish National Branch of IAML is celebrating today (March 24, 2016) the 100^th anniversary of birth of Maria Prokopowicz - initiator and co-founder of the Section of Music Libraries - Polish National Branch of IAML!

Maria Prokopowicz and Karol Musioł in Copenhagen (August 22-26, 1976), where they met with the secretary of the Danish National Group of IAML. They also got acquainted with the types of work in the Department of Music of the Royal Library, Denmark and the Danish Centre for RISM. In the cruise ship, Karol Musioł and Maria Prokopowicz are on the 7th bench from the front of the ship on the right. From the collection of the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, Poland.

Maria Prokopowicz was for many years the head of the Music Collections Depart­ment at the National Library in Warsaw, and was a co-founder of the Section of Music Libraries of the Polish Librarians' Association (SBP) in 1964.

She was born on March 24, 1916 in Żywiec. Maria Prokopowicz started working at the Division of Acquisition and Processing of New Collections at the National Library in Warsaw after the Second World War. In 1951 she was appointed the head of the newly created Music Division of the National Library, which later became the Music Collections Department. Thanks to her proposal, in 1974 the Music Department was divided into two sec­tions: the music manuscript and print section and the sound documents section, which is now a separate department functioning under the name of Sound and Audiovisual Collections Department. She retired in 1978.

Maria Prokopowicz worked as a volunteer for the Polish Librarians Association, aiming to lift up the status of the music librarian profession. She was the initiator of creating the Section of Music Libraries, as well as co-organiser of ten national conferences of music librarians. She cared about good co-operation with IAML and she took part in 15 international IAML conferences and congresses. Thanks to her efforts in 1972, the Section of Music Libraries became the Polish National Branch of IAML. Until 1979 Maria Prokopowicz had been the Chairman of the Section of Music Libra­ries, and was its vice president after that.

She passed away on April 2, 2006.

More information and photos can be found on the Polish National Branch of IAML website.