100 let 100 knih (100 Years, 100 Books) – our best literature

Professor Jiří TrávníčekLiterary scholar and reviewer, editor and teacher at the university. Author of several books:

Poezie poslední možnosti (Poetry of the Last Possibility; 1996), Na tvrdém loži z psího vína (On the Hard Bed of Woodbine; 1998, with Zdeněk Kožmín), Příběh je mrtev? (Is Story Dead?; 2003), Vyprávěj mi něco… (Tell Me a Story; 2007), Čteme? (Do We Read?; 2008), Čtenáři a internauti (Reader and Internauts; 2011), Překnížkováno (Too Many Books; 2014), Knihy kupovati (To Buy Books; 2014, with Zdeněk Šimeček), Reading Bohemia (2015). Co-author of two books of interviews (with Arnošt Goldflam and Dušan Šlosar). Also, he published “reader’s CVs” of people who dedicated their professional career to books, named Knihy a jejich lidé (Books and Their People; 2013) and Česká čtenářská republika (Czech Readers Republic; 2017). His texts have been published in Bulgaria, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Austria, Slovakia, USA, UK, and elsewhere. Currently, he is a member of two international teams dealing with reading.

Olga Erhartová

Romance scholar and librarian, author of a number of books in her disciplines. Undoubtedly, she inherited her numerous talents – a close relationship with literature and history as well as publishing books – from her father, professor Adolf Erhart, a globally renowned linguist and expert on Indo-European languages. Visitors to the Jiří Mahen Library can meet her in the information services department, where her outstanding erudition, knowledge, as well as communication skills are highly appreciated. Besides searching for often complex information for both readers and institutions, she’s been in charge of bibliographic and informational texts and books published by the Library. She also put together Selection of Major Year’s Anniversaries (Výběr z významných výročí roku), including mainly literary figures. She substantially contributed to the script for a large exhibition on the Jiří Mahen Library on the anniversary of its establishment in 2000. Also, she’s the author of a number of entries for the Encyclopaedia of the History of Brno and cooperates with Where To in Brno (Kam v Brně) magazine.

David Osvald

Lecturer in Czech studies. Librarian. Bookworm, at least in the well-established sense of the word; beyond this the term reminds of some annoying creature with wings rather than a passionate reader. He preferes to roam in fictitious worlds, in both Czech and translations, that try to intelligently or innovatively grasp the human existence, and regularly reads fiction, such as crime, historical or humorous novels. He studied Czech language and literature, has a soft spot for the opulent magic of Czech language, and hates the Czech equivalent of “sort of”. He works for the department of culture and eduction at the Jiří Mahen Library which – among other things – enables him to support and spread the love he’s felt since he was a little child – his love for books and reading.

Ballot boxes: Special boxes will be placed at partner institutions for people to vote for their favourite quotations and positions they like to read in. The results will be published as part of an exhibition at the Exhibition Grounds.

Partners: Faculty of Architecture of Brno University of Technology – designer of the entire exhibition in the Morava Pavilion!, Division of Information and Library Studies at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University, Brno City Museum, Museum of the Brno Region, Moravian Library