Dynamika systematycznego wzrostu, nowoczesna przestrzeń intelektu, labirynt znaków, magia zaangażowanych w swoją pracę ludzi z pasją – to tylko kilka haseł, które przychodzą na myśl, kiedy chcemy przywołać nazwę Biblioteki Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego i 70 lat jej historii. Łódź przed dwoma wiekami powstawała z tradycji niejednorodnych, i podobnie powstawał – jako mozaika różnych treści intelektualnych – Uniwersytet Łódzki.The authoress presents the Library collections of books named Cymelia and Rezerwa. The Cymelia holdings are valuable for their artistic aspects. Some books were illustrated by famous artists and/or published by reputable artistic publishing houses in the XIX and the XX century. Among them, there are also unique prints considering their historical importance. The Cymelia holdings also include the collection of Lodziana (books about Łódź). The Rezerwa collection (Reserve) contains the so-called prohibita (restricted documents) separated from the main library holdings at the end of the 40s. of the XX century
by order of the Ministry of Higher Education and Science.
The collection includes documents from 1918 to 1990 published in the country and in exile: documents published before the Second World War; emigration documents published after 1939; materials from 1945 to 1990, inconvenient for the Polish government and published in samizdat. The authoress describes the genesis of the collection and some restrictions preventing the readers of the Library of Łódź University from using the items from these collections
