Support Charles University after the floods

Dear Colleagues,

I am including below a call for assistance for the library of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University, which was severely damaged by the recent floods. I encourage you to consider: (1) any personal donations that you, or your colleagues, can make, and (2) asking your home institution to provide support.

I am visiting Charles University this semester, and the damage to the library, and the rest of the Karlin district, is immense. While photographs don't really do justice to the situation, some pictures and additional information are available.

Sincerely,
David Morton
Chair, COSP

Czech Republic, and Prague in particular, was heavily hit by recent floods. The largest Czech mathematical library was located in the building of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University at Karlin, the most damaged part of Prague. It contained books and journals from all fields of pure and applied mathematics, statistics, numerical analysis and computer science. About two thirds of books and journals in the library were heavily damaged and, despite all efforts, are almost surely lost. Among them were five thousands of books and monographs from recent decades, almost 400 titles of journals; there were also thousands of historical books from the last three centuries, which cannot be bought any more (including, e.g., the first edition of collected works of Cauchy, Weierstrass and Riemann). Taking into account that the whole country was extensively damaged by the flood, we must expect that to collect money needed for the reconstruction of the library will be very difficult. While we can recover texts needed for undergraduate study, we are not able to buy again books needed for graduate and postgraduate students as well as books and journals needed for research.

In our difficult situation, we would like to ask you for help. If you are in a position to provide us assistance, a donation of extra copies of books and journals would be an immense assistance for us. In order to make a donation of books or journals, please contact Marketa Jirickova via: MARKETA.JIRICKOVA@MFF.CUNI.CZ

It is also possible to make a financial contribution to the renewal of the library, which is a particularly efficient way to help to recover exactly what we need. Money can be sent either by a check payable to

Charles University, Karlin Library in Praha
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
Hospodarske odd.
Ke Karlovu 3
121 16 Praha 2
Czech Republic
or by a money transfer to the following account:
CSOB, Prague 1, Na Porici 24
account No. 01256280/0300
Our reference: 999
SWIFT: CEKO CZ PP PRA

To avoid the high charges, a local account is available for donations from the Netherlands.

In order to minimize shipping costs regional centers have been developed to collect books and journals.

  • There are six centers in the US, and there is free shipping (via CSA, Czech Airlines) from these centers to Prague.
  • There is a regional center in Germany. Books and journals may be shipped to:
    Dr. Pavel Cizek
    Institut fur Statistik und Okonometrie
    Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultat
    Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin
    Spandauer Str. 1
    10178 Berlin
    and Dr. Cizek will organize shipping from Berlin to Prague.
  • Other regional centers may develop as needed.
Gifts of books or money contributions are free of tax in our country in case we have a letter declaring that the gift was sent to help the library of the faculty.

Any help from your side would be very welcome and highly appreciated.