The roots of the Public Library of Jagodina can be found in the Jagodina reading-room, formed in the mid 19th century. We can find first records of it in a report of the Society of Serbian Slavic Thought for the year 1851, in which the Jagodina reading-room is mentioned as a subscriber to the Society’s magazine.
The press of the time had reports of fund raising balls being organized to help the reading-room, which only had the membership fees as a source of income.
In the beginning of the year 1858 an anonymous author states in the Serbian press that... the readers do want the reading-room to continue its work, but the question is if the traders want the same..., while also mentioning problems in gathering membership fees, and saying the reading-room will soon be closed.
Ten years later, in 1868, the municipality of Jagodina decrees that the reading-room is now a municipal one. Several years later Emilo Cvetic points out in his Monograph of Jagodina that the town can support its own Reading-room with 80 members, a Society of Poets and an Amateur Theater. The municipality did support the reading-room, but at the same time wanted to have more influence in its work. At the time, the reading-room was a place where avant-garde authors with great oratory skills (Djura Jaksic, Svetozar Markovic, Kosta Mihajlovic) gathered to share their advanced ideas. The municipality’s leaders often didn’t approve of the atmosphere there, and in 1874 the Reading-room in Jagodina was shut down.
The fate of the books in the last two decades of the 19th century is not well known. Not until 1892 did the municipality form a supporting comity to initiate the opening of a third Reading-room.
In the early 20th century the Public Library, of which the Reading-room is a part, emerged as a state institution for the first time. Records show that it had 125 members and that the general public could read many daily and weekly magazines there. During the Great War, both the Library and the Reading-room were closed. According to some records, the complete book fund of the Library had been destroyed in the battles.
In 1923 the Society of Young Intellectuals (UMUR) in Jagodina opened the Public Reading-room and Library with over 600 books. In a course of a year the book fund was doubled and the books became available to a wider population. Every Sunday and Thursday the books could be borrowed and taken home.
By the beginning of the Second World War, the Library had more than 4,500 books on its shelves. During the war it was closed, but it had managed to save around 3,000 books, which after the war became a part of the newly founded Youth Library.
The Library reached its full growth in the seventies and the eighties. It is a period during which large resources were being invested to increase the book fund and attract more members. The Library managed to modernize its internal organization and form a library network in its district. At the same time international rules, codes and standards began to be upheld, which raised the quality of service to a much higher level.
