On Monday, 13 October 2025, we at CTK received the news that our former headmistress and colleague Nada Čučnik Majcen had passed away. We received the news with deep sadness and respect.
My colleague Nada was not only a CTK employee, but also a headmistress. At that time, being a CTK employee meant a bit more. Working at CTK was a way of life. This is still true today and it is also a value that we have inherited from our predecessors. During her tenure as Director, as well as afterwards, Nadat confirmed this on several occasions, when she respectfully attributed the success and outstanding results of the library to the professional and dedicated work of her colleagues and the good relations within the team. And often, modest as she was, she herself remained in the background.
That is why Nada remained part of CTK even after her retirement. With her advice, her wealth of professional experience and her collegial but always critical outlook, she has had a significant impact on the further development of the library, which has become an indispensable information centre at the heart of the national scientific research and education infrastructure over the past decades.
As mentioned above, Nada was modest and never highlighted her achievements. But they were many and it would be difficult to list them all. But let us highlight three of the most important, especially as they have shaped the CTK's work in our times.
Her outstanding contribution not only to the development of CTK but to the library system in Slovenia as a whole was in the field of automation of library services. Under her leadership, CTK continued in the 1980s to introduce new databases and to automate and digitise its services. The library's experts not only used international information systems to obtain information, but also, by participating in the construction of databases, sent information to the world about the achievements of the then common state in various scientific and professional fields, especially in the field of building. The management of the CTK recognised that in order to successfully digitise its services, adequate staff was needed. Therefore, in addition to engineers and researchers, the library began to actively recruit IT specialists and substantial funding was provided for staff training.
Particularly important was Nadia's pioneering work and visionary view on the automation of library information systems. With her colleagues, in particular the sadly recently deceased Mgr. Kokolet, Nada outlined the framework for a modern national bibliographic system in the digital environment as we know it today.
During Nada's directorship, the international orientation and the involvement of the CTK in contemporary professional trends in the field of academic librarianship were also important. In this way, CTK operated according to internationally recognised standards and was innovative and efficient in this respect as well. CTK's international activities, such as exchanging documents with foreign libraries and centres from all over the world in the framework of interlibrary loans, providing access to international standards and databases, and professional links with experts from abroad, made it possible for the International Association of University Libraries in the Field of Technology to entrust CTK with the organisation of the annual IATUL Members' Conference in 1989. This was a unique recognition of the quality of CTK's professional work under the leadership of our dear colleague.
But I also think it is important to emphasise the concept of the relationship between the library, the library materials and its users, which the experts at CTK have developed under Nadine's leadership. CTK has put its users at the centre of its activities and has provided them with quality services. Her understanding of the academic library as a community of information professionals and users, working hand in hand to design and upgrade modern services, was crucial in charting the subsequent path of CTK's development into the modern learning and information centre we know today.
To properly understand the value of these achievements, it is important to point out that CTK achieved all this in a period of reduced communication and financial resources. And yet Nada, strict first and foremost with herself and with others, but at the same time respectful and kind, with perseverance, with professional arguments and with the utmost integrity, has achieved these results with perseverance, with professional arguments and with the utmost integrity.
The last time we met was about a year and a half ago, before the Consortium. Although all tiny and visibly tired, she took my hand firmly and said to me, in her characteristic "you have to persevere, you understand" way, when I was proverbially yammering. This came from her big heart. A heart that she shared with her loved ones with an incredible will to live. That heart is now gone, but the beautiful, beautiful memories of our days at CTK remain.
We have no choice but to stick to the principles you have instilled in us, dear Headmistress. Perseverance, professionalism and honesty.
On behalf of the CTK staff, I would like to express our sincere condolences to the relatives and all those who are mourning these sad moments.
Written by: mag. Miro Pušnik, Director of the Central Technical Library, University of Ljubljana
