NSK celebrates the legacy of distinguished Croatian heritage expert Šime Jurić
On 4 September 2025, the National and University Library in Zagreb (NSK) hosted a symposium commemorating the legacy of a prominent Croatian library professional and heritage expert Šime Jurić (1915-2004).
Organised as a result of the Library’s cooperation with the Sinj Community Association in Zagreb, the symposium was held as part of Heritage at Hand at CroAtrium, NSK’s 2025 programme aimed at the popularisation of Croatian cultural heritage which it preserves as part of CROATICA, Croatia’s national library collection.
Outstanding scholar and indispensable part of NSK’s history
Welcoming the symposium participants, the NSK Director General Dr Ivanka Stričević emphasised Jurić’s major contribution to the Library’s development as the Head of its Manuscripts and Rare Books Collection, in which position he dedicatedly worked for over three decades, from 1946 to 1979. The symposium participants were also greeted by the President of the Sinj Community Association in Zagreb Dr Jakov Žižić, who later also presented Jurić as a native of Sinj, a centuries-old city in the heart of the Dalmatian hinterland.
The symposium’s first part featured presentations by Jurić’s contemporaries, associates and family members. Apart from Dunja Jurić-Knežević, the speakers, who reminisced about Jurić and revealed many interesting details about him as both a scholar and a person, were Dražen Budiša, who managed the most valuable part of NSK’s holdings at the time when Jurić still headed the Library’s oldest special collection, Croatian journalist, writer and translator Marko Grčić, Tomislav Barhanović and Father Vatroslav Frkin.
Šime Jurić – avid researcher of early Croatian books and his native region
In the second part of the symposium’s programme, today’s Head of the Collection Dr Irena Galić Bešker gave a more comprehensive overview of Jurić’s contributions to present-day Collection’s absolute relevance in understanding Croatian and European literary and historical heritage, especially incunabula, also including in her analysis his academic achievement in the field of classical philology.
After Professor at the Zagreb University’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Neven Jovanović and Assistant Professor at the University’s Faculty of Croatian Studies presented their insights into Jurić’s scholarly work, Jurić’s manuscripts in the Collection were presented by the Collection’s members Karolina Tumbas and Ivan Kapec.
Jurić successfully combined his passion for research with his love of his native region, making many important discoveries about its history, customs and rich cultural heritage. The focus of his interest here was the Alka Tournament (Sinjska alka), more than a 300-year-old tradition which still attracts thousands of visitors every year and findings on which by Jurić have been documented in his works preserved in the Library’s collections (Dokumenti i književna građa o Sinjskoj alki (1988), Bibliografske zabilješke o Sinju i Cetinskoj krajini (1999), etc.).
Apart from the credit which Jurić is rightfully given as a long-time head of the oldest and most valuable among NSK’s special collections, considered as his greatest accomplishments as a library professional are his participation in the compilation of the Croatian retrospective bibliography and the bibliography of the Croatian Latinists, the restitution of misappropriated items to Croatian libraries after the Second World War and his great influence on the development of Croatia’s leading library journal – the international, official journal of the Croatian Library Association (Vjesnik bibliotekara Hrvatske).
