摘要：The title of the symposium “Museums and literature” focuses the theme of the heritage of authors to museums, while at the same time leaving unresolved the question of the relationship between museums and the heritage (not only manuscripts) of authors with the dilemma “Museums and literature” and/or Museums of literature”. This view is also a challenge to other disciplines that deal with the heritage in the broadest sense (archives specialists, librarians and historians of literature). From a broader point of view, this symposium is a challenge and opens up the question of whether an author’s legacy should be viewed as an object of museum activity or whether to take a broader view, with respect to archives, libraries and the history of literature and institutions that deal with these disciplines. It is interesting to note that there are two international committees that deal with the legacy of authors: the International Committee for Literary Museums and the Section on Literature and Art Archives - SLA. Both of the se bodies have similar tasks. The International Committee for Literary Museums task is “research, publication, exhibition and education aimed at historical and biographical literary museums and museums of composers”, while the SLA’s task is “to encourage the study and research concerning the management of literary archives and to promote the exchange of views and experiences in this field”. Librarians join together with these two disciplines because in recent time whole departments of national and university libraries are called literary archives. Along with those three professions (museum, archives and libraries) “the manuscript heritage of literary authors” is the subject of research on the part of historians of literature, so that in places (like in Croatia) there are institutes that collect manuscripts in order to study the manuscript heritage and prepare critical publications. Finally, there are tendencies to create, along with the collection, preservation and treatment of the manuscript heritage of cultural authors, interdisciplinary scholarly institutes for the presentation and study of the ideas and work of authors, artists and philosophers. The approach to the “literary heritage” (not only in manuscript form) and the delineation of the sphere of activity of each of the disciplines is a challenge for theoretical thinking and has practical implications concerning the collection, preservation, presentation and study of works and writings of literary authors in the sense of their being works belonging to the cultural heritage. The paper gives an insight into contemporary trends in the world (in museums, libraries and archives) with respect to the treatment and presentation of the literary heritage (as well as the heritage of other authors in the field of culture and thinking: composers, artists, architects, philosophers). There is a historical overview concerning the collection, treatment and presentation of the literary heritage in Croatia, and in this context there is mention of the problems linked with the policy of acquisitions and the norms of documenting and describing material in literary archives. Stress is placed on the role of museums in the presentation of writers (memorial museums) and the institutional framework of literary archives as individual institutions or as departments within national and university libraries and state archives.
