History

Tourism as a phenomenon, emerging at the end of 19th century, initiated research, analytical and publicity activities in the field. An increasing number of works and publications dealing with this new phenomenon have appeared.
The scientific approach to tourism was followed by setting up the Tourism Department at the University of Rome in 1925 and the Institute for Scientific Studies of Tourism in Berlin in 1929. An initiative for accepting the scientific approach as a method of tourism development was undertaken in Dubrovnik, as early as 1929. The idea was finally realised in 1938 by establishing the Tourism Archives. Revived after the Second World War this institution was developing until it was eventually known as the Tourism Documentation Centre and an affiliate of the Faculty of Tourism and Foreign Trade. Today, the Tourism Documentation Centre makes part of University of Dubrovnik, Department of economics and business economy.

Library

The Tourism Documentation Centre was established with the aim to collect, organize, process, preserve and make available materials concerning tourism and similar activities.
The Centre’s library holdings were based on the principles of tourism science in general with the scope to, by its numerous aspects and related disciplines/branches, express all the complexity of the tourism phenomenon.
The main collections thus were set up to point out the development of scientific theory of tourism, organizations and institutions, research results, policy, tourism economics, tourism in relation to social sciences, different kinds of tourism, its forecasting and planning. Besides tourism and catering as parts of economy the most numerous literature belongs to the sphere of  sociology, geography, traffic, physical planning, cultural and natural resources and their protection.

Services

The Tourism Documentation Centre is a special library open to the public. Library material is to be consulted in the reading room only. Literature in open access is in the reading room  (current periodical and  statistical issues and the collection of reference literature).

Holdings
The Centre’s library comprises the following collections:

Collection of over 19200 volumes (books, reference  literature, official publications of national and international tourism organizations),
Collection of periodicals (journals, almanacs, annual reports, etc.),
Donated collection “Dr. Dragutin Alfier”,  
Collection of rare literature (examples of special importance for tourism,  literature published up to the World War II – 1942.),
Collection of tourist information material/advertising material (folders, booklets, leaflets, travel plans and maps, itineraries, newspaper clips, etc.),
Archives collection  concerning the development of tourism in Dubrovnik and Croatia,
Collection of travel guides.