At the Library of the Romanian Academy there was the special book stock, where only researchers could subscribe. They had all the Iron Guard journals, everything that was written abroad about socialism. Gabriel Strempel, the library director, who still holds the position, told me that he included in the special stock the translations in the ?Enigma? collection, which he wanted to keep away from the young people who should not get to read such things, for their own good. I could read anything from the special stock, but I also knew that the request notes were registered and everyone had a dossier that mentioned everything he or she ever wanted to read. So I tried to avoid that and only asked for books I needed for my research, and which could be thus justified. (A. V., 7)

At the Institute for Art History we did not apply the special stock rules until very late. The books were marked with a triangular stamp that contained the letter S. Some of these books were clearly against the regime, others were by ?inconvenient? writers or simply by authors who had left the country in a legal way, like Victor Stoichita. The Journal of the Royal Foundations was included in the S stock. We were subsidiary to the Central University Library, since research was subordinated to education. Once a month or so, they sent us lists with titles that had to be moved from the library to the special stock. So at some point my boss at the education department told me we should get our S stock right, lest we might have problems. We couldn?t really get it right, since this would have meant to take all the volumes out of the library and put them in a special room whose keys would only be kept by the librarian specially appointed to take care of the S stock. There was a separate card index cabinet. So we could take the cards from the common cabinet and into the special one. Every reader who needed to consult one of these texts had to write a request, mentioning what text he wanted, why he wanted it, and even, for instance, which exact article form a certain journal he looked for. The formal instructions stipulated that the librarian should take care that the reader only read the pages he or she had mentioned and nothing else. I was supposed to stand behind people?s back and watch which pages they turned. It was never applied, but those were the regulations. (A. V., 6)