Filippos Tsiboglou / For a visionary who died prematurely

Ethos, reason, passion. With these words Philippos Tsiboglou closed his speech at the World Library Conference in Kuala Lumpur in 2018, inviting the international library community to Athens for next year’s conference. These three words that characterized his scientific and professional path and which he consistently followed throughout his life were chosen by his colleagues as the frontispiece for the event dedicated to his memory. One year after his sudden, untimely death, on February 2, 2023, the packed auditorium of the National Research Foundation (NRF) remembered a scientist who left a strong mark and largely determined the development of librarianship in Greece and Cyprus. A man who loved people.

Its absence in the National Library is, unfortunately, already evident. General manager of the country’s leading spiritual depository from 2014 until last year, he found him half-dead and put him on a roll, deservedly lifted the burden of his move from Valianio to the SNF Culture Center and gave him perspective. Focusing on the library as a public and social good and with the thought directed towards open, accessible libraries, new technologies and the meaning of the library as the main channel of knowledge, Philippos Tsiboglou gestured to his science without forgetting the quintessence of Culture and the essence of democracy. And in the midst of all this, clearly and clearly, in the way he ran the National Library of Greece (NBH), he never forgot the colleague, the partner, the simple visitor, the little bibliophile. A man of companionship and duty, he embodied in his charismatic personality a visionary who constantly sought new knowledge, but also the legacies of human civilization in the written word. He commanded respect and won allies. Kindness, erudition, simplicity, honesty in his case were not empty words.

All this was remembered by his friends on Saturday night at this special libation in his memory. His colleagues chose the HEI, where he started his scientific career. Tearful words, moved people, his fellow citizens from Farsala, Crete and Cyprus, as he liked to call his place of origin while honoring the two islands that defined his life and journey: Crete, home of his beloved Niki, and Cyprus, where he set up its University Library. His colleagues from there, classmates and fellow students, colleagues from Cyprus, academics and politicians, his predecessors at EBE and others who met him at various periods of his scientific journey spoke in simple words, remembered this charismatic man and small snapshots of joint actions or drinking and dancing. The evening was intensely charged, with his musician friends playing roots songs that he especially loved. Videos of his interviews and speeches, from his guided tours of EBE, photos with colleagues, friends, relatives. An event that started at 5 in the afternoon and ended past 9 in the evening, because everyone wanted to testify a piece of life and the memory that connected them to this special person.

The National Library, which is now in the process of searching for his replacement, seems, however, to have already forgotten Filippos Tsiboglou.