Libraries of Russia: The National Library of Russia presents the project ‘Memorable books of the Russian Empire provinces and regions’

On March 31 in the National Library of Russia will take place the presentation of the ‘Memorable books of the Russian Empire provinces and regions’ project.

The National Library of Russia holds the most complete collection of the memorable books – a valuable source for study of the Russian history before 1917. It holds about 2500 of such editions including 25 unique ones and over 100 of rare copies.

The National Library of Russia launched the project in 1993. From 1997 the project has been supported by the Russian Foundation for Humanities. The essential part of the project consists of the multivolume Content Index which gives the comprehensive information on history and bibliography for every province. The first two volumes received the first prize of the All-Russian Library Science, Bibliography and Bibliology works contest. In the end of 2009 was published the third volume covering eight provinces of Nechernozemny Center.

In the course of work on the project the collection of the National Library of Russia was supplemented by 192 copies of unique and rare issues of memorable books. From 2007 the Library has been creating the digital collection of all the memorable books.