Culture and Authority: Russia’s Ministry of Culture approves the procedure for keeping of rare books register

The Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation has approved the procedure for keeping of the unified register of books of great value, so-called book monuments. The relevant document was published in “Rossiyskaya gazeta”. Ancient scrolls, old manuscripts, works by prominent literary men, issued during their lifetime, will acquire sequence numbers.

Within the past decade our country has been keeping the All-Russian code of book rarities. The order of the Ministry of Culture consolidates and systematizes the accumulated experience. It introduces two basic criteria for ascribing books to the ‘book monument’ category: chronological and socially significant.

The order of the Ministry of Culture divides all book monuments into single-copies and collections. Single-copy book monuments are editions or manuscripts whose only one copy has survived. As to collections, this is the set of books, whose value lies in the very fact that the books have been brought together.

All book monuments will be determined, counted and registered in a special register.

Only state-owned book monuments are subject to special evaluation and registration. Collectors are free to register their books. Specialists claim that today over 2 million copies fall into the book monuments category.