History books: Exhibition of books with bookplates in foreign languages, dedicated to the fate of the books and their owners, in Veliky Novgorod

Until November 10 in the Novgorod Regional Universal Scientific Library runs the exhibition "From Count… to the Sapper Battalion Library: what a stamp on the book tells about", which presents books with bookplates in foreign languages ​​and is dedicated to the fate of the books and their owners.

Visitors can see old editions in foreign languages. Here are the books from libraries of manors of Novgorod provinces S. A. Kovanko and I. P. Daragan, libraries of Orientalist and bibliophile Baron D. G. Ginzburg, a poet, writer and translator G. F. Gnesin, from the personal collections of famous St. Petersburg Publishers A. A. Cherkesov, O. N. Popova.

In the windows are exposed books with stamps of libraries of Lifeguards sapper battalion and the Life Guards Rifle Regiment of the Imperial family, the Imperial Library of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. At the root of the Lyceum library was Catherine II, bequeathed personal library to her favorite grandson Alexander, the future Emperor Alexander I, granted this part of the collection to the Imperial Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum.   

Books with bookplates arrived in the Novgorod regional library in the 40-50s of XX century, when the library restored a book fund, lost during the Great Patriotic War. The collection of rare books now includes unique editions of XVIII-XIX centuries in Russian and foreign languages. Books with bookplates are the monuments of the time. By these bookplates today we can find out who owned the book, in which libraries it was stored, to trace not only the fate of a particular book, but the first owner of the book collection.

«Ex libris» - translated from Latin means "from the books". Homeland of bookplates is Germany. The author of one of the first bookplates was a German painter and graphic artist Albrecht Dürer of the 16th century.