The Presidential Library’s webinar to illustrate dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference books

November 24, 2021 at 10:00 the Presidential Library’s portal will host an online webinar "Encyclopedias, dictionaries, reference books (industry-specific and universal"), which will present the most interesting reference books from the electronic collections of the Presidential Library. The webinar is timed to coincide with the 220th anniversary from the birthday of Vladimir Ivanovich Dal; on this day, November 22, the Dictionary Day is celebrated.

The first explanatory dictionary of the Russian language is "Dictionary of the Russian Academy". Work on it began from the very first day of the Academy's foundation in 1783 and lasted 11 years. The first edition of the dictionary contained 43 357 words, the second (1806-1822) - more than 51 thousand words.

The life of the language and its history refer to the history of the society. The example is the 1998 Explanatory Dictionary of the Language of the Soviets. This is a dictionary that "will temporarily return to the recent linguistic past - the Soviet socialist" and "comprehensively present the Soviet era in lexical representation".

This is about the "Russian Historical and Household Dictionary" by Leonid Belovinsky (1999), aimed at specialists who, during their work, most often encounter outdated words - literary critics, historians, translators...

The webinar will also present a dictionary with a very long title "Geographical Lexicon of the Russian State, or a Dictionary describing in the alphabetical order rivers, lakes, seas, mountains, cities, fortresses, noble monasteries, forts, winter plants or factories of Russian Empire" of 1773.

Reference book are used in order to get a brief information about something narrowly focused on. They are structurally divided into sections and subsections. For example, the "Sports Directory" of 1946 consists of several sections: the first contains information about the nearest sporting events, standards, set records, the second section is devoted to the Ready for Work and Defence (GTO) standards, the last one contains information about Leningrad sports societies, shops, etc.

For a deeper study, there are large-scale editions in terms of content and volume - encyclopedias. Thus, 41 main and 2 additional volumes of the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, which is considered the most complete encyclopedia of the 19th century, contain information on completely different areas.

The webinar will also feature a very unusual "Children's Encyclopedia, or New Abbreviation of All Sciences", published in 1808. The encyclopedia is compiled in two languages ​​- Russian and French and is structured in the form of "question-answer".

In addition to these publications, the Presidential Library’s collections contain many other dictionaries, reference books and encyclopedias. For example, "Dictionary of Memorable People of the Russian Land" (1847), "Dictionary of Wrong, Difficult and Doubtful Words, Synonyms and Expressions in Russian Speech" (1914), "Dictionary of XX Century Culture" (1999), "Jubilee Directory of the Imperial Academy of Arts" (1764-1914), "Moscow Almanac for Young Russian Citizens, or New Manual Encyclopedia with Pictures" (1830).

These and many other materials are now available in more than 1,300 remote access centers open in all constituent entities of the Russian Federation and 30 foreign countries. The electronic collections of the Presidential Library are available in full.

Webinars on various topics are regularly held in the Presidential Library in the form of video conference calls. With their help, one has opportunity to discover the unique collections of the national electronic repository, learn about rare historical documents, publications and other materials little-known to a wide audience.

The webinar "Encyclopedias, dictionaries, reference books (industry-specific and universal") will be broadcast live on November 24 starting 10:00 (Moscow time) online in Live broadcasts section on the Presidential Library's portal in accordance with the program of live events. Please note that before watching the webinar in the Live broadcasts section it is necessary to refresh the portal page.

The Presidential Library’s portal provides all the information about past and upcoming webinars in the Webinars section, and information about remote access centers - in the Remote Access Centers section.