The National Library of Russia

Abstract

The National Library of Russia (NLR) in Saint Petersburg is the first state public library in Russia, one of the largest libraries in the world and the second largest in the Russian Federation; it is an all-Russian information, scientific and cultural center. The year 2020 will be an anniversary year – 225 years since the establishment of our library. In 1795, the Imperial Public Library was founded by order of Empress Catherine the Great. A special library building designed by the architect Egor Sokolov (1796– 1801) was erected in the capital of the Russian Empire: Saint Petersburg. Nowadays, the building is a part of a unique architectural complex in the historical city center. The ‘Publichka’ (informal colloquial name of the library) was opened in January 1814 and since then the library has been constantly increasing its funds, developing collections and improving readers services. Since 1810, the library has received legal deposit documents. In 1992, the State Public Library became ‘The National Library of Russia’ and by Decree of the President of Russia, it was included in the list of cultural heritage sites that represent historical and cultural heritage of the peoples of the Russian Federation. The Library receives more than 400,000 new documents annually, most of them under the legal deposit law; more than 80% are in the Russian language. Today the NLR collections exceed 39 million documents and include 38 million printed documents, more than 450,000 manuscripts, including 40,000 handwritten books. The electronic library contains 600,000 digitized editions; network access to 60 million electronic documents is provided. The library holds collections of handwritten books in different languages, including West European and Eastern ones, collections of rare books (incunabula, palimpsests); there are rare books of the 15th to 18th centuries in West European languages and the ‘Rossica’ department founded in the middle of the 19th century by the then director