Russian National Library

Infobox_Library
library_name = Российская национальная библиотека
name_en = The National Library of Russia
library_


caption = New building of the Library
country = Russia
type = National library
scope =
established = 1795
ref_legal_mandate = Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation authorizing the Statute of the Federal State Institution "The National Library of Russia" (March 23, 2001)
location = St Petersburg
coordinates = coord|59|56|0.66|N|30|20|8.28|E|display=inline
branch_of =
num_branches =
items_collected = Books, journals, newspapers, magazines, official publications, printed music, sound and music recordings, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings, manuscripts and media.
collection_size = 35,000,000
criteria = Legal deposit of materials published in Russia; "Rossika": materials about Russia or materials published by the people of Russia residing abroad; selected foreign scholarly publications and other materials.
legal_deposit = Yes (Legal Deposit Law [ [http://fontanka36.nlr.ru Legal Deposit Law] ] )
req_to_access = Reading rooms – free. Russian residents must be 18 or older. Foreign visitors are limited by the period of their visa.
annual_circulation = 8,880,000 (2007)
pop_served = 1,150,000 (2007)
members =
budget = 569,200,000 RUB ($23,400,000)
director = Mr. Vladimir Nikolaevitch Zaytsev (Владимир Николаевич Зайцев)
(since 1985)
num_employees = 1850
website = http://www.nlr.ru/eng/
phone_num = [phone]

The National Library of Russia in St Petersburg, known as the "State Public Saltykov-Shchedrin Library" in 1932-1992 (i.e. in the Soviet era), is the oldest public library in Russia. It should not be confused with the Russian State Library, located in Moscow.

Establishment

The Imperial Public Library was established in 1795 by Catherine the Great, whose private collections included the domestic libraries of Voltaire and Diderot, which she had purchased from their heirs. Voltaire's personal library is still one of the highlights of the collection.

The cornerstone of the public library came from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the shape of Załuski's Library (420,000 volumes) [Малый энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона, published in the Imperial Russia in the early 1900s] . Those books were only partially returned to Poland by the Russian SFSR in 1921 (55,000 printed books).Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd. edition]

For five years after its foundation, the library was run by Comte Marie-Gabriel-Florent-Auguste de Choiseul-Gouffier, a scholar of European reputation. The elegant main building on the Nevsky Prospekt was built to a Neoclassical design by Yegor Sokolov in 1796-1801. Several annexes were added in the course of the following century, notably the Gothic Hall in 1857.

19th century

Under Count Alexander Stroganov, who managed the library during the first decade of the 19th century, the Rossica project was inaugurated: a vast collection of foreign books touching on Russia. It was Stroganov who secured for the library some of its most invaluable treasures, namely the Ostromir Gospel, the earliest book written in Russian language, and the Hypatian Codex of the Russian Primary Chronicle.

The Imperial Public Library was officially opened on January 3, 1814 in the presence of Gavrila Derzhavin and Ivan Krylov. In 1811 funds of the library began to grow rapidly, because a copy of each book published in the Imperial Russia was henceforward deposited with the library, so that by 1914 the collection had expanded to 3,000,000 volumes.

The library's third, and arguably most famous, director was Aleksey Olenin (1763-1843). His 32-year tenure at the helm of the institution, with Sergey Uvarov serving as his deputy, raised the profile of the library among Russian intellectuals. Such luminaries as Krylov, Konstantin Batyushkov, Nikolay Gnedich, Anton Delvig, Mikhail Zagoskin, Alexander Vostokov, and Father Ioakinf joined the library staff. The library's doors were opened to all kinds of readers, including women and peasants. .

From 1849 to 1861 the library was managed by Count Modest von Korff (1800-76), who had been Alexander Pushkin's school-fellow at the Lyceum. Korff and his successor, Ivan Delyanov, added to the library's collections the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament (the Codex Sinaiticus from the 340s), the Old Testament (the so-called Leningrad Codex), and the Qur'an (Uthman Qur'an from the mid-7th century).

20th century

In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, the institution survived under the management of Ernest Radloff and Nicholas Marr, although its national preeminence was relinquised to the Lenin State Library in Moscow. The library remained open during the gruesome Siege of Leningrad. It was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour in 1939.

In 1948, the Neoclassical campus of the Catherine Institute on the Fontanka Embankment (Giacomo Quarenghi, 1804-07) was assigned to the library. By 1970, the Library contained more than 17,000,000 items. The modern building for the book depository was erected on the Moskovsky Prospekt in the 1980s and 1990s.

St. Petersburg Bede (746)
Trebizond Gospel (10th cent.)

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Codex Zographensis (ca. 1000)
Leningrad Codex (ca. 1010)

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Ostromir Gospel (1056)
Spiridon Psalter (1397)
Bible Historiale (1350s)
Simon Marmion's Grandes Chroniques de France (1450s)
Breviary_of_Mary Stuart (1490s)
Lancelot du Lac (ca. 1500)

References

External links

* [http://www.nlr.ru/eng Official site of the library]
* [http://fontanka36.nlr.ru Russian National Library on the Fontanka Embankment]
* [http://www.nlr.ru:8101/guide_m/ Russian National Library on the Moscow Prospect]
* [http://voltaire.nlr.ru The personal library of Voltaire as exhibited in the RNL]

Bibliography

* История Государственной ордена Трудового Красного Знамени Публичной библиотеки имени М. Е. Салтыкова-Щедрина. — Ленинград: Лениздат, 1963. — 435 с., [15] л. ил.
* История Библиотеки в биографиях её директоров, 1795—2005 / Российская национальная библиотека. — Санкт-Петербург, 2006. — 503, [1] с.: ил. — ISBN 5-8192-0263-5.