The Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences () is a large state-owned Russian library based in Saint Petersburg on Vasilievsky Island and open to employees of institutions of the Russian Academy of Sciences and scholars with higher education. It is a part of the academy and includes, besides the central collection, the library collections housed by specialized academic institutions in Saint Petersburg and other cities.
The library was founded in Saint Petersburg by a decree of Peter I in 1714 and subsequently included into the structure of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Since 1747 all academic institutions and since 1783 all publishers in the country have been legally obliged to provide the library with a free copy of each published item.
In 1924-1925 the collections were transferred to the new building built for the library in 1914 and occupied by a military hospital during the First World War. During the siege of Leningrad in 1941-1944 the collections stayed in the besieged city and the library was open.
On February 15, 1988, the library suffered the most catastrophic fire in its history which destroyed or damaged a considerable part of the collections, it had destroyed 298.000 books of the total 12 million housed, two to three million more were damaged by heat and smoke. 734,465 copies volumes initially became damp due to firefighting foam. Many of the lost volumes were part of the Baer Collection of foreign scientific works: 152.000 were lost. The rest 146.000 were Russian books, many of them early scientific and medical books from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
The damp books damaged by fire extinguishment were initially frozen. Then a radio appeal was broadcast for citizens to dry the damp books in their homes. By late March 1988 93% of the damp books had been dried in that way and returned to the library. However, about 10,000 books became moldy.
In a 2018 article on the web site "Siberian scientific news" it says that the fire destroyed 298 061 copy of monographs and periodicals; 146,716 books in Russian; 152,245 copies of foreign publications before 1930, arranged according to the classification system of academician Karl Baer (including the legendary Baer fund - about 62 thousand folios). The lost fund was replenish with 222,336 copies from 764 institutions were accepted for the restoration of funds. The loss of 62% of domestic books and 8% of publications from the Baer collection has been replenished. Also destroyed were 20,640 binders, or one third of the newspaper stock, this fund was also partially restored.
Other sources say that 45% of the burned books in Russian and 13% in foreign were recovered.
Before the fire, as of October 1, 1986, the collection of the library and libraries subordinate to it consisted of 17,288,365 items.Справочник-путеводитель по сети специальных библиотек ленинградских академических учреждений / Отв. ред. К. В. Лютова. – Ленинград: Библиотека АН СССР, 1987.
History of the Library
Library of the Academy of Sciences in the 18th century The library of the Academy of Sciences was founded in 1714 by Tsar Peter I. No government act on the establishment of the library has come down to us. However, there is evidence of this in the book of the first Russian historian of St. Petersburg, curator of the Russian book fund of the Library, Andrei Ivanovich Bogdanov (1696-1766). Describing the first libraries of St. Petersburg, he called the Library of the Imperial Academy of Sciences one of the earliest and most important, which, - he wrote, - “began to gather by the supreme decree of the Emperor Peter the Great from 1714, and in 1724 it was united into the Imperial Academy of Sciences".
Three collections were brought to the Summer Palace - the books of the Pharmaceutical Order from Moscow, the Gottorp library and the so-called library of the Dukes of Courland. The fund consisted of about 2,000 books in Russian and many European languages. In 1728 the Library was opened to the public in a new building on Vasilievsky Island. This building housed the Academy of Sciences until 1787, the Library until 1924, and the Kunstkamera is still located today. The priority right to use the Library after 1728 was assigned to academicians, but other educated people could also visit it. Moreover, this mode of access to the Library was maintained until the 1770s.
On December 5, 1747, when the Library was in the Kunstkamera building, the first fire broke out. The reason was faulty chimneys. During the fire, the Gottorp Globe and the tower of the building burned down, and the things stored in the Kunstkamera and books from the library suffered more from water and careless movement than from fire. In the Russian part of the Chamber Catalog, librarian A.I. Bogdanov in his working copy indicated exactly which books were burned. Their total number is 44 titles (33 printed and 11 handwritten books) from the catalog of Russian books and more than 200 foreign publications.
The news of the new library in St. Petersburg spread far beyond the borders of Russia. The French educator Denis Diderot, the author of about 400 articles in the "Encyclopedia", in 1751 in the second volume placed a review article on the libraries of Europe. It contains the first mention of the Library of the Academy of Sciences and the role of Peter the Great in its creation. "This great monarch has collected very significant funds for the library of his St. Petersburg Academy, which is provided in large numbers with books in all fields of science."
Library Fund in the 18th century At the time of the move to Kikiny Chambers, the Library's holdings consisted of approximately 6,000 volumes. From 1716 to 1719 the Library received private collections of A. Pitkarn, A. Vinius, G. Palmstrik, R. Areskin. By the end of 1719, the funds totaled about 10,000 volumes, and by the end of 1747 - about 22,300 books. Since 1747, the Library began to receive mandatory copy of all academic publications; since 1783 - an obligatory copy of all publications published in Russia.
The first book on the history of the Library was written by its employee with 32 years of experience, an adjunct of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (1766), a member of the Imp. Free Economic Society, non-commissioned librarian Johann Konrad (Ivan Grigorievich) Buckmeister. “An experience about the Library and the Cabinet of curiosities and the history of the natural St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences, published in French by Johann Buckmeister, a sub-librarian of the Academy of Sciences, and translated into Russian by Vasily Kostygov.It presented a complete and detailed description of the book fund of the Library of the Academy of Sciences at the end of the 18th century.
Library of the Academy of Sciences in the 19th century The 19th century was a period of further development and prosperity of the Library. Its primary task was to serve science. The position of the Library within the Academy of Sciences continued to be determined by the statutes of the Academy. The charter of 1803 - "Regulations of the Academy of Sciences" - in Chapter X "On the Academy's scientific accessories" defined the Library as an independent institution, separated it from the Kunstkamera, allocating two academicians for their management. Geographically, they were both together until 1924.
According to the Charter of 1803, the Academy of Sciences was freed from educational and educational functions and became a purely scientific and research institution. The Charter also stipulated the staff of the Library, the procedure for managing it and the ways of acquiring its funds - "All printing houses in the empire are obliged to send one copy of each book published in these, to the library of the Academy of Sciences."
In 1818, the president of the Academy of Sciences S.S. Uvarov took measures to replenish funds and streamline their use. The library was divided into two parts - from books "in the Slavic and Russian languages" and "from books in all other languages". For more than a century, the main Library of the Academy of Sciences consisted of two independent subdivisions - I (Russian) department and II (Foreign) department.
The leaders of the Library, and first of all academician K.M. Baer and academicians Ya.I. Berednikov, M.A. Korkunov and A.A. Kunik went to great lengths to uncover the funds for readers. Alphabetical and systematic catalogs were created in both departments. In 1836, the rules for the use of the library, developed by academician Baer, were introduced, in which it was recognized that "the scientific study of books should be limited only to the minimum extent" and that the Library will be able to fulfill its tasks the better, the longer and more often access is open into it.
In the 19th century. the structure of the Library became more complex, which required an increase in staff. In 1883, in the I (Russian) department, the Slavic department was allocated as an independent unit; in 1893 - the magazine department; in 1901 - the Manuscript Department and the Russian Book Department. A new formatting arrangement of funds was introduced, systems of library classification of academicians K.M. Baer, A.A. Kunik and others. In 1893 the staff of the Library was increased to 10 people; 9.5 million rubles were allocated for the purchase of books.
In the first half of the 19th century. from the libraries at the scientific institutions of the Academy, a network of special academic libraries began to be created. The first to enter it were the libraries of the Archive (1800), the Observatory (1804), the Numismatic Cabinet (1804–1806), the Botanical Garden (1809); libraries at academic museums: Asian, Botanical, Zoological; societies: Mineralogical, Geographic; at laboratories: Chemical (1881), Physiological (1889), Anatomy and Plant Physiology (1890), Special Zoological (1894), at the Main Physical Observatory, etc. Central and scientific libraries of research institutions expanded international connections and strengthened the authority of the academic library. By the end of the 19th century. there were 15 special academic libraries.
In the second half of the 19th century. The library experienced a great lack of space to accommodate book collections. Since the 1870s, efforts to expand the premises have been the leitmotif of many speeches by the heads of library departments: Academician A.A. Kunik (Russian branch), academician Carl Salemann (Foreign Department) and Master Eduards Volters, (Slavic branch). At the end of the 1880s. The library received the entire historical building of the Kunstkamera. However, the Academy again began to bother about the construction of a library building, which was built two decades later.
Library Fund in the 19th century. The general idea of the growth of the book collections of the Library of the Academy of Sciences during this period is represented by the following figures: in the 1790s in the Library there were 40,000 volumes of books and manuscripts, in 1836 there were 90,000, in 1848 there were 112,753, and in 1862 there were 243,109. The foreign branch occupied a dominant position in terms of the size of the book fund, but a faster growth of funds of the Russian branch.
As in the 18th century, the Library continued to receive an obligatory copy of all Russian editions. The main sources of foreign literature were: purchase of books abroad, exchange of publications of the Academy of Sciences for publications of foreign scientific institutions, gifts of organizations and individual foreign scientists.
In 1862 LRAS(Library Of Russian Academy Of Sciences) received publications on book exchange from 150 Western European large scientific centers, and by the end of the 19th century. had 516 foreign partners. By the end of the 1880s the Slavic department was organized, in which about 10 thousand volumes were concentrated; by the end of the century, this figure increased several times.