Russian State Library of Central Documents. Archives of Russia. Russian State Library (RSL). Fund of music publications and sound recordings

The Russian State Library is the largest public library in Russia and continental Europe. It existed as part of the Rumyantsev Museum since 1882. Since 1924 - Russian Public Library named after V. I. Ulyanov (Lenin). In 1925 it was transformed into State Library of the USSR named after V. I. Lenin (GBL), in 1992 - to the Russian State Library.

How to purchase a subscription and library card

Russian and foreign citizens are enrolled in the Russian State Library upon reaching 14 years of age, in the main building (on Vozdvizhenka), in the branch in Khimki, the Jewish Museum and the Tolerance Center. Documents – passport, for foreigners – passport and visa, for citizens with an academic degree – passport and diploma. A plastic library card (free) with a photo is issued. If a ticket is lost, a duplicate costs 100 rubles.

A subscription is issued if you have a library card, at the information desk for the desired number of orders (10 orders - 100 rubles). This makes it possible to order books in advance by telephone, providing the title, author, and imprint of the publication.

How to work with Leninka funds

1. Use the electronic catalog (or paper catalog in the library building), search for the required publications, print or write down the code, title, and author of the book.
2. Come to the library with a library card and fill out the form at the entrance. On the required sheets, fill in the data of the publications you want to work with. Give the request form to the library staff. After 2-3 hours (maximum waiting time), you receive publications upon presentation of the questionnaire filled out at the entrance and a library card. The waiting time depends on the number of orders for a certain storage tier; it is better to place an order in advance - by phone (if you have a subscription) or online. Publications located in the reading room, and not in the warehouse, are available for work without ordering.
3. You work with books within the library without lending them to your home. In case of dilapidation or absence of paper versions of publications, microfilms are issued.
4. When returning books, a corresponding mark is placed on the form, which must be returned upon leaving the library.

Funds

Readers have access to the central main fund (a universal collection of ongoing publications, books, magazines, documents for official use in Russian, foreign languages ​​except Eastern, languages ​​of the peoples of Russia), the central auxiliary fund (duplicates of publications), collections of maps, sound recordings, rare books, manuscripts and other publications.

Services

• Copying (for a fee) from a paper source and microfilm - scanning, transferring to paper, transferring to film.
• Free Wi-Fi for regular readers.
• Virtual help desk (free).
• Excursions to all buildings and funds, visit to the Museum of Books (for a fee).
• Individual user account (paid) – for personal and group work (up to 4 people). PC with Internet access, Skype, office and voice-over programs.
• Dining room.

The RSL contacted me and offered to do a report about our main library, naturally, I happily agreed.

Within the walls of the Russian State Library there is a unique collection of domestic and foreign documents in 367 languages. There are specialized collections of maps, sheet music, sound recordings, rare books, dissertations, newspapers and other types of publications. The library provides the right to use its reading rooms to all citizens of Russia and other countries who have reached the age of 18. About 200 new readers sign up here every day. Almost 4 thousand people come to the RSL every day, and virtual reading rooms located in 80 cities of Russia and neighboring countries serve more than 8 thousand visitors daily.

Today is the first part of a long story about the Russian State Library. In it you will learn how to borrow a book from the library, look at the vaults and the secret underground passage to the Kremlin.

01. First you need to come to the metro station. "Library named after. Lenin". They still won't rename it. Previously, the RSL (Russian State Library) was also called the “Library named after. Lenin". To get into the library you need to have a library card; you can get one at the second entrance. In your hand: passport, student ID (if a student) and 100 rubles for a photo. Fill out the form and press the “electronic queue” button. A ticket comes out. Take it in your hands - it is yours. Numbers light up on the scoreboard above special small rooms. Wait for yours and come in. There, a specially trained woman will take your application form and take a photograph. You need to immediately decide on the reading room where books will be issued to you. It’s not very clear how to do this without seeing the halls. In 5 minutes the plastic card will be ready. It takes no more than 10 minutes to obtain a library card.

02. Login. The RSL is guarded by a special police regiment. Turnstiles are one of the latest innovations in the library, which, however, was received ambiguously by readers. Access is via a barcode on your library card. You are not allowed to carry books, cameras or large bags; they must be stored in a storage room.

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04. If you already have a list of references - that is, you know exactly what books you need, feel free to go to the card catalog room.

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06. Leninka’s funds contain more than 43 million storage units. There are specialized collections of maps, sheet music, sound recordings, rare books, dissertations, newspapers and other types of publications.

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08. There are always consultants in the hall who will help you navigate the huge amount of information.

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11. After you have found the book you need in the catalogue, you need to obtain a requirement sheet from the consultant.

12. And copy all the information about the book into it.

13. For advanced readers, stands with the RSL electronic catalog have been installed. I honestly tried to take something from Pushkin...

14. I guess I was too worried because I received a book about potatoes. By the way, since at present the process of transferring the paper catalog to electronic form has not yet been completed, not all books are there, so many people are looking in the old-fashioned way in the card index.

16. Once every 15 minutes, a pneumatic mail operator comes to collect demand sheets.

17. The operator is hiding from prying eyes behind this cabinet.

18. And here is the pneumatic mail point itself. The system was installed in the library back in the 70s.

19. The sheet is folded, placed in a “cartridge” and sent to the storage tier where the book you ordered is located. This is why we need codes on the cards.

21. By the way, a requirement sheet is not always placed in the cartridge. You can use it to send cigarettes, a pen or a love note. Before the New Year, employees like to send candy.

22. This is what the diagram of the receiving and sending station looks like.

23. The pneumatic mail channels descend into the basements of the library. This, by the way, is a secret passage to the Kremlin, but they asked not to write about it.

24. This is a pneumatic mail repairman. Sometimes careless employees try to pass prohibited items (for example, pens), the cartridge may open and then, in order to find and remove the pen, the pipes have to be opened. Often the caps simply fall off the cartridges, and getting them out is also problematic.

25. This miracle machine was installed in the early 90s. They say she can beat Kasparov at chess, but now she simply manages the entire network of pneumatic mail in the RSL.

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27. So, while your request is being processed, which is about 2 hours, you can go have fun.

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29. For example, you can read periodicals - the RSL has all the magazines that are sold in print kiosks - including those for the current month. This can be done in the reading room of periodicals.

30. Every minute the doors of the Library are opened by five visitors.

31. According to the Law on Legal Deposit of Documents, the Russian State Library is the place of storage of the legal deposit of all printed materials published in Russia.

32. There is also an excellent canteen in the RSL. Some people come here just to drink tea in a warm, comfortable environment. Tea costs 13 rubles, but boiling water is free, some “readers” take advantage of this. By the way, the smell in the dining room makes it difficult to stay there for too long.

33. While you are drinking tea and absorbing the aromas of home cooking, your request is being processed at the book depository.

34. The total length of the RSL bookshelves is about 275 kilometers.

35. The ceilings are very low, once there was a case when a worker received a concussion, she was taken to the hospital.

36. There is a story in the RSL that the ghost of Nikolai Rubakin lives in storage. At night, when the floors are locked and sealed with wax seals, the night guards hear someone walking, footsteps are clearly audible, doors open and close. Perhaps the fact is that in his will Rubakin indicated that he bequeathed his entire personal collection (which is 75,000 books) to the Lenin Library. After his death they did so. Only along with the books they brought an urn with his ashes and for some time it was kept here. Well, what is a personal collection? It’s a part of the soul, pencil marks in the margins, dog-eared pages and a lot of thoughts. Rubakin was buried in Moscow, but his ghost continues to wander the floors... perhaps turning pages, rearranging books...

37. Rubakin - the creator of bibliopsychology - the science of text perception. Author of the book “Psychology of the Reader and the Book.” He developed the ideas of Emil Hennequin, the author of “Estoppsychology”. His ideas are widely used in psycholinguistics.

38. The “note” is received by storage workers, they take your book and send it to the reading room using conveyors. There are two conveyors at the RSL: the vertical one was designed by Sukhanov in the 70s.

39. Large chain conveyor, put into operation back in 1953.

40. “This is Metrostroy, there are the same gears as on escalators in the subway.” Nevertheless, it is high time to replace the mechanism with a much more modern analogue. But, as the general director of the RSL explained, in order to implement a new technical system, the conveyor must be stopped, and this threatens that the activities of the entire Library will actually be paralyzed. Only with the commissioning of a new building will it be possible to replace the conveyor.

41. There is also a small version of the chain conveyor. To store 41,315,500 copies, premises with an area equal to 9 football fields are used, and for each library worker there are 29,830 storage copies.

42. In 1987, the fund of the special storage department consisted of about 27,000 domestic books, 250,000 foreign books, 572,000 issues of foreign magazines, about 8,500 annual sets of foreign newspapers. These books and magazines could not be obtained by the common reader.

43. Books from the storage room are waiting for readers.

44. You can’t take books home. For reading, the RSL has 37 reading rooms with 2,238 seats, of which 437 are computerized.

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46. ​​Reading room No. 3 is the largest, this is a kind of visiting card of the RSL, you can come to it with your laptop, there are dictionaries on the side shelves, for example, Ancient Greek-Russian.

47. You can make a copy of a book, it costs 6 rubles per page, but you cannot take photographs. Nobody really explained to me the reason for the ban on photography; there was something incomprehensible about copyright, then about the fact that books are deteriorating. It seems to me that a photocopier spoils books more than a camera, and if you allow people to photograph illustrations, for example, they will be cut out less and pages will be torn out.

48. One day indicators:
- registration of new users (including new users of EDB virtual reading rooms) - 330 people.
- attendance of reading rooms - 4.2 thousand people.
- number of hits to RSL websites - 8.2 thousand,
- issuance of documents from the RSL funds - 35.3 thousand copies.
- receipt of new documents - 1.8 thousand copies.

49. At the beginning of 2010, the RSL employed 2,140 people, of which 1,228 were library workers.

50. Women make up about 83% of the total number of RSL employees. The average age of Library employees is 48.6 years. The average salary is 13,824 rubles.

51. Reading room of the electronic library.

52. Here you can use remote resources and databases to which the RSL is connected - for example, the Cambridge library, and the databases of the Springer publishing house - an electronic library of foreign scientific and business journals, the EAST-VIEW database. The subject of the search is publications on social sciences and humanities. There is also access to the RSL Electronic Library and an archive of dissertations.

53. Reading room Internet and electronic documents. Here you can surf the Internet for 32 rubles per hour. There was also some kind of disgusting photo exhibition taking place here. Incomprehensible photographs hung from the ceiling so that they could not be seen from behind plastic sheets.

54. Hall of official documents, here you can read files of old newspapers, codes of laws and all kinds of codes. Young people are interested in the extensive collection of UN documents (since 1946) and collections of acts, resolutions, and decisions of the international court on human rights. GOST standards for “any occasion” are also presented here - there is even one for the “cleaver axe”. Free legal consultations are organized for anyone in the FN reading room.

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58. An old sports magazine, a lot of illustrations have been cut out. If we take, for example, the Ogonyok magazine from 1958, we will see Beria’s face painted over with ink. This is the work of the censors of the 1st department.

But in addition to political censorship, there was also “popular censorship” - readers observed morality. And the RSL is one of the few libraries during the Iron Curtain that received all the issues of foreign magazines. There was nothing like that there, of course, but diligent citizens lengthened their skirts and even glued the pages together so that no one would see examples of bourgeois life. Another distinctive feature of readers of those years was that they cut out advertisements from magazines.

59. Hall of Rare Books - this is where you can touch the most ancient copies from the RSL collection. “Only the reader of the RSL, who has good reason to do so, can study the materials of the fund (and only a small part of it is on display in the museum - 300 books) and leaf through the pages of unique book monuments. The fund contains over 100 publications - absolute rarities, about 30 books - the only ones in the world of specimens. Here are some more examples of museum exhibits that you can work with in this reading room: “Don Quixote” by Cervantas (1616-1617), “Candide or Optimism” by Voltaire (1759), “The Moabit Notebook” (1969), Tatar poet Musa Dzhalid, written by him in the fascist prison Maobit, "The Archangel Gospel" (1092). Here there are the first copies of the works of Pushkin and Shakespeare, books by the publishers Gutenberg, Fedorov, Badoni, Maurice. From the point of view of the history of Russian books, it will be interesting - Novikov, Suvorin , Marx, Sytin. Cyrillic books are widely represented."

60. Microfilms were made for some of the books. And, if the presence of the original source is not of paramount importance for the work (paper, ink, etc. are not important, but the content is valuable), microfilm will be issued in the reading room. The original is out of the question.

62. As it turned out, many readers steal books, and quite often. Particularly inventive ones cut out a valuable book from the cover, and insert another one of similar size into it. Often they simply tear out pages or cut out illustrations. And although it is easy to identify a thief or vandal, it is almost impossible to bring him to justice; for this you need at least 2 witnesses who saw how the book was damaged.

64. Cards and documents are sometimes forgotten in books. Once in the 80s, a forgotten chervonets was found.

65. Pink Corridor" - one of the exhibition areas of the RSL.

66. Remains from old telephone booths.

67. Meeting room of the RSL - here the fate of the library is decided - the directorate meets weekly, the course of development is determined, decisions are made.

68. The RSL is the fourth library in the world in terms of collection size, the British Library is in first place - 150 million items versus our 42.

69. The windows of some reading rooms offer stunning views of the Kremlin.

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72. The top floors of the book depository also offer good views; unfortunately, while I was going there, the weather turned bad.


Click on the photo to view in large size.

73. Families work in libraries, for example Olga Viktorovna Serezhina, she has been working for 41 years, her mother worked here for 40 years.

74. On the left is Natalya, her daughter, who has been working here for 7 years)

75. And this is a policeman, he was extremely indignant that I took his photograph, and threatened to tear his head off. He urgently needs to be sent to the hall of official and regulatory documents so that he can read the laws. Otherwise, he spends all his free time chatting on the phone with his wife.

76. Soon there will be a separate story about how books are scanned, restored and repaired.

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The library has two main websites - www.rsl.ru - there you can read about all the services and news - who came where, what exhibitions are taking place. And www.leninka.ru - here is the history of the RSL from the moment of its establishment

All photographs presented in this report belong tophoto agency "28-300" , for questions regarding the use of photographs, as well as conducting photo sessions, please email [email protected].

Russian State Library(FGBU RSL) - national library of the Russian Federation, the largest public library in Russia and continental Europe and one of the largest libraries in the world; a leading research institution in the field of library science, bibliography and bibliology, a methodological and advisory center for Russian libraries of all systems (except for special and scientific-technical ones), a center for recommendatory bibliography.

Encyclopedic YouTube

Story

Library of the Rumyantsev Museum

The Rumyantsev Museum, established in 1828 and founded in 1831 in St. Petersburg, has been part of the Imperial Public Library since 1845. The museum was in dire straits. The curator of the Rumyantsev Museum V.F. Odoevsky proposed to transport the Rumyantsev collections to Moscow, where they would be in demand and preserved. Odoevsky’s note about the difficult situation of the Rumyantsev Museum, sent to the Minister of the State Household, was “accidentally” seen by N.V. Isakov and gave it a go.

The custodians of the department of manuscripts and early printed books, with which the library was especially closely connected throughout its history, were A. E. Viktorov, D. P. Lebedev, S. O. Dolgov. D. P. Lebedev in -1891 was first A. E. Viktorov’s assistant in the department of manuscripts, and after Viktorov’s death he replaced him as keeper of the department.

In the same year, a 50-meter vertical conveyor for transporting books came into operation, an electric train and a conveyor belt were launched to deliver requests from the reading rooms to the book depository. Work has begun to serve readers with photocopies. To read microfilms, a small office was set up, equipped with two Soviet and one American machines.

V.I. Nevsky ensured that the authorities decided on the need for construction. He also laid the first stone in the foundation of the new building. It became the standard of the “Stalinist Empire style”. The authors combined Soviet monumentalism and neoclassical forms. The building harmoniously fits into the architectural surroundings - the Kremlin, Moscow University, Manezh, Pashkov House.

The building is lavishly decorated. Between the pylons of the facade there are bronze bas-reliefs depicting scientists, philosophers, writers: Archimedes, Copernicus, Galileo, I. Newton, M. V. Lomonosov, C. Darwin, A. S. Pushkin, N. V. Gogol. The sculptural frieze above the main portico was made mainly according to the drawings of academician of architecture and theater artist V. A. Shchuko. M. G. Manizer, N. V. Krandievskaya, V. I. Mukhina, S. V. Evseev, V. V. Lishev took part in the design of the Library. The conference hall was designed by architect A.F. Khryakov.

Limestone and solemn black granite were used for cladding the facades, and marble, bronze, and oak wall panels for the interiors.

In 1957-1958, the construction of buildings “A” and “B” was completed. The war prevented all work from being completed on time. The construction and development of the library complex, which included several buildings, lasted until 1960.

In 2003, an advertising structure in the form of the Uralsib company logo was installed on the roof of the building. In May 2012, the structure, which became “one of the dominant features of the appearance of the historical center of Moscow,” was dismantled.

Main book depository

Library collections

The collection of the Russian State Library originates from the collection of N.P. Rumyantsev, which included more than 28 thousand books, 710 manuscripts, and more than 1000 maps.

The “Regulations on the Moscow Public Museum and the Rumyantsev Museum” stated that the director is obliged to ensure that the Library of Museums includes all literature published on the territory of the Russian Empire. Thus, since 1862, the Library began to receive legal deposit. Before 1917, 80% of the fund came from legal deposit receipts. Donations and donations have become the most important source of replenishment of the fund.

A year and a half after the founding of the Museums, the Library’s fund amounted to 100 thousand items. And on January 1 (13), 1917, the Library of the Rumyantsev Museum had 1 million 200 thousand items of storage.

At the time of the start of the work of the Interdepartmental Commission, headed by Glavlit of the USSR, to revise publications and rearrange them from special storage departments to open funds in 1987, the fund of the special storage department totaled about 27 thousand domestic books, 250 thousand foreign books, 572 thousand issues of foreign magazines, about 8.5 thousand annual sets of foreign newspapers.

Central fixed fund has more than 29 million storage units: books, magazines, ongoing publications, documents for official use. It is the basic collection in the subsystem of the main document collections of the RSL. The fund was formed on the basis of the collection principle. Of particular value are more than 200 private book collections of domestic figures of science, culture, education, outstanding bibliophiles and collectors of Russia.

Central Reference and Bibliographic Fund has more than 300 thousand storage units. The content of the documents included in it is universal in nature. The fund contains a significant collection of abstract, bibliographic and reference publications in Russian, languages ​​of the peoples of the Russian Federation and foreign languages ​​(with the exception of Eastern ones). The collection widely includes retrospective bibliographic indexes, dictionaries, encyclopedias, reference books, and guidebooks.

Central auxiliary fund compiles and quickly provides readers in open access with the most popular printed publications in Russian, published by central publishing houses in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The fund has a large collection of scientific, reference and educational literature. In addition to books, it includes magazines, brochures, and newspapers.

RSL Electronic Library is a collection of electronic copies of valuable and most requested publications from the collections of the Russian State Library, from external sources and documents originally created in electronic form. The volume of the fund at the beginning of 2013 is about 900 thousand documents and is constantly being updated. The full range of resources is available in the reading rooms of the RSL. Access to documents is provided in accordance with Part IV of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation.

The RSL electronic library contains open access resources that can be freely read on the Internet from anywhere in the world, and limited access resources that can only be read within the walls of the RSL, from any reading room.

There are about 600 Virtual Reading Rooms (VRR) operating in Russia and the CIS countries. They are located in national and regional libraries, as well as in the libraries of universities and other educational institutions. VChZ provide the opportunity to access and work with RSL documents, including restricted access resources. This function is provided by DefView software, the predecessor of the more modern Vivaldi network of digital libraries.

Manuscript Fund is a universal collection of written and graphic manuscripts in various languages, including Old Russian, Ancient Greek, and Latin. It contains handwritten books, archival collections and funds, personal (family, ancestral) archives. Documents, the earliest of which date back to the 6th century AD. e., made on paper, parchment, and other specific materials. The fund contains the rarest handwritten books: the Arkhangelsk Gospel (1092), the Khitrovo Gospel (late 14th - early 15th centuries), etc.

Fund of rare and valuable publications has more than 300 thousand storage units. It includes printed publications in Russian and foreign languages ​​that correspond to certain social and value parameters - uniqueness, priority, memoriality, collectibility. The fund, according to the content of the documents included in it, is universal in nature. It presents printed books from the mid-16th century, Russian periodicals, including the Moskovskie Gazette (from 1756), publications by the pioneer Slavic printers Sh. Fiol, F. Skorina, I. Fedorov and P. Mstislavets, collections of incunabula and paleotypes , first editions of the works of J. Bruno, Dante, R. G. de Clavijo, N. Copernicus, archives of N. V. Gogol, I. S. Turgenev, A. P. Chekhov, A. A. Blok, M. A. Bulgakova and others.

Dissertation Fund includes domestic doctoral and master's theses in all branches of knowledge, except medicine and pharmacy. The collection contains author's copies of dissertations from the 2010s, as well as microforms of dissertations made to replace the originals from the 1950s. The fund is preserved as part of the cultural heritage of Russia.

Newspaper Foundation, which includes more than 670 thousand storage units, is one of the largest collections in Russia and the post-Soviet space. It includes domestic and foreign newspapers published since the 18th century. The most valuable part of the fund are Russian pre-revolutionary newspapers and publications from the first years of Soviet power.

Military Literature Foundation has more than 614 thousand storage units. It includes printed and electronic publications in Russian and foreign languages. Wartime documents are presented - front-line newspapers, posters, leaflets, the texts for which were composed by the classics of Soviet literature I. G. Erenburg, S. V. Mikhalkov, S. Ya. Marshak, M. V. Isakovsky.

Foundation of Literature in Oriental Languages(countries of Asia and Africa) includes domestic and the most scientifically and practically significant foreign publications in 224 languages, reflecting the diversity of topics, genres, and types of printing design. The sections of the socio-political and humanities are most fully represented in the fund. It includes books, magazines, ongoing publications, newspapers, and speech recordings.

Specialized collection of current periodicals formed to quickly serve readers with current periodicals. Doublet copies of Russian periodicals are in the public domain. The fund contains domestic and foreign magazines, as well as the most popular central and Moscow newspapers in Russian. Upon expiration of the established period, the journals are transferred for permanent storage to the Central Fixed Fund.

Art publications fund, numbering about 1.5 million copies. This collection includes posters and prints, engravings and popular prints, reproductions and postcards, photographs and graphic materials. The Foundation introduces in detail the personal collections of famous collectors, including portraits, bookplates, and works of applied graphics.

Fund of cartographic publications has about 250 thousand storage units. This specialized collection, including atlases, maps, plans, map diagrams and globes, provides material on topics, types of publications of this kind and forms of presentation of cartographic information.

Fund of music publications and sound recordings(more than 400 thousand items) is one of the largest collections, representing all the most significant in the world repertoire, starting from the 16th century. The music fund contains both original documents and copies. It also includes documents on electronic media. The sound recording fund contains shellac and vinyl records, cassettes, tapes from domestic manufacturers, DVDs.

Fund of official and normative publications is a specialized collection of official documents and publications of international organizations, government bodies and management of the Russian Federation and individual foreign countries, official regulatory and production documents, publications of Rosstat. The total volume of the fund exceeds 2 million storage units, presented in paper and electronic forms, as well as on other micro-media.

IN fund of Russian literature abroad, numbering more than 700 thousand items, presents works by authors from all waves of emigration. Its most valuable component is the collection of newspapers published on the lands occupied by the White Army during the Civil War, others were published in the occupied territories of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War. The fund stores the works of figures of the domestic human rights movement.

Network Remote Resources Foundation has more than 180 thousand items. It includes resources of other organizations located on remote servers to which the library provides permanent or temporary access. In terms of the content of the documents included in the fund, it is universal in nature.

Collection of publications on optical CDs(CD and DVD) - one of the youngest collections of RSL documents. The fund includes more than 8 thousand storage units of various types and purposes. Includes text, audio and multimedia documents that are original publications or electronic analogues of printed publications. The content of the documents included in it is universal in nature.

Literature Fund for Library Science, Bibliography and Bibliology is the world's largest specialized collection of this kind of publications. It also includes language dictionaries, encyclopedias and general reference books, literature on related fields of knowledge. The 170 thousand documents available to the fund cover the period from the 18th century to the present. Publications from the Russian State Library are included in a separate collection.

Microform Working Copy Fund has about 3 million storage units. It includes microforms of publications in Russian and foreign languages. Partially presented are microforms of newspapers and dissertations, as well as publications that do not have paper equivalents, but meet such parameters as value, uniqueness, and high demand.

Intrastate Book Exchange Fund, part of the subsystem of exchange funds of the Russian State Library, has more than 60 thousand storage units. These are doublet and non-core documents excluded from the fixed assets - books, brochures, periodicals in Russian and foreign languages. The fund is intended for redistribution through gift, equivalent exchange and sale.

Fund of unpublished documents and deposited scientific works on culture and art has more than 15 thousand storage units. It includes deposited scientific works and unpublished documents - reviews, abstracts, references, bibliographic lists, methodological and methodological-bibliographic materials, scripts for holidays and mass performances, materials of conferences and meetings. The foundation's documents are of great industry-wide importance.

The building of the country's largest library, directly opposite the entrance to the Kremlin, was built as a result of a large architectural competition. This was the heyday of avant-garde architecture, but preference was given to far from the most daring project. And the long construction period led to a change in the initially conceived strict appearance in a more decorative manner. Academician Shchuko from St. Petersburg, of pre-revolutionary academic training, together with the younger generation architect Gelfreich, developed a complex complex of six buildings, forming a system of courtyards, colonnades and forming a kind of new Roman forum for the proletarian capital. The building was designed at the corner of two designed avenues - Ilyich Alley - the planned route from the Palace of Soviets to the Three Stations and the then nameless Kalinin Avenue. But academic training did not allow the architects to create a new dominant building next to the Kremlin, and the tallest building, a nineteen-story book depository, was moved as far as possible from the intersection. The library complex organically includes the principles and techniques of architecture from different eras - these are Roman forums, asymmetrical plans of constructivists, and restrained stylized decor (for the most part also borrowed from Ancient Rome). The cult of study and knowledge was almost universal and was eclipsed only by the cult of workers and Red Army soldiers; the building was decorated with a two-row sculptural frieze, reminiscent of that of the second famous work of the architects - the theater in Rostov-on-Don, individual statues on the balustrade facing Mokhovaya, as well as medallions with portraits of great scientists and writers, starting with Archimedes. A large group worked on the creation of the sculptural decoration, including such sculptors as S.A. Evseev, M.G. Manizer, E.A. Yanson-Manizer, N.V. Krandievskaya, V.V. Lishev, .

The construction of the complex of buildings of the Russian State Library (until 1992 - the State Library named after V.I. Lenin) began in 1929 and was completed in the late 1950s. The first stage of metro construction affected the stylobate of the building; the vestibule of the Lenin Library and Aleksandrovsky Sad stations was built into it. The ground pavilion, installed in 1935 at the corner of Mokhovaya and Vozdvizhenka, was later demolished.

Reading room No. 3 (Humanities Hall) with 464 seats was opened in 1958. The architects of the workshop were V.G. Gelfreich embodied the idea of ​​​​monumental representativeness of the “temple of science”, designing a two-height space (area - 1208 sq. m; ceiling height - more than 10 m) in the style of a front hall-palazzo. Over the 35 years of operation of the hall since its restoration in 1978, the integrity of the historical architectural and decorative elements of the interior has been compromised.

During the large-scale scientific restoration of 2012–2018. in reading room No. 3, the gallery, stairs, doors, portals, furniture, and finishing elements made of veneer and solid oak were restored; artistic parquet; three-tier brass chandeliers; picturesque panel “Friendship of Peoples”; 16 plaster busts of famous public and cultural figures; bronze sculpture of V.I. Lenin.

In 2018, reading room No. 3 became a laureate of the Moscow Government competition "Moscow Restoration" in the category "high quality of repair and restoration work."

July 1, 2012 marks the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Russian State Library.

The Moscow Public Library (now the Russian State Library, or RSL) was founded on July 1 (June 19, old style) 1862.

The collection of the Russian State Library originates from the collection of Count Nikolai Rumyantsev (1754-1826), which included more than 28 thousand books, 710 manuscripts, and more than 1000 maps. The collection belonged to the private museum of the count, which he created in St. Petersburg. After Rumyantsev’s death, his brother turned to Emperor Nicholas I with a request to accept the gift and transfer the museum and library with manuscript and book collections to the government. By decree of the emperor, the museum became known as Rumyantsevsky.

The St. Petersburg period in the history of the Rumyantsev Museum and its library ended in 1861, when, on the initiative of Muscovites who wanted to organize a public library in the city, it was decided to transfer the collection to Moscow. The library was housed in a building built by the Russian architect Vasily Bazhenov next to the Kremlin at the end of the 18th century and known as the Pashkov House.

This building still belongs to the library. department of manuscripts, where 600 thousand written and graphic monuments are stored, the oldest of which date back to the 7th century. There is also a department of music publishing and sound recordings and a cartographic department.

Officially, the founding date of the Russian State Library is considered to be July 1, 1862, when by decree of Emperor Alexander II the staff and budget of the library were approved, and the library’s receipt of one legal copy of all printed materials published in Russia was legalized. In addition to mandatory receipts, the library fund was replenished through gifts and donations. Thus, the collection of books by the Minister of Public Education Avraam Norov, donated to the library, numbered 16,000 books. This collection included publications of Greek and Roman writers, works by Machiavelli, a unique collection of Giordano Bruno’s lifetime publications with an autograph on one of the books, Russian scientific monographs of the first half of the 19th century - the collection is still one of the most valuable in the fund libraries.

Hundreds of collections, individual books, and manuscripts came to the library from donors, among whom were the merchant and publisher Kozma Soldatenkov, the scientist Fyodor Chizhov, the bibliophile and musicologist Vladimir Odoevsky, the son of Alexander Pushkin Alexander, the daughter of Leo Tolstoy Sophia and many others.

For almost a century, from the late 20s of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20s of the 20th century (in the St. Petersburg and Moscow periods), the library functioned as part of a complex that kept the name of the Rumyantsev Museum unchanged in its official names.

The library of the Moscow Public and Rumyantsev Museums has become a true cultural center. Artistic works and scientific works were created in its reading rooms. The library's readers included Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov, and Vladimir Korolenko.

On January 29, 1992, by decree of the President of Russia, the State Library of the USSR named after V.I. Lenin was transformed into the Russian State Library (RSL).

In the second half of the 1990s, the library began to use automated bibliographic search systems and create electronic catalogs.

The Russian State Library is a participant in the UNESCO Memory of the World program, designed to protect the world's documentary heritage and, to the extent possible, ensure wide access to it. In 1997, at the request of the Russian State Library, several library collections and individual books recognized as world documentary heritage were included in the international Memory of the World register: the Arkhangelsk Gospel of 1092, the Khitrovo Gospel, Slavic editions of the Cyrillic font of the 15th century, a collection of maps of the Russian Empire of the 18th century, Russian posters of the late 19th - early 20th centuries.

In 2000, the main book depository of the library was closed for reconstruction, related, among other things, to the need for its technical re-equipment. In 2003, the reconstruction was completed, but this did not solve the problem of lack of space to accommodate the library collection. The capabilities of its storage facilities were exhausted by the beginning of the 80s of the twentieth century. Since then, the library has been replenished annually with 300 - 500 thousand publications.

In 2007, the construction of a new building of the Russian State Library was included in the list of construction projects and facilities for federal needs for 2008-2010 by order of the Government of the Russian Federation.

The new building of the Russian State Library is behind the main building, on Vozdvizhenka Street. Construction is expected to begin this year, 2012.

Within the walls of the Russian State Library there is a unique collection of domestic and foreign documents in 367 languages. The volume of the fund exceeds 43 million storage units. There are specialized collections of maps, sheet music, sound recordings, rare books, dissertations, newspapers and other types of publications.