Let’s Open Rare Books
среда 25 октября 2023, 15:35
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How often do you look at a book’s year of publication? Can you remember the oldest book you have ever read or taken?
The reading room of the Library Department of Rare Books gives you the opportunity to work with the items published one, two, or even three centuries ago. Among them, for example, the lifetime and first editions of such Russian writers and poets as Anton Chekhov, Alexander Ostrovsky, Vladimir Mayakovsky, as well as of outstanding scientists like Isaak Newton or Edward Burnett Tylor.
The department keeps rare (from 1831 to 1917) and of particular value (the 17th century–1830) separate books and special collections. For example, a considerable part of the fund consists of the collection from the library of the Imperial Alexander Lyceum, the graduates of which were Alexander Pushkin and his comrades. It was gifted to the Ural university in 1920. In this collection a particular attention should be focused on the books from the library of Catherine II and her court official Alexander Lanskoy donated to the Lyceum by the Emperor Alexander I. With this collection, the items from the Van-der-Vliet statesmen’s family library were delivered to Yekaterinburg.
The 45-thousand items collection of the department includes also contemporary books, among them around four thousand scientific-auxiliary editions aimed at studying the history of book business and history of private collections.
Throughout the academic year all the students and faculty can visit the department permanent exposition. This year it is dedicated to the 300th anniversary of Yekaterinburg. The exhibits include city documents, address-calendars and guides dated from the 19th–early 20th centuries, as well as the famous “Proceedings of the Ural Society of Natural Science Lovers”, and some modern city history researches.
To take back amazing memories of the unique books, photography is allowed but without the use of flash.
Authors: Anastasia Komarova, Olga Kravchenko
Translator: Natalia Krasnogor |
