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1. The Russian State Library
The Russian people read more than any other nation in the world. They read on the metro, on planes, on tranes, during their holidays. In fact anywhere and everywhere. Of cource, with a total of 4,000 million
volumes in our 350,000 public
libraries, there is no shortage of reading matter.
The national library
contains more than 40 million volumes.
The library's
brain is in the
catalogue room, where all information is easily
available. The catalogues /hundreds of them/ list the books alphabetically,
according to subject, and there are also special information and bibliographcal departments
dealing with information about every known work
published in the world. There is also a new
publications' room which changes its
contents every week.
Every year the library recives some 700,000 Russian and 250,000 foreigh publications.
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4. Libraries
The word
library comes from the Latin word
"liber", meaning a book. This is a place where information in print (books, manuscripts, periodicals and musical scores) and in other forms is collected and arranged to serve people of all ages and intrests.
Libraries appeared in aciend times in Egypt, Assyria, Greece and Rome. Perhaps the most famous library of that early day was at Alexandria. It was founded by Ptolomy I. Ptolomy who orered the librarians to collect all Greek texts as well as manuscripts in other languages from every part of the known word. By the middle of the 1st century BC there were about 700,000 papyrus rolls in the library.
The first libraries in Russia were establisced in medieval
[,medi'iv(e)l] monasteries. Public libraries were opened in 19
th century at the Academy of Sciences and Moscow University.
The library today is a centre for all kinds of communications: printed, pictured, recorded, and even electronically stored. People go to the library to read, look, listen, search, inquire, relax, discuss, learn, and think.
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