GENERAL INFO

The fun­da­men­tal library of the Uni­ver­si­ty is one of the largest Uni­ver­si­ty for­est libraries in Rus­sia. Its book col­lec­tions reflect the his­to­ry of for­est sci­ence and for­est edu­ca­tion, for­est man­age­ment experience.

The library is as old as the Uni­ver­si­ty itself, they share a com­mon his­to­ry of more than two hun­dred years.

The Uni­ver­si­ty library is one of the largest Uni­ver­si­ty for­est libraries in Rus­sia. Its book col­lec­tions reflect the his­to­ry of for­est sci­ence and for­est edu­ca­tion, for­est man­age­ment experience.

The first infor­ma­tion about the Library dates back  to 1803. In the “Pro­vi­sion” on the foun­da­tion of the Rus­si­a’s first for­est school in Tsarskoye Selo (Tzar’s Vil­lage) it is stat­ed: “At the for­est school there should be a small col­lec­tion of books on forestry of the best authors for the stu­dents to use it” It gave rise to the Library — one of the world’s largest depos­i­to­ries of for­est literature.

A spe­cial place in the Fund of our library is occu­pied by the col­lec­tion of rare books. It has 8000 unique edi­tions of the lumi­nar­ies of for­est sci­ence of 17–19 cen­turies. Among them there are the first forestry pub­li­ca­tions and train­ing man­u­als on spe­cial for­est sub­jects of the famous sci­en­tists of the time: P. Divov, A. Zablon­sko­go, P. Pere­ly­gin, G. Hardinga, Cotta.

The Library hous­es the first edi­tions of the works of M. V. Lomonosov, Lin­naeus, S. P. Krashenin­nikov, P. Pal­las, N. M.Karamzin, G. R. Derzhavin, A. Kantemir.

In the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry the Library fund con­sist­ed of about two and a half thou­sand volumes.

One of the most valu­able pub­li­ca­tions in the rar­i­ties col­lec­tion of the library is ” The Decrees of Peter the Great” pub­lished by the Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in 1739.

The size of the book is 25х19 cm, it is 10 cm thick.

In the reign of Peter I the need for large mer­chantable wood for ship­build­ing, iron and steel indus­try increased.

It was these rea­sons that made Peter I pay atten­tion to forests as a source of indus­tri­al devel­op­ment of Russia.

Almost half of the for­est decrees, orders and let­ters of Peter I in 1722–1723 dealt with the reg­u­la­tions on log­ging, pro­tec­tion and ratio­nal use of the most valu­able ship forests. These decrees laid the foun­da­tions of the sys­tem of state own­er­ship and man­age­ment of forests, estab­lished posi­tions of for­est supervisors.

Seri­ous research inter­est in the his­to­ry of forestry and for­est leg­is­la­tion is rep­re­sent­ed by the fol­low­ing pub­li­ca­tions: Wrangel V. (Baron)” His­to­ry of For­est Leg­is­la­tion of the Russ­ian Empire, with the sup­ple­ment of an essay on the his­to­ry of  Russ­ian ship forests ” — St. Peters­burg.: Print­ing house of. Fish­er, 1841. — 153 p.;Shelgunov N. V. “His­to­ry of Russ­ian For­est Leg­is­la­tion” — St. Peters­burg, 1857; admin­is­tra­tive orders on forestry rep­re­sent­ed in the Library in the most entirety.

The most valu­able Fund of the Library is the col­lec­tion of forestry lit­er­a­ture, a sig­nif­i­cant part of which is made up by Russ­ian and for­eign sci­en­tif­ic peri­od­i­cals. At present many of them can be attrib­uted to the cat­e­go­ry of rarities.

Among them are: a full set of “Works of the Free Eco­nom­ic Soci­ety” (1765–1915), “For­est Jour­nal” which is pre­sent­ed from its first vol­ume of 1833 to the last issue of 1918.

Title pages of the first and last issue of the journal.

The reor­ga­niz­ing of the Insti­tute into the For­est Tech­ni­cal Acad­e­my (1929) result­ed in an increase in the num­ber of stu­dents, the cre­ation of new fac­ul­ties, depart­ments, lab­o­ra­to­ries. Dur­ing these years the Library funds increased, the pro­file of acqui­si­tion was sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand­ed. In 1932 the bib­li­o­graph­ic bureau was cre­at­ed. Ini­tial­ly it was used only by the sci­en­tists of the Acad­e­my, but then it began to pub­lish the anno­tat­ed index “Lit­er­a­ture on For­est Industry”.

Dur­ing the great Patri­ot­ic war the Library did not stop its work. In the hard win­ter of 1941/42, many Library employ­ees died of star­va­tion. At the end of 1944 the Library start­ed get­ting pre­pared for read­ers’ ser­vice resump­tion. After the war Tama­ra Zuye­va became the head of the Library. She was at the head of the library till 1977. For many years she col­lect­ed mate­ri­als relat­ed to the his­to­ry of the Acad­e­my. Thanks to her research we know not only the offi­cial his­to­ry of the Acad­e­my, but also the con­tri­bu­tion made by its pro­fes­sors, teach­ers and grad­u­ates for the ben­e­fit of nation­al for­est sci­ence and practice.

The basis of the library is its book Fund. Due to the devo­tee activ­i­ty of many gen­er­a­tions of library staff, a unique book col­lec­tion was formed and preserved.