HISTORY

The library cel­e­brates its anniver­saries at the same time as the Uni­ver­si­ty itself.

This is quite nat­ur­al: as soon as an edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tion is found­ed, its library is found­ed too. The unique­ness of the Uni­ver­si­ty library fund is due to the fact that the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture about for­est was formed and gath­ered togeth­er with the work of the Uni­ver­si­ty, along with the devel­op­ment of for­est edu­ca­tion in Russia.

The 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.

In the year of the Library foun­da­tion the nation­al sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture deal­ing with for­est num­bered a few edi­tions. Cur­rent­ly, the library Fund has about 1.5 mil­lion vol­umes on the whole com­plex of forestry prob­lems and this col­lec­tion of the Uni­ver­si­ty library reflects the essence, depth and pow­er of for­est Russ­ian science.

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”  — this was a col­lec­tion of books, con­sist­ing main­ly of for­eign sil­vi­cul­tur­al pub­li­ca­tions. It gave rise to the library, which lat­er became the world’s largest depos­i­to­ry of for­est literature.

In the first half of the 19th cen­tu­ry, the For­est Insti­tute was reor­ga­nized sev­er­al times. As a result the Library received books from Kozel­sk and Orlovsk for­est edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions which were joined to the For­est insti­tute. It became the aim of the Library to col­lect as ful­ly as pos­si­ble and to pre­serve Russ­ian and for­eign for­est lit­er­a­ture. Doc­u­ments remained which show that books for the library was pur­chased in Paris, Berlin, the Swiss antique shops, were ordered from Lon­don and oth­er cities.

The Old Fund of the Fun­da­men­tal Library

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. Many of them can now be attrib­uted to the cat­e­go­ry of rarities.

Of the numer­ous Library old for­eign edi­tions  the works of Dugamel du Mon­ceau are worth men­tion­ing. They appeared in the mid-18th cen­tu­ry and rep­re­sent­ed a sep­a­rate era of forestry sci­ence of the West. Among the books which are also worth men­tion­ing are the books of the Ger­man clas­si­cal forestry schol­ars G. Hart­ing, G. Kot­ta, F. Pfeile, etc.

Among them are:

• Full set of “Works of the Free Eco­nom­ic Soci­ety” (1765–1915)
• “For­est Jour­nal” which is pre­sent­ed by all vol­umes — from the first book of 1833 to the last issue of 1918 (title pages of the first and the last journals)
• the Jour­nal “Agri­cul­ture and Forestry”: a month­ly jour­nal of the Min­istry  of farm­ing. — 1865–1918.
• “Russ­ian Forestry”: was issued twice a week in 1892–1894 and con­tained a large num­ber of arti­cles on all issues of forestry. The jour­nal played a promi­nent role in the dis­sem­i­na­tion of sci­en­tif­ic and prac­ti­cal for­est engi­neer­ing knowledge.
• “Nature and Hunt­ing”: a month­ly illus­trat­ed jour­nal. Press organ of the soci­ety of hunt­ing and com­mer­cial ani­mals repro­duc­tion and prop­er hunt­ing. — 1878–1912. (cov­er and title page)

A spe­cial place in the library’s fund is occu­pied by 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 of 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.

(por­trait of Peter I.)

Besides the Decrees of Peter I 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.

Among them are:

“Instruc­tion on the Man­age­ment of the For­est Depart­ment at the Min­ing Plants of the Urals Moun­tain Range, Accord­ing to the Rules of the For­est Sci­ence and Prop­er Econ­o­my” pub­lished by the Min­is­ter of Finance Count Kankrin in 1830. The instruc­tion was sent to all min­ing man­age­r­i­al boards, min­ing cham­bers which were in charge of state forests man­age­ment, to for­est offi­cials. It con­tains 120 para­graphs “in the form of a schol­ar­ly man­u­al for con­sid­er­a­tions in car­ry­ing out for­est activ­i­ties and the dis­sem­i­na­tion of the most nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion about forestry.”

“The List of Cir­cu­lars of the For­est Depart­ment from Jan­u­ary 1, 1863 to Jan­u­ary 1, 1868, on sub­jects in alpha­bet­i­cal order”.  In the “List” all the cir­cu­lar reg­u­la­tions were stat­ed from the “Sys­tem­at­ic Code” with a brief expla­na­tion of which item each cir­cu­lar refers to.

The library holds unique books — the first domes­tic forestry pub­li­ca­tions and text­books on spe­cial for­est disciplines.

In 1869 Sergey Niko­lae­vich Stepanov was invit­ed to the posi­tion of librar­i­an. He intro­duced a “serf” arrange­ment of books in the fund, which cor­re­spond­ed to the advanced tech­nolo­gies of the library sci­ence of that time. After S.N. Stepanov, the posi­tion of librar­i­an was occu­pied by D.M. Kravchin­sky, V.B. Struve, N.G. Lei.

From 1903 to 1917 years. the librar­i­an of the fun­da­men­tal Library was L.N. Ged­imin. He worked on the cre­ation of an alpha­bet­ic cat­a­logue. In 1915 he elab­o­rat­ed a sys­tem­at­ic cat­a­logue on the dec­i­mal classification.

Since 1803, the library main­tains a unique card index of jour­nal arti­cles. To date, it has 500 boxes.

In addi­tion to the usu­al ways of lit­er­a­ture acqui­si­tion, the library received books from pri­vate libraries. This way books that belonged to a tal­ent­ed sci­en­tist S.P. Karelshchikov (died in 1869) were pur­chased as well as books from the per­son­al library of a famous Russ­ian econ­o­mist, for­mer pro­fes­sor of the For­est Insti­tute V.L. Khod­sky, the libraries of pro­fes­sor V.T. Sobichevsky, the forester G.F. Vyshin­sky and others.

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

In the mid­dle of the XIX cen­tu­ry. the Library’s fund num­bered about two and a half thou­sand volumes.

In the 60’s of XIX cen­tu­ry  its funds sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand­ed due to the trans­fer of the col­lec­tions of Moscow Petro­vskaya Agri­cul­tur­al and Forestry acad­e­mies, the Gora-Goret­sky Agri­cul­tur­al Insti­tute, the stud­ies of A.N. Engel­hardt, P.A. Kosty­chev, I.P. Borodin, A.F. Rudzky, G. F. Moro­zov, M.M. Orlov and oth­er pro­fes­sors and teach­ers of the For­est Insti­tute (renamed in 1877), the works of high­er edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions and sci­en­tif­ic soci­eties of Rus­sia — the Petro­vskaya Agri­cul­tur­al and For­est Acad­e­my, the Novo-Alexan­dria Insti­tute of Agri­cul­ture and Forestry, the Min­ing Insti­tute , The Insti­tute of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Routes, the Russ­ian Tech­ni­cal Soci­ety, the Russ­ian Geo­graph­i­cal soci­ety and Russ­ian Chem­i­cal society,

Moscow, Peters­burg, Kiev and oth­er uni­ver­si­ties, the Tarandt For­est Acad­e­my (Ger­many), the For­est Acad­e­my in Eber­swalde (Ger­many), the High­er School of For­est in Nan­cy (France), socio-polit­i­cal and art mag­a­zines: “Con­tem­po­rary”,  ““Domes­tic Pro­ceed­ings,” Russ­ian Bul­letin”, “Bul­letin of Europe “,” Russ­ian Antiques “, etc.

Teach­ers — pro­fes­sors A.N. Engel­gar­dt, I.P. Borodin, P.A. Kosty­chev, P.S. Kosso­vich, A.F. Rudzky and oth­ers took part in the Library’s fund creation.

G.F. Moro­zov, cre­at­ed a unique library at the Forestry Depart­ment, in which about 10,000 books, mag­a­zines, pam­phlets and prints were col­lect­ed. The funds received books from per­son­al libraries of S. P. Kare­lit­sikov, V. L. Khod­sky, V.T. Sobichevsky, G. F. Vyshin­sky and others.

Fun­da­men­tal Library in the XX Century

By the begin­ning of the XXth cen­tu­ry. the Library’s book fund num­bered about 50 thou­sand vol­umes, includ­ing those stored in offices and depart­ment libraries. At that time the Library main­ly served the senior and junior lec­tur­ers and pro­fes­sors of the insti­tute as well as stu­dents, which result­ed in the cre­ation of an inde­pen­dent stu­dents’ library in the 60s of the last cen­tu­ry. It exist­ed on the dona­tions of phil­an­thropists and mon­ey col­lect­ed by stu­dents. Lat­er, its fund was trans­ferred to the Fun­da­men­tal Library.

In the 1920s, the Library already had more than 100,000 vol­umes. Since that time, the order of acqui­si­tion for the fund changed: not only sci­en­tif­ic pub­li­ca­tions were pur­chased but also the boks for stu­dents’ train­ing. Reor­ga­niz­ing  of the Insti­tute into the For­est Tech­ni­cal Acad­e­my (1929) caused 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”.

In 1932, a bib­li­o­graph­ic bureau was cre­at­ed in the library. Ini­tial­ly, it served only aca­d­e­mics, but then it began pub­lish­ing an anno­tat­ed index “Lit­er­a­ture on the For­est Industry.”

Until the ear­ly 60s of the last cen­tu­ry, there was no a posi­tion of librar­i­an in the staff of the For­est Insti­tute. The work was per­formed by one of the offi­cials for a small addi­tion­al pay­ment “for man­ag­ing the library”. In 1863 the posi­tion of “librar­i­an and cura­tor of muse­ums” appears in the Acad­e­my. One of the first librar­i­ans was Mon­nerot du Maine, who car­ried out the work on account­ing, descrip­tion and clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the book fund.

In the 20s of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the Library was paid much atten­tion by the Coun­cil of the Insti­tute pro­fes­sors, mem­bers of the Coun­cil were appoint­ed the direc­tors of the Library — prof. LA Ivanov, prof. N. P. Kobra­nov. From 1928 to 1937 V.P Makarov was the direc­tor of the Library.

In 1937 T.A .Pakhuno­va became the direc­tor of the Library. By 1941 alpha­bet­ic cat­a­logues were reor­ga­nized, a clas­si­fi­ca­tion scheme for a sys­tem­at­ic cat­a­logue was worked out and the cat­a­logue itself was cre­at­ed. 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.

 Fun­da­men­tal Library of the XXI Century

At present the Fun­da­men­tal library has more than a mil­lion vol­umes in its book depositories.

The col­lec­tion of sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture con­tains more than half a mil­lion volumes.

The Library has an exten­sive col­lec­tion of uni­ver­sal and indus­try ency­clopae­dias, dic­tio­nar­ies, ref­er­ence books, bib­li­o­graph­ic pub­li­ca­tions, lit­er­a­ture on nat­ur­al sci­ences, human­i­ties and all branch­es of the for­est complex:

- eco­nom­ics of for­est and for­est chem­i­cal complex

- forestry, ecol­o­gy, nature management

- log­ging industry

- wood work­ing indus­try, sawmilling, ply­wood and fur­ni­ture production

- chem­i­cal pro­cess­ing of wood, pulp and paper indus­try, pro­duc­tion of wood plas­tics and boards

The library Fund includes edu­ca­tion­al, sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture, peri­od­i­cals, dis­ser­ta­tions, research reports, state stan­dards. There is lit­er­a­ture in Eng­lish, Ger­man, French, Bul­gar­i­an, Roman­ian, Pol­ish, Czech, Hun­gar­i­an, Chinese.

The sec­ond largest is the Fund of text­books and man­u­als , which num­bers more than 600 thou­sand vol­umes. Its com­po­si­tion is con­stant­ly updat­ed in accor­dance with the cur­ricu­lum. The library has a col­lec­tion of man­u­scripts and type­writ­ten works, a set of stan­dards, patents and indus­tri­al cat­a­logues. The fic­tion Fund num­bers more than 25,000 volumes.

In 1993, the Library start­ed automa­tion of library process­es. Par­tic­u­lar atten­tion is paid to the fur­ther devel­op­ment of the auto­mat­ed library sys­tem “IRBIS-64” and the local library net­work. The elec­tron­ic cat­a­logue is con­stant­ly updat­ed through new acqui­si­tions, retro­con­ver­sion of tra­di­tion­al cat­a­logue and record­ing of peri­od­i­cals, col­lec­tions of arti­cles, pro­ceed­ings of con­fer­ences and sci­en­tif­ic papers.

Expe­ri­ence of work with mod­ern infor­ma­tion­al tech­nolo­gies makes it pos­si­ble to con­tin­ue the prac­tice of con­vert­ing card cat­a­logues, cre­ate an elec­tron­ic cat­a­logue for the Library rar­i­ties fund.

The fun­da­men­tal library of FTU takes part in inter­na­tion­al book exchange. For many years we received peri­od­i­cals and works of relat­ed high­er schools of Bul­gar­ia, Ger­many, Swe­den and, espe­cial­ly, Fin­land. The Interuni­ver­si­ty col­lec­tions of works of the Forestry Acad­e­my (in par­tic­u­lar: “Pro­tec­tion of For­est”, “Ecol­o­gy and Pro­tec­tion of For­est”, “Forestry, For­est Cul­tures and Soil Sci­ence”, etc.) were sent in exchange.

The basis of the library is its book fund. Thanks to the self­less work of many gen­er­a­tions of library staff, a unique book col­lec­tion has been formed and preserved.

Library Nowa­days

At present the Fun­da­men­tal library has more than a mil­lion vol­umes in its book depositories.

The col­lec­tion of sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture con­tains more than half a mil­lion volumes.

The Library has an exten­sive col­lec­tion of uni­ver­sal and indus­try ency­clopae­dias, dic­tio­nar­ies, ref­er­ence books, bib­li­o­graph­ic pub­li­ca­tions, lit­er­a­ture on nat­ur­al sci­ences, human­i­ties and all branch­es of the for­est complex:

- eco­nom­ics of for­est and for­est chem­i­cal complex

- forestry, ecol­o­gy, nature management

- log­ging industry

- wood work­ing indus­try, sawmilling, ply­wood and fur­ni­ture production

- chem­i­cal pro­cess­ing of wood, pulp and paper indus­try, pro­duc­tion of wood plas­tics and boards

The library Fund includes edu­ca­tion­al, sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture, peri­od­i­cals, dis­ser­ta­tions, research reports, state stan­dards. There is lit­er­a­ture in Eng­lish, Ger­man, French, Bul­gar­i­an, Roman­ian, Pol­ish, Czech, Hun­gar­i­an, Chinese.

The sec­ond largest is the Fund of text­books and man­u­als , which num­bers more than 600 thou­sand vol­umes. Its com­po­si­tion is con­stant­ly updat­ed in accor­dance with the cur­ricu­lum. The library has a col­lec­tion of man­u­scripts and type­writ­ten works, a set of stan­dards, patents and indus­tri­al cat­a­logues. The fic­tion Fund num­bers more than 25,000 volumes.

Sub­scrip­tion to the peri­od­i­cals on the pro­file of the Uni­ver­si­ty is car­ried out annually.

In 1993, the Library start­ed automa­tion of library process­es. Par­tic­u­lar atten­tion is paid to the fur­ther devel­op­ment of the auto­mat­ed library sys­tem “IRBIS-64” and the local library net­work. The elec­tron­ic cat­a­logue is con­stant­ly updat­ed through new acqui­si­tions, retro­con­ver­sion of tra­di­tion­al cat­a­logue and record­ing of peri­od­i­cals, col­lec­tions of arti­cles, pro­ceed­ings of con­fer­ences and sci­en­tif­ic papers.

In addi­tion to print­ed pub­li­ca­tions there is  the Elec­tron­ic library sys­tem of the LAN pub­lish­ing house which con­tains full-text text­books and manuals.

Theme pack­ages:

• «Forestry and For­est Engineering»
• «Engi­neer­ing Sciences»
• «Infor­mat­ics»
• «Eco­nom­ics and Management»
• «Social and Human­i­tar­i­an Sciences»

Remote access to elec­tron­ic library sys­tem “LAN” is only pos­si­ble for autho­rized readers.

Work is under­way to cre­ate a Uni­ver­si­ty ELS (Elec­tron­ic Library Sys­tem). All lit­er­a­ture pub­lished by the Uni­ver­si­ty authors in 2008–2015 was con­vert­ed into pdf for­mat and inte­grat­ed into the sys­tem IRBIS as an exter­nal object. Cur­rent­ly, it is avail­able through the elec­tron­ic cat­a­logue of the library in the read­ing room and from any com­put­er of our University.