Book Collections of European Military Libraries of the 18th — 19th Centuries in the Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Abstract

It is known that the history of book collections of past centuries’ libraries, including military ones, is tragic: for many reasons, they are often either scattered or preserved in small fragments. Today, when libraries intensively work to digitize their holdings and search out historical book collections, it is very important to identify and attribute books from foreign, as well as from Russian military libraries.For the first time, the article describes the work carried out to identify publications of foreign (and partly Russian) military libraries from the rare books collection of the Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The article considers the publications as a source of information about scientific knowledge (military libraries were aimed to acquaint their readers with the basics of military art and the latest achievements in military science). There is shown that the content of such libraries’ collections did not exclude thematic diversity, targeted to comprehensively form the officer’s personality: professional, moral and cultural. The article examines the books of the 18th—19th centuries from military libraries of Europe, currently stored in the Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the book marks in them proving the publications’ belonging to specific military libraries. There is highlighted the importance of book marks for the attribution of collections (and libraries) that existed in the past, but turned out to be scattered. The results obtained show that the publications and book marks of military book collections are a strong and reliable source in studying the history of military affairs, military science, and the history of military libraries, and confirm the need for further serious work with the library’s rare book collection.