I. I. Betsky’s collection in the stock of the Scientific Library of the Russian Academy of Arts

Abstract

The Scientific Library of the Russian Academyof Arts is one of the most important specialized art libraries in Russia. The formation of its library collections began almost immediately after the decree of the Senate on the creation of the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. One of the first collections transferred to the Academy of Arts, along with the famous collection of I. I. Shuvalov, was the collection of books of the first presidentof the Academy of Arts, Ivan Ivanovich Betsky. According to the “Catalogue of books of the Imperial Academy of Arts”, compiled by the artist, academic inspector K. I. Golovachevsky in 1773, on behalf of Betsky in 1765, 69 titles of publications in 85 volumes were transferred to the Academy. The inventory was compiled entirelyin Russian, including the names of authors and titles of foreign publications, which greatly hampered the process of identifying books.Working with archival sources, online resources of foreign libraries and library catalogs madeit possible to compile an extended inventory of books with original titles and library codes.To date, the study of the collection of I. I. Betskyis at the stage of reconciliation with the inventory.The purpose of this article is to raise the issueof a comprehensive study of personal collections in the stock of the Scientific Library of the Russian Academy of Arts, and, on the example of the collection of I. I. Betsky, of the need to develop this field of library research. The published materials represent one from the methods of work on identifying individual collections: to compile according to the documents the historical reconstruction, being the base of the search for publications in the stock, carried out further, and give the general component characteristics of the collection under analysis.