Officers’ Libraries in the Corps of Military Engineers: How Many of Them Were There?

Abstract

Recently there appeared quite a lot of publications on the history of military libraries of pre-revolutionary Russia. There arose the question, how many of them there were and why it was so important to know their quantity? In response to this question, first of all, we can discuss the classification of military libra-ries. Basing on the obtained quantitative data we can determine the eligibility of use of the terms “Military Library System” and “System of Military Librarianship”, applied to the libraries of the Ministry of War. Besides that, considering the number of military libraries, we can compare them with the other book collections. In the article on the basis of the pre-revolutionary sources there is counted for the first time the number of engineer and sapper officers’ libraries in the Corps of military engineers. Reliability basis for counting the number of libraries is made by the “Regulations” of 1838, 1863, 1889, orders of the engineering Department, some catalogues of the books, regimental history, and annual summarized publications of journals on the number of its subscribers. On the basis of the above documents and publications there is consistently analyzed the growth dynamics of the officers’ libraries in the Corps of military engineers.