The Public Library of P. I. Makushin in Tomsk: The Quantitative and Qualitative Fund Structure at the End of the XIX – the Beginning of the XX Century

Abstract

The fund of the Public Library of P. I. Makushin in Tomsk and the dynamics of its replenishment at the end of the XIXth – the beginning of the XXth century are presented and analyzed. The purpose of the article is to reconstruct the fund of this library. To achieve it, use was made of eleven printed catalogs of this library, additions and attachments to them of different years. This base allowed the calculation the number of titles and volumes of books in the library as a whole and in its departments. It is discovered that their number has increased respectively from 3925 and 6415 in 1878 to 7162 and 9334 in 1907, and in 1916 the fund was replenished by another 2753 and 3745 tytles, which allows us to talk about the steady positive dynamics of the fund replenishment. Quantitative indicators of titles and volumes with works by famous domestic and foreign writers are given in dynamics. Short lists of authors whose works on art, scientific and philosophical works presented in the library fund, and a number of works in all departments are compiled. The presence in the fund of such publications that have introduced to readers the achievements of science and technology, various religious, socio-­political and economic teachings, including revolutionary ones, together with the increase in the number of books in the fund and the predominance of secular literature in it is the manifestation of the modernization of traditional society that took place in the country during the period under review.