Collection of Rare and Valuable Books

More than 300 thousand storage units. Among them are:

• more than 45 thousand units in the auxiliary collection,
• more than 7 thousand units in the microfilms collection, 
• 44 units on CD-ROMs.

This fund is formed as a collection and consists of a series of topical, bibliological and proprietary collections. Structurally it’s divided into sub funds, having in mind the chronological and linguistic characteristics of the materials in them. The collection is widely represented by early printed domestic editions of the XVI — the first quarter of the XIX century, foreign editions of XV—XVII centuries and books of a more recent periods (optional). Apart from the books, there are pamphlets, leaflets, newspapers, magazines, music scores, maps, albums. Mostly there are publications in traditional media (but there are individual samples which are printed on unusual materials — silk, cork, etc.).

The Auxiliary (auxiliary science) Collection, supplementing the main one, contains material on the history of books and publishing (printing, publishing, book trade, periodicals, paper, binding, illustrations, etc.).

• Catalogues of Research department of rare books
• Central catalogue system
• Also in a Digital catalogue of the RSL: 
  catalogue of early printed books (published from 1450 till 1830) 
  catalogue of books (published since 1830 to present)
• Digital resources:
  Digital catalogue of the RSL
  Digital library of the RSL (collection of 'Early printed books')