On 3 and 4 October, the complete facsimile reconstruction of Skaryna’s heritage was presented at the V. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, which keeps many original editions of the printing pioneer.

The deputy director of the National Library of Belarus Alies Susha donated to the biggest Ukrainian library the 20-volume edition and made a presentation about the results of the five-year work on the preparation of this unique publication.

The V. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine will celebrate its 100th anniversary in less than a year. The general director of the library Vladimir Popik emphasized that the effort of his Belarusian colleagues for the preparation and celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Belarusian book-printing deserved a lot of respect, and furthermore, it was really a heroic act making all the librarians from the neighboring countries to intensify their work on the study and promotion of national book heritage.

According to the appeals and demands of the National Library of Belarus in 2014–2017, the editions of Francysk Skaryna were provided for digitizing by the Ukrainian libraries as follow: the V. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, the V. Stefanyk National Academic Library in Lvov, Odessa National Scientific Library, the A. Sheptytsky National Museum in Lvov and the T. Legotsky Zakarpattia Regional Museum in Uzhgorod. The scanned copies were handed over to the National Library of Belarus for use and publishing as part of digital collections.

At the presentation Alies Susha expressed sincere gratitude to the Ukrainian colleagues for their cooperation. It is safe to say that the transfer of digital copies from Ukraine to Belarus and the facsimile edition from Belarus to Ukraine will stimulate further cultural and scientific relations between our countries.