Book acquisitions

In the last year, due to budgetary funds, the National Library of Belarus acquired rare artifacts of national and European literary culture and archival materials. The library bought over 200 West-European early printed books of the ХVІ–ХVІІІ centuries, and also rare publications, manuscripts, archival materials and publications of the early ХХ century concerning the history of Belarus.

Among the possessions there are the XVIII century manuscript book which was the propriety of a church on the territory of Belarus, as witnessed by a record of 1790; a complex of archival materials of the early twentieth century in Polish and Russian language concerning the parish in Staryja Vasiliški (the Vilna Province), as well as documents and photographs of 1938–1945 which belong to the native of Vitebsk, the veteran of the Great Patriotic War K.I. Lomač.

The most ancient artifact of printed book culture is a Venetian edition of the Bible, 1548.

The collection of West-European early printed documents has considerably enlarged by receiving the XVIІ century publications of the famous Dutch printers and publishers Plantins and Elseviers. Of particular interest are a copy of the famous work by K. Siemianovič Vialіkaje Mastactva artyleryі ... (Grand art d’Artillerie ...) having two title pages, as well as publications marked with invalid output data which the Elseviers used in the mid XVIІ century. A wonderful example of publishing skills of the XVIІ-XVIІІ centuries is book production of other printers in Amsterdam, Geneva, Leipzig, Paris, London, Prague.

Among the early printed and rare books there stand out those with bookplates, stamps and other signs of the owners of Belarusian book collections – the Radzivils and the Huten-Čapskis.

A set of high-quality facsimile editions is represented, in particular, by six volumes of the XVI century Civitates Orbis Terrarum by F. Hogenberg and G. Braun, which is the first in the history of cartography atlas of cities, and one copy of scientific comments.

The exhibition runs from 1 February, 2016.

For more info please call: (+375 17) 293 27 22.