For many years Scientific and Technical Library of NTUU "KPI" named after H.I.Denysenko keeps such a large number of publications, that the greatest scholars of the university can not even realize. So it's time to talk about them and about their location, opening to students and teachers the new aspects of the library.
In 2010, the formation in the library fund of rare and valuable books made it possible to estimate the ancient and book monuments that reflect the best way all stages of development and history of the discoveries of both national and foreign science and technology. Acquisition of this fund is by finding the necessary publications in the departments of scientific, technical, artistic and social economic literature and periodicals department. Many of them were not available to the public for several decades.
So now library is gradually opening the readers printed and manuscript treasures, this way acquainting them with real book monuments. All that is books and periodicals among which are really unique patterns of Scientific and Technical literature, printing and publishing art of XIX - early XX century.
There are editions from private collection of professors from Kyiv Polytechnic Institute that can be found in the fund of rare and valuable book. Since the first years of existing of university’s library the students and teachers formed a tradition to give books and magazines from their own book collections. Studying the inscriptions, autographs and proprietary printing, you can learn a lot about the history of the university.
Library’s book depository as well saves a big amount of ancient periodicals of XIX-XX century in which pages driving age of occurrence and development of many branches of science and technology. In our fund the scientific journals "Zodchyi", "Inzhenerъ», «Dingler's polytechnisches journal», «Vestnyk tehnologa", "Zapiski russkogho tehnycheskogho obshestva" and others can be found.
Using the publications from the fund of rare and valuable book of Scientific and Technical Library, you can learn something about Kiev publishers of the second half of XIX - early XX century. At that time , at the turn of the century , the city reached a high European level and counted a large number of cultural institutions , among them booksellers, typography and typolitography had been occupied an important place. So according to modern Kiev experts at the beginning of XX century the city had 48 bookstores, 20 libraries and free reading rooms had been operated. Wealthy merchants and nobility on their own initiative started to create printing establishments and to publish books of national and foreign authors, eventually this activity turned into a profitable business.
Significant part of rare and valuable editions are ancient tomes-printed books: books of XVIII - early XIX centuries. Despite the advanced age of these books, they now can become the theoretical basis for mastery of the classical exact sciences and engineering disciplines.
Except for sci-tech and educational literature, during the first years of the fund formation, there appeared a lot of publications of art and architecture literature and fiction. Among them there were outstanding writers’ lifetime publications and multi-books collections, first publications of unique scientific works. Works in history of art and architecture are also in the collection of rare and valuable books. It is to be mentioned that the department of building art and architecture existed in the Kyiv Polytechnic since the very its foundation. So it explains the reserve of valuable and highly artistic examples of art publications that is preserved in our library.
Exploring the books from the fund of rare and valuable book, it is possible to come across publications which were incredibly popular and useful in some branches of science and art. One of such publications preserved in the fund, is dedicated to the life and artwork of the artist, sculptor, engineer, inventor with an exceptional encyclopaedic knowledge from Florence Leonardo da Vinci. This publication’s author Yakym Volynskiy had written the monograph "Leonardo da Vinci” after a thorough research of written monuments about the artist and after visiting the cities, where his art was created. The work of Y. Volynskiy received a lot of credit and was highly evaluated by experts in history of art. Almost at once it was translated in Italian, and in some time the author was entitled as honorary citizen of Milan. A big collection of documents and files about life and artwork of the artist, which was gathered by him, became the part of memorial library-museum of Leonardo da Vinci.
The book, which is preserved now in the fund, is the second edition of the Yakym Volynskiy’s famous work, which is published in the Stefan Kulzhenko’s publishing house – one of the best and the most modern one in the whole Russian empire. It was updated by the author with historic facts which were unknown before, certain details and explications. In this publication there is also the last will of Leonardo, certain extracts from his writing, written by himself, the catalogue of his works and reproductions of his artistic paintings.
The fund of rare and valuable book gives an opportunity to get acquainted with the series "Classical exact sciences", which was funded by the eminent scientist Wilhelm Ostwald for popularization of sci-tech literature. The series consists of several hundreds of small books, and in our fund there are over 60 exemplars. They contain classical works in astronomy, mathematics, physics, chemistry and physiology. It is interesting, that during the work on this series certain editions were updated by representatives of respective sciences. Exactly owing to this series of original works of outstanding scientists we have a chance to follow the history of scientific thought.
In this fund there also is reserved the unique annals of development of national science and technology "Notes of Imperial Russian Technical community", which was founded in 1866. Most of the tomes were book binded and on their back there is a mark "L.K.P.I", which means "Library of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute".
All in all, the library of NTUU "KPI" gives an opportunity to all scientists, researchers and students to explore these and many other different publications, which can become a great example of development of publishing and typography of printed and written works.
Anastasiya Sohach, librarian
Переклад: Карліна А., Логінова Є.