Metadata: Research Archive of the V. I. Vernads’kyi National Library of Ukraine
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- Manuscript Institute of the V. I. Vernads’kyi National Library of Ukraine
- Holding institution (official language):
- Інститут рукопису Національної бібліотеки України ім. В.І. Вернадського
- Postal address:
- Building number 2, 62 Vladimirskaya street, 3rd floor, room 307; 4th floor, room 403, Kiev 03039, Ukraine
- Phone number:
- 380 (44) 288-1418
- Web address:
- http://www.nbuv.gov.ua/node/1
- Email:
- irnbuv@gmail.com
- Reference number:
- F. Аrkh. NBUV
- Title:
- Research Archive of the V. I. Vernads’kyi National Library of Ukraine
- Title (official language):
- Научный архив НБУВ
- Creator/accumulator:
- Research Archive of the V. I. Vernads’kyi National Library of Ukraine
- Date note:
- 1918 – 21st century (supplementation of the fond is ongoing)
- Language:
- Russian
- German
- Ukrainian
- Extent:
- 2,074 storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
The fonds includes a whole corpus of documents from the archive of the National Library of Ukraine that shed light on the the establishment of the library’s department of Jewish literature and the formation of its Judaica fonds. Among these are minutes of sessions of the Temporary Committee on Establishing the National Library of Ukraine at which proposals (of B.-Ts. Dinaburg, Ia. I. Izrael’son, and others) for the organisation of a Jewish department at the library were taken up; mentioned here is Ia. I. Izrael’son’s work in establishing a Desiderata catalogue for the Jewish department, and his involvement in selecting Jewish books for it (1919); minutes of sessions of the National Library of Ukraine Committee to discuss a proposal by Iu. S. Aleksandrovich, director of the National Library of Ukraine’s Vinnitsa branch, that Judaica and Hebraica departments be established (1923); and of the National Library of Ukraine Council on opening a standalone Jewish department (in connection with a proposal by the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences’ Department of Jewish Culture, 1928), to select a specialist librarian for the Jewish department, and to discuss the Institute of Jewish Culture director’s proposal that a unified academic Jewish library be established, to be called the Library of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Jewish Culture (1929).
Also housed in the fonds is correspondence of the National Library of Ukraine’s management with institutions and private individuals, including a copy of a letter to the sons of Dr. G. M. Barats expressing gratitude for their donation of the surviving portion of his book collection (1923); a letter to the director of the Institute of Jewish Culture on difficulties in selecting candidates for the post of Jewish department director, and a description of three candidates under consideration; requests to the State Book Fund for permission to select books for the library (at the Leningrad Book Depository No. 2) from the remnants of the collection of Baron D. G. Gintsburg (1929); etc.; reports of the library and its Jewish department containing information on the state of its fonds, the number of readers using it, its research work, etc.; data on the library’s receipt of donations of Jewish books and periodicals; lists of Jewish newspapers to which the library subscribed in 1918; information on the activities of the Bibliographic Section of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture, and on its library and press archive (1933); and data on the ethnic makeup of the library’s readers (1939).
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The V. I. Vernads’kyi National Library of Ukraine was established in 1918 (prior to the founding of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) as the All-National [Vsenarodnaia; natsional’naia] Library of the Ukrainian State [Ukrains’ka derzhava] (VBU) in the city of Kiev. Its title has since undergone several changes. In February 1919 it was placed under the jurisdiction of the Academy of Sciences and was called the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences’ All-National [Vsenarodnaia; natsional’naia] Library; and from 1921 on, the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences’ All-National [Vsenarodnaia] Library. On 13 February 1934, due to a reorganisation of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and its transfer from the jurisdiction of the People’s Commissariat of Education to that of the Ukrainian SSR Council of People’s Commissars, it was renamed the Library of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences. Beginning 7 August 1948, it was called the Ukrainian SSR State Public Library; from 1965-88, the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences’ Central Research Library; and from 1988-96, the V. I. Vernads’kyi Central Research Library of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, after which it received its present title.
The library’s Judaica fonds dates to 1919, when the first proposals were received concerning the establishment of a Jewish department at this institution. Originally the fonds was formed as a component of the Orientalia Department established through the efforts of Academician A. E. Krymskii, but in June 1928 a decision was adopted to establish a standalone Jewish Department (earlier, in 1923, Judaica and Hebraica departments, and a corresponding museum, were established at the Vinnitsa branch of the All-National Library of Ukraine). However, in the course of subsequent reorganisations of the library and the political repressions of the 1930s-40s, operations of this specialised subsection were for all intents and purposes suspended, and from 1950 through 1991 no Jewish department as such was in operation at the library at all. Currently it is called the Judaica Holdings Department and is part of the Manuscript Institute of the V. I. Vernads’kyi National Library of Ukraine.
- Access points: persons/families:
- Aleksandrovich, Iu. S.
- Barats, G.
- Dinaburg, B. Z.
- Gintsburg, D. G.
- Izrael’son, Ia. I.
- Krymskii, A. E.
- Vernads’kyi, V. I.
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds includes two inventories; op. 1 is systematised according to the structural-chronological principle by year, and within each year according to the collection creator’s structure; op. 2 contains personnel files.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
