The National Library of Belarus employees got the opportunity to establish professional contacts with the Swedish colleagues of the Uppsala University Library (Carolina Rediviva) thanks to the European Union MOST project on May 15–18.
They began to form the collection of the University Library in the middle of the 17th century. It counts more than 5 million books. The most precious is the famous “Codex Argentus” of the 6th century in the Gothic language.
Elena Zakharevich, Tatyana Kornilova, Natalya Koshko, Olga Kurilina and Natalya Palachanina, Bibliology Research department employees got acquainted with the specifics of working with old-print and manuscript books (storage, restoration, digitization), as well as with the work of the Special Library Collections reading room. One of the important tasks was the study of old printed books and manuscripts of Belarusian origin.
The Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1588) which represents the Belarusian legal book heritage, and other books and manuscripts are kept in the Library collection.
In the libraries of Sweden there are Belarusian books in different languages which will be interesting to bibliologists, historians, philologists. The visit was an important step in the study of the Belarusian book heritage abroad.
Bibliology Research Department
