A New Bibliographic Index Has Been Published at RSAL

In the centenary year of the Russian State Art Library (RSAL), library staff have prepared a unique edition—an annotated bibliographic index, The Russian State Art Library 2005–2021.

In the entire history of RSAL, such a fundamental publication has been published only once—in 2006. In a capacious, yet concise and strict format, this seemingly modest brochure provided the reader with comprehensive information about RSAL’s publishing activities and all printed references to the library for the first 80 years of its existence—from the very first identified publication (1924) to 2004.

The current edition is significant: timed to coincide with RSAL’s centenary, it continues the work already begun and represents the library in a new stage of development. The index covers a shorter period, from 2005 to 2021, but the index is already a complete book. And this is natural. By the brief records, one can judge how broad the publishing activity of RSAL is. Here are materials from conferences, seminars, and readings; collections of plays; booklets; and exhibition catalogues. The book contains a fundamentally new type of publication with audio commentary for the blind and visually impaired, such as the album Uncle Vanya for the At the Nikitsky Gate Theatre performance and the large-scale, richly illustrated and annotated publication Woe from Wit by Alexander Griboyedov, staged by the Maly Theatre.

The number of publications about RSAL has also increased. The annotations to articles show how diverse are the topics covered in works by researchers who reference library materials. It is interesting to read through the titles of the articles: in a sense, they give an impression of the vectors of development in the modern science of the theatre arts.

The general series of publications about the library also includes works by RSAL staff. Of course, compared with the first index, this edition includes a significantly higher number of electronic versions of publications.