Belarus marks Day of Libraries

15 сентября 2017

By Olga Medved: Today, Belarus marks Day of Libraries. The day is marked annually in honour of the foundation of the National Library of Belarus. This year, the National Library is celebrating its 95th anniversary. Alexander Lukashenko congratulated the staff of the Library on this anniversary. Alexander Lukashenko noted the importance of the National Library as the main educational centre of the country, as well as the symbolism of the fact that the anniversary of the National Library is celebrated together with the 500th anniversary of the Belarusian book printing.

Today, the repository of the national Library stores the most valuable, rare, and ancient printed books and manuscripts. All in all, it has over 70,000 books. The repository has excellent security system, and no reader can get there.

The main know-how of the Library is the telelift. Due to the scale of the building, the telelift became a necessity for quick delivery of books. It makes it possible to deliver a book, that has to travel about a kilometer, in under 20 minutes.

The National Library received all its modern features, when the new building was opened in 2006. Prior to that, the Library was located in the building designed by the architect Lavrov.

Before WWII, the fund had over two million books, but after the war, this figure became several times less. Some books survived, and now they are among the rarest and most valuable books on the 8th floor. Some of the pages of these books have marks and holes left by bullets, and they are now on display that is timed to mark the 95th anniversary of the National Library.