Information technology and libraries: “Picturesque Russia” in the electronic library of RGS

The electronic library of the Russian Geographical Society hosts the 12-volume publication “Picturesque Russia”. The Homeland in its land, historical, tribe, economic and everyday meaning” is prepared by partnership M. O. Wolf in the end of the IX century.

It has been over 130 years since the publication of the first book, but such full and voluminous works, devoted to the description of the Russian Empire, did not appear. Editorial work on the popular science publication took over Peter Semenov-Tyan-Shan, Vice-Chairman of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, Senator, then a member of the State Council.

Initially, the 12-volume edition was planned to make available to the majority of the population, but at the request of the publisher it was printed in large numbers in the deluxe version, which significantly increased its value. Thus, the "Picturesque Russia" has become one of the most expensive books in the history of Russian book printing.

"Picturesque Russia" consists of 19 books, which contain 6984 pages, 220 individual essays written by 93 writers and 3815 illustrated drawings. It involved 423 people.

Year of publication of the first book - 1881, the latter was released in 1901. Bibliographic rarity "Picturesque Russia" was already in 1900, after a fire in the bookstore, where was burned almost the entire stock of ready-made volumes and sheets. Print new volume has not been possible to replace the burned - in particular because of the high cost of publication.

Now, a unique article about our beautiful country, once written by the hand of the best representatives of the literary, artistic scientists and Russian forces are available to all scanned version. The electronic version of the publication was prepared under the Agreement the Russian Geographical Society with the State Public Scientific and Technical Library of Russia.