Fate of the RAS Library Through the Destinies of Its Staff During the Great Patriotic War and the Seige of Leningrad

The review of the collection “The Great Patriotic War and the Siege of Leningrad in the Destinies of the Staff of the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences” (2024), prepared by library specialists N.V. Bekzhanova and A.A. Balakina, is presented. The purpose of the collection is to capture the memory of the employees whose selfless labor ensured the functioning of the academic library during the war years. The structure and content of the publication, which consists of a biographical dictionary of the staff who worked in the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) in 1941—1945, their memoirs and fragments from their autobiographies related to the period of war and the blockade of Leningrad, are analyzed. The central section of the publication is the biographical dictionary, which contains 532 references to the library staff of the war period. The content of personal articles of the dictionary is considered, the composition of the reference apparatus and appendices of the collection is revealed. The relevance of the publication under consideration is emphasized, and its importance for research on the history of the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the history of librarianship of the country as a whole is noted.