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Mr Putin started his tour of the library with its Internet and electronic documents room. He was told that it had a catalogue of all books that had come out since 1980, and the library started electronically filing texts in 2003. The President next went to the central reading room, which receives 7,000 visitors a day.
Most of the President’s time, about half an hour, was spent at the exhibition of rare books that was prepared for him. He was shown a Gospel manuscript from 1340–42, one of Gogol’s manuscripts and Giordano Bruno’s books, which are rare because a majority of them had been destroyed as heretical.
Mr Putin spent two and a half hours at the library and made the following entry in its visitors’ book: “The Russian State Library is not a mere depository of printed and electronic publications—it embodies the historical memory of Russia and the whole world.”
The Russian State Library currently possesses more than 42 billion volumes in 249 languages. It has 400 new visitors a day. Its 22 reading rooms have a capacity of over 2,000, and it has 1.5 million Russian and foreign visitors a year.
November 27, 2003, Moscow