Who's behind the news?
Who's behind the news?
Kyiv, Ukraine
The Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine (VNLU; Ukrainian: Національна бібліотека України імені В.І. Вернадського) is the main academic library and principal scientific information centre of Ukraine, and one of the largest national libraries in the world. Located in the Demiivka neighborhood of Kyiv, it holds over 15 million items across 27 floors.
The library was founded on August 2, 1918, by decree of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi as the National Library of the Ukrainian State. Three weeks after its founding, the library's Provisional Committee was headed by the mineralogist Vladimir Vernadsky, after whom the library is now named. The library was evacuated to Ufa during the German invasion in August 1941 and returned to Kyiv in May 1944. The current building was constructed between 1975 and 1989. In 1988 the library was named after Vernadsky, and in 1996 a presidential decree granted it its current official status.
The VNLU holds more than 15 million items, including books, magazines, serials, maps, sheet music, fine arts materials, manuscripts, rare printed books and incunabula, newspapers, and electronic documents. Notable holdings include the world's most complete collection of Slavic writings; the Peresopnytsia Gospels; the Orsha Gospel (one of the oldest Belarusian texts); the collection of the Presidents of Ukraine; archival copies of all Ukrainian printed documents from 1917; archives of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; and the Collection of Jewish Musical Folklore (1912–1947), inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2005. The library also holds one of two extant copies of Aristotle's History of Animals published in Venice in 1476.
The VNLU serves approximately 370,000 readers annually and conducts international book exchange with over 680,000 partners from 70 countries. As a UN depository library since 1964, it receives all English and Russian-language UN publications. The library operates online catalogues, bibliographic databases, and participates in global library cooperation networks.
Website: nbuv.gov.ua