Libraries which store unique collections are inevitably confronted with a complex problem: on the one hand, they are bound to make such collections easily accessible for the contemporaries, on the other - to provide for their conservation for future generations.
 The world practice and Russia's own experience show that the most effective decision of the problem could come through arrangement of a Book Museum - a scholarly and enlightening unit within a large library which would be capable of combining the functions of rational employment of the unique collection and its preservation.
 In 1967 in Novosibirsk, in the freshly opened for visitors new building of the State Public Scientific-and-Technical Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences a collection of rare books and manuscripts was officially started. For a library which was established in 1918 in Moscow as a book collection of a purely technological profile, than had suffered a chain of transformations during its Moscow period of existence, and, in 1958, was finally transferred under the auspices of the rising Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences, where it was quickly turned into a universal library, such a move was an unprecedented as well as a logically justified one.
 Quite naturally, the pre-Siberian history of the Library imposed a deep imprint on its collections, where drastic gaps in scientific and humanitarian files were revealed. A scientific-and-technical library, having survived an unprecedented in the world practice relocation to a new place three thousand kilometers away from Moscow, was to turn rapidly into a universal library capable of providing information support for diversified scientific programs of an academic community and to meet the information needs of scientists and area specialists.
 In Siberia the Library became a national non-chargeable legal deposit copy recipient. A large-scale acquisition of contemporary humanitarian literature was undertaken in order to create a collection with a deepest possible retrospection. Sizable lots of literature were being constantly acquired from book-shops, interlibrary exchange with Russian and foreign libraries was established. The collection was replenished with donations from well-known scholars: historians, philologists,ethnographers, philosophers.
 Purposeful activities undertaken to convert the Library's stock into a universal collection resulted in a broad incoming stream of early-printed editions which are traditionally regarded as rare and valuable, and the establishment of a rare book collection in the SPSTL SB RAS followed as a consequence.
 The groundwork for the ancient Russian part of the rare book file was laid by a largest private collection of Russian manuscripts, early-printed books and documents belonging to an outstanding historian, academician Mikhail Tikhomirov. According to the will of the academician, his collection was transferred to Novosibirsk. It comprises more than 600 manuscripts, about a thousand historical documents and a hundred of early-printed books. The Tikhomirov's collection formed the core of the Rare Books and Manuscripts stock.
 The ancient Russian section of the collection consists primarily of precious samples of written and printing culture acquired by the archaeographic expeditions in Siberia. The expeditions, run since 1965, brought acquirements which allowed to form separate "territorial" collections bearing the names of the respective territories: Tomsk, Zabaikalie, Altai, Tuva, Krasnoyarsk, West-Siberia.
 A "territorial collection" is not merely a collective title for a group of separate items; it gives us glimpses of a written monument's migration in Siberia, illustrates the Russian book spread and the history of Siberian libraries in XVII-XIX centuries.
 Tomskaya Collection is by right regarded as one of the most diverse and voluminous collections of the SPSTL's Book Museum. Along with the brilliant samples of ancient written culture of XVI-XVII centuries one may find in it the latest manuscripts (the so-called "zwetniki") - excerpts from books supplied with precise index of sources of citation. Tomskaya Collection includes several files of the kind, e.g. the library of Siberian peasants Lev and Kallistrat Viatkin, an assembly of books collected in a secluded monastery of Pomorians-Novodanilians.
 Diversity of manuscripts (as reflected in the composition of this territorial collection) found in Tomsk region is quite explicable: the book collection mirrored the real processes which had been taking place amid the local Siberian old-believers.
The presence of ancient books, both hand-written and early-printed, in Tomskaya Collection (the Collection can boast of several copies published by Ivan Fedorov) is explained by the emergence of a big center of Pomorians-Novodanilians at the joint of Omsk, Tomsk and Novosibirsk regions in their present-day boundaries. Seeking a foundation for their dogmas, Pomorians-Novodanilians appealed exclusively to the authority of ancient manuscripts and early-printed books; they completely ignored newly printed, and the more so, new hand-written books. It was a rule with each Pomorian-Novodanilian to have ancient books at home.
 Almost at the same time, the Stolypin's reforms caused numerous groups of old-believers belonging to Chasovenny and Titovsky accords to move to the territories which had been already inhabited by Novodanilians; the so-called "runners"(beguny) also came there from behind the Urals. The adherents of these accords widely used excerpts from manuscripts, early- and newly-printed books in their everyday life, as well as in disputes on key questions of dogmata. Following the Uralic adepts of XVIII-XIX centuries, they thought that, taking into consideration the scarcity of ancient books and the way of life their accords led, it would be reasonable to have home-made "zwetniki" - selections of excerpts. Indeed, for a "runner", with his restless way of life, a voluminous collection of books could prove a burden; whereas a compact manuscript with all the necessary texts would be much handier, and the fact of its being copied by the owner himself could serve as a reliable proof of its correctness.
 As a result of a clash between the two antagonistic ideas shared by the old-believers of the region, Tomskaya Collection acquired a dual character: one part of it has a core composed of ancient books, the other part includes both ancient and "new" books, published in XVII-XX centuries.
 Zabaikalskaya Collection has a different character. It comprises early-printed books published mostly in the first half of the XVII century. The most numerous here are hook singing-books; there are also a few literary almanacs. Predominance of the early-printed books published in the first half of the XVII century has an historical ground: they were brought here by Russian settlers as far ago as in the XVIII century and were carefully transmitted from fathers to posterity: the fact is witnessed by inscriptions on the books. Among the local population of Zabaikalie members of Chasonenny-Semeisky group led a solitary life, keeping (sometimes to the present day) their patriarchal domestic traditions. There was no influx of new books in Zabaikalie untill the opening of the Transsiberian roadway, so Zabaikalskaya Collection may serve as an original sample of book repertoire created by early Chasovenny old-believers.
 But after the Transsiberian roadway had been started, a flood of newest hook manuscripts produced in book-printing shops belonging to Moscow old-believers, gushed to Zabaikalie, to Semeisky old-believers famous for their ardent love for sol-singing. The roadway also brought to Zabaikalie a fresh party of settlers - "beglopopovtsy", old-believers of "austrian" accord. Naturally, a dispute about holiness arose between the new settlers and the accords of Semeisky and Chasovenny, which entailed a spread of polemic treatises.
 Obviously, Tomskaya territorial collection without the latest manuscripts, as well as Zabaikalskaya collection without early-printed books would not be able to give an objective and comprehensive picture of the Siberian literary tradition of the past; a picture of the historic environment, where this tradition had been formed, could have been distorted. That is why, when compiling territory collections of rare books and manuscripts, experts of the Book Museum include in them not only manuscripts but also early-printed books, letters by peasants, documents, drawings which allow to register and bring together books and other monuments of spiritual culture peculiar for each region submitting its matters to the Book Museum collections.
 The stock of Krasnoyarskaya territorial collection, which have been well replenished during the recent years, may be looked upon as a ramification of Tomskaya collection. Krasnoyarsk Territory, like Tomsk region, presented ancient books: pseudo-Dionisian treatise "On heavenly hierarchies", copy dated by the XV century; Moscow's "Apostle" by Ivan Fedorov, 1564; two hand-written Prologues of XVI century, and others, and newly-written "zwetniki". The list of old-believers' "accords" of Krasnoyarsk Territory is similar to this of Tomsk region. Most of the old-believers living in the places adjacent the river Enisei descended from the shores of the Ob-river. Experts of the Book Museum witnessed a case when one part of an old-believer's private collection was acquired in Tomsk region and attributed to Tomskaya collection, whereas the other one was found in Krasnoyarsk Territory. It happened so that the owners had the same family name and acknowledged their kinship.
 The most precious possessions of any museum are authentic items; an eventful history of creating the amalgamated stock of the SPSTL SB RAS and specialized collection of rare books and manuscripts, and a still existing chance to acquire a rare book laid the foundation for successful arrangement and maintaining of the Book Museum.
 When a remarkable Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov, who spent many years working in the Rumiantsev Museum, spoke about the place of museum in human life, he said that "museum is the highest instance which can and must perpetuate life". It seems so that book as a substance most closely related to human life in all of its aspects can serve this cosmic purpose in Book Museum.
 

 For additional information please contact: 
  ALEXEYEV  Vladimir Nikolayevich,  Candidate of Philology
  E-mail: rbook@SPSL.NSC.RU 
  tel. 383-2-66-10-91