N. I. Lobachevsky Scientific Library

The Lobachevsky Library of Kazan Federal University ranks among the ten largest book collections in Russia, and among university libraries in the country its holdings are surpassed only by those of Moscow and St. Petersburg universities. The complex comprises the main building on Kremlyovskaya Street and the historic building of the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books.

The creation of a book collection was already envisaged in the charter of Kazan University, signed by Emperor Alexander I in November 1804; at first its functions were fulfilled by the book collection of the university’s preparatory gymnasium. The library became an independent department in November 1806, and its initial holdings were formed from the books of the Catherine-era statesman Grigory Potemkin and the Kazan landowner Vasily Polyansky, who had once served as secretary of the Academy of Arts. The building of the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books was designed in 1838, while the main building on Kremlyovskaya Street was built later, in Soviet times, in 1978, to a design by architect Olga Kashintseva, and includes twelve reading rooms.

From 1825 to 1835 the post of university librarian — director, in today’s terms — was held by Nikolai Lobachevsky, the creator of non-Euclidean geometry, who at the same time served as rector. In 1932 the collection was merged with the largest book fund in the republic — the library of Tataria, then known as the Central Scientific and Public Library; its holdings of over a million volumes consisted largely of books from institutions closed after the revolution, including a significant part of the theological academy’s collection. Two years later the institution was granted republican status, and during the Great Patriotic War it served staff of the USSR Academy of Sciences institutes evacuated to Kazan. The library was given Lobachevsky’s name in 1953, to mark the university’s 150th anniversary.

The library’s holdings cover publications in dozens of languages; of particular note is its substantial collection of Tatar-language printed material, which includes books set in Arabic script. The Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books preserves texts created from the ninth to the twentieth century in Russian, Persian, Arabic, and Tatar, and after the merger of universities into Kazan Federal University in 2009 the combined holdings exceeded six million items.

Today the library is used annually by more than five hundred thousand people — university staff and students, researchers from other Kazan institutions of higher education, and anyone with a temporary reader’s card. Since 2002 the institution has headed a corporate network of Kazan libraries, since 2004 it has taken part in the LIBNET national library information centre, and by presidential decree it has been included in the list of especially valuable cultural heritage sites of Russia since 1996.

For more than two centuries the library has remained the intellectual centre of Kazan University — from the age of Lobachevsky and the evacuated wartime institutes to today’s digital collections, accessible to researchers around the world.