Рукописна та книжкова спадщина України (Jan 2024)

Volodymyr Naumenko’s private library: information potential and reconstruction attempt

  • Kovalchuk Halyna

Journal volume & issue
no. 2
pp. 64 – 81

Abstract

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The purpose of the article is a search for books and relevant information about the library of Volodymyr Pavlovych Naumenko, an outstanding Ukrainian scientist and public figure of the late 19th - early 20th century. The methodological base consists of heuristic, bibliographic, book studying, and provenance research methods, as well as the use of a complex historical analysis of the facts regarding the fate of the private library of V.P. Naumenko. The search for source information, the identification of archival and published sources on the topic, biblio graphic heuristics in combination with the bibliographic study of specific copies, and the ex amination of proprietary marks resulted in the discovery of a small array of books from the library of V.P. Naumenko and reproduction of its probable history. The scientific noveltyconsists in the identification, collection and interpretation of sources, mainly archival, from the history of the issue, as well as in the discovery in the fonds of the V.I. Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine and in descriptions of specific copies of mostly valuable and rare editions from the own library of an extraordinary personality, which was V.P. Naumenko. Conclu sions. V.P. Naumenko presented his own library to the National Library of the Ukrainian State in the city of Kyiv in January 1919. In July of the same year, he was arrested and shot as an enemy of the Soviet government. Under such circumstances, the scientist's library could not be preserved as a complete complex in the fonds of a state Soviet institution. According to the information found in the archival files of the departmental archive of the V.I. Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine, the library of V.P. Naumenko was disbanded, like most of the collections of that time; the copies were processed, catalogued and transferred under different codes, without indicating the origin, to different structural subdivisions of the institution: to the Ukrainika department, the main fond, the reading room, the department of old prints. The scientist's archive, which was transferred to the library by his widow after his death, was sent to the manuscripts department. From the standpoint of historical justice, respect for the outstanding figure of the national movement V.P. Naumenko, we consider it expedient to carry out a bibliographic reconstruction of this library, to draw attention to previously pub lished information about the copies of his collection, as well as to continue the search for other copies and introduce them into the scientific and informational space.

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