Book monuments – handwritten books or prints that have an outstanding spiritual, material value, have a special historical, scientific, cultural significance and in relation of which a special mode of accounting , storage and use is established. They are divided into single book monuments and book monuments – collections that are a complex of documents, that acquire the properties of a book monument only when they are combined together due to their origin, species or other characteristics. Book monuments are an especially valuable part of the national library fund and are subject to registration in the All-Russian Book Monuments Register, created by the Russian State Library, which is the federal scientific research, scientific and methodological and coordination center for work with Russian book monuments. The National Library of the Chuvash Republic acts as a regional center for working with book monuments (RCBM), whose main task is to organize and form a regional Collection of book monuments. This work is carried out by the department “Center of Rare Books and Conservation”. As to 01.01.2013, 12 descriptions of the collections of rare and valuable publications, 12 collections and bibliographic descriptions of 14,000 rare and valuable publications kept in the institutions of Chuvashia are recorded in the Regional Collection of Book Monuments of the Chuvash Republic.
Everyone can join us on the pages: Vkontakte, Facebook, Twitter and find the newsletter of the department, learn about the exhibitions, see their virtual version, ask a question and take part in surveys and discussions. Also news from the world of rare and valuable publications related to this or that significant event of our society are available on the personal blog “The Library rarities”.