Mezhov, Vladimir Izmailovich

Born May 17 (29), 1830, in Saratov; died May 17 (29), 1894, in St. Petersburg. Russian bibliographer.

From 1851 to 1866, Mezhov served in the Public Library in St. Petersburg. He was a constant contributor to the journals Bibliograf (The Bibliographer) and Knizhnyi vestnik (Book News). Mezhov’s bibliographical work was distinguished for its breadth and thematic topicality. He wrote an extraordinary number of works in diverse fields. Mezhov’s major works in specialized bibliography include Russian Historical Bibliography (vols. 1-8, 1882-90; vols. 1-3, 1892-93), The Literature of Russian Geography, Ethnography, and Statistics (vols. 1-9, 1861-83), The Literature of Russian Pedagogy, Didactics, and Methods (vols. 1-3, 1865-74), and Puschkiniana (1886). Mezhov also compiled indexes of works on archaeology, legal scholarship, linguistics, the peasant and worker problems, and cooperative societies and the cottage industry.

In local lore and history, Mezhov produced the bibliographies Turkestan Collection, a cumulative listing of 416 works with a three-volume subject and alphabetical index (1878-88) having bibliographical importance of its own; and the indexes Bibliography of Asia (vols. 1-2, 1891-94) and Siberian Bibliography (vols. 1-3, 1891-92).

Mezhov’s catalogs of the bookstores of A. F. Bazunov, Ia. A. Isakov, and I. I. Glazunov are a source of information about Russian books and book reviews, primarily for the 1840’s through the 1880’s. Despite certain inaccuracies, Mezhov’s indexes, containing about 400,000 bibliographical entries, still retain a definite value.