Vasilii SobolShchikov

Born Jan. 13 (25), 1813, in Vitebsk; died Oct. 19 (31), 1872, in St. Petersburg. Russian library scholar and architect. Honorary member of the Academy of Arts (1858).

Beginning in 1834, Sobol’shchikov worked at the Public Library in St. Petersburg, in which he established the Rossica division, containing foreign books about Russia. A new reading room designed by Sobol’shchikov was built in the library’s courtyard between 1859 and 1862.

Sobol’shchikov’s main works included Some Comments on P. M. Stroev’s Article on a Simple and Convenient Way of Designing a Large Library (1856), On Organizing Public Libraries and Compiling Their Catalogs (1859), Survey of the Great Libraries of Europe at the Beginning of 1859 (1860), The British Museum in London and the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg (1864), and The Chertkov Library in Moscow and the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg (1864). Sobol’shchikov also wrote Memoirs of an Old Librarian (introduction by V. V. Stasov; published posthumously 1889). The anonymous essay “The Imperial Public Library During the Period of Its Transfer to the Ministry of Public Education” (1863) is attributed to Sobol’shchikov.