State Public Scientific and Technical Library of the USSR

(Gpntb Sssr), located in Moscow. Multisubject library of ail-Union status specializing in technology and those sciences that are fundamental for technology.

The State Public Scientific and Technical Library was organized in 1958 under the State Commission on Science and Technology of the Council of Ministers of the USSR in connection with the transfer to Novosibirsk of a library that had until then been located in Moscow. This library, the State Scientific Library, had been founded in 1918 under the All-Russian Council of the National Economy. As of Jan. 1, 1970, the collections of the State Public Scientific and Technical Library numbered more than 6.3 million items. There are several unique, specialized collections (industrial catalogs, ministerial literature, translations of scientific and technical literature, mathematical materials for computers, and other collections). In its reading rooms the library serves 70,000 readers annually; more than 6,000 enterprises and scientific research and planning and design organizations borrowed its literature. Materials from the collections are copied for readers and subscribers.

The State Public Scientific and Technical Library carries out book exchanges with 45 countries. The library provides information on acquisitions made by its specialized collections, organizes a printed union catalog of foreign scientific and technical literature located in libraries of the USSR, publishes topical bibliographical indexes, compiles bibliographical aids requested by organizations, and coordinates work on translations of scientific and technical literature. The library is the methodological center for the network of technical libraries throughout the country. It publishes the collection entitled Scientific and Technical Libraries of theUSSR (since 1961; until 1969, The Technical Library of the USSR).