Central Polytechnical Library

in Moscow, one of the oldest and largest scientific and technical libraries in the USSR. It was founded in 1864 by the Society of Friends of Natural Science, Anthropology, and Ethnography, which was attached to Moscow University. In 1923 it annexed the book collection of the library of the Polytechnical Museum. In 1934, by a resolution of the Council of the People’s Commissariat of the RSFSR, this library was transformed into the State Scientific and Technical Library of the People’s Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR; in 1947 it was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Ail-Union Znanie Society. As of Jan. 1, 1970, the library’s holdings amounted to more than 3 million items, composed primarily of scientific and technical literature. The library has a rich collection of domestic and foreign journals, such as Gornyi zhurnal (Mining Journal; since 1826) and Engineer (since 1857). It also has a considerable collection of rare and valuable books.

Eacli year the library has 300,000 visitors. In accordance with its interlibrary subscription plan, books are sent out to 1,500 organizations in various cities in the USSR. The library does a great deal of work on the dissemination of natural science, scientific and technical, and sociopolitical books. Jointly with the Znanie Society’s Scientific and Methodological Council on Propagating Scientific and Technical Knowledge, it publishes manuals of recommended books to aid lectures on urgent problems of science and technology. With the Lenin State Library of the USSR it publishes a series of surveys of popular scientific literature for self-education entitled What’s New in Science and Technology. Since 1946 it has published, with the Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, auxiliary scientific bibliographical indexes entitled The History of Technology. In 1970 the library prepared and published the second volume of its fundamental index Book About Books—The History of Natural Science and Technology. The Central Polytechnical Library assembles bibliographical information on recent domestic and foreign technical literature and compiles retrospective indexes on technology for enterprises, scientific organizations, and institutions.