The Moscow Kremlin Museums hosted the 22nd Conference ‘Museum Libraries in Modern Society’

Deputy Director for the Scientific Work of the Moscow Kremlin Museums A.L. Batalov
Head of Department ‘Scientific and Reference Library’ S.A. Kostanyan
Display of Publications Kept in the Library of the Moscow Kremlin Museums
Display of Publications Kept in the Library of the Moscow Kremlin Museums
Participants of the Conference
К.V. Golubeva “On the Question of Attribution of the Christoph Weigel’s Bible from the Collection of the State Historical Museum”
Candidate of pedagogic sciences I.Е. Prozorov with the report “Problems of Reflecting Specifics of Rare and Worthwhile Book in the Library Catalogue”
Candidate of art history E.K. Bratchikova with a report “Role of the Pictorial Sources in the Attribution of the 1692 Siya Gospel”
V.A. Zagrebin with a report “Series of Prints from the 1648 Louvre’s Publication of ‘De Officiis’ by George Kodinos: Questions of Attribution”

On 8-10 April 2025, the research-to-practice conference ‘Museum Libraries in Modern Society’ was held in the lecture hall of the Moscow Kremlin Museums on Manezhnaya Street. This year, the theme of the conference was ‘Book and Book Collections: New Attributions’.

The event began with a welcoming speech of Deputy Director for the Scientific Work of the Moscow Kremlin Museums A. L. Batalov.
“For twenty-two years, our museum has been proving its devotion to the book, which stands in the centre of civilisation. This time our conference is devoted to the most actual direction not only in the work of the museum libraries but also in the fundamental work of any library: the problems of attribution. It is the attribution that allows founding a base for further research and creation of a conceptual pattern of the development of one or another kind of art,” Batalov stated.

Further, Head of Department ‘Scientific and Reference Library’ S. A. Kostanyan welcomed the audience.
“The attribution theme is not always correlated with the problems of museum libraries, however, due to the increasing participation of library publications in the exhibitions, our library has started working on the attribution and revealing of new book monuments on a regular basis. We are still finding in the museum fund unique books that are worth thorough reviewing and sometimes need an absolutely new attribution and a new look,” she noted.

The representatives of the Moscow Kremlin Museums, State Hermitage, Historical Museum, State Archive of the Russian Federation, Lomonosov Moscow State University,State Russian Library, Russian Ethnographic Museum, Exlibris and Miniature Book Museum, International Union of Bibliophiles, The Ilya Glazunov Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and others spoke at the conference.

On 8 and 9 April, two thematic excursions, “Troves in the Moscow Kremlin” and “Patriarchs’ Court in the Moscow Kremlin”, were organised for the guests. On 10 April, the round table “Attribution of Book Monuments in the Publications: Traditions and Specifics” was held in the framework of the conference. The participants shared the experience of arranging the scientific catalogues of book collections, discussed the peculiarities of the books’ descriptions in the museum, archive and library collections, and publication of book monuments in the electronic systems and databases.