Central Agricultural Scientific Library of the Lenin All-Union Academy

Central Agricultural Scientific Library of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences 

(TsNSKhB VASKhNIL) located in Moscow, the largest scientific library of agricultural literature in the world; scientific and methodological center for the more than 1,300 agricultural libraries in the USSR.

The Central Agricultural Scientific Library was founded in 1930 and has borne its present name since 1934. It has a branch in Leningrad. As of Jan. 1, 1970, the library’s collections included more than 3 million items; of these, 40 percent were foreign publications. There are a number of valuable domestic and foreign editions and collections, including the first book on agriculture in Russian; a rare collection of prerevolutionary Russian periodical publications, such as Trudy Vol’nogo ekonomich. ob-va (Transactions of the Free Economic Society), 1765–1915, and Lesnoi zhurnal(Forestry Journal), 1833–1918; and a collection of materials from 707 domestic and 90 foreign agricultural experimental stations, covering a period of more than 50 years. There are also more than 25,000 translations and surveys of foreign agricultural literature. The library receives approximately 2,000 foreign agricultural journals in 32 languages. It exchanges books with 864 organizations from 64 countries. Each year it serves more than 20,000 readers; moreover, books channeled through the TsNSKhB’s interlibrary subscription service are used by 2,000 libraries in the USSR and foreign countries. It publishes the following classified bibliographies: Sel’skokhoziaistvennaia literatura SSSR (Agricultural Literature of the USSR), which has 12 issues a year recording up to 60,000 domestic titles; Sel’skoe khoziaistvo (Agriculture), which has 12 issues a year recording up to 30,000 articles in foreign journals; as many as 100 recommended and topical bibliographies of scientific information; and Biullten’ TsNSKhB, which contains instructional and methodological materials, issued twice a year. Since 1957 the TsNSKhB has been a member of the International Association of Agricultural Librarians and Documen-talists (IAALD); it participates in the International Information Center for Agriculture and Forestry set up by the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON).

A. M. BOCHEVER