1. NLR
  2. Manuscripts Department
  3. Catalogues
  4. Online Catalogues

Online Catalogues

The Manuscripts Department of the National Library of Russia is widely known as one of the world’s most important repository, not only by size, but also by its exceptional historical and cultural value. The catalogues below partly describe its priceless holdings.

Please note. All catalogues are maintained in Russian.

  • The Catalogue of Manuscripts Collections gives brief descriptions of all the collections of the Manuscripts Department, which are on open access to the public. These are about 1,400 collections. Manuscript Collection Lists provide detailed listings of the contents of the most collections in PDF format. The search is carried out by collection number or name, as well as by personality or institution name.

  • The electronic Catalogue of Manuscript Materials lists Old Russian, Oriental and archival materials held in the Manuscripts Department. A manuscript may be searched by its collection, shelfmark, author (if possible), title, former owner (person or an organization) or date of the document. The catalogue comprises details for 10829 items. The catalogue is regularly updated.
    In the table of the search result, click on the shelfmark (the left column) to see a full description of the document.

  • The Digital Library of Manuscripts consists of 815 digitized Cyrillic (Old Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian) and Kurd manuscripts and 131139 digitized manuscript pages. In the table of the search result, click on the shelfmark (on the left) to see a full description of the document. Press the rightmost button (Digital Copy) to display manuscript images. You can click image to enlarge.

  • You can also view Manuscripts in the NLR Digital Library

The catalogues are based on the "Depository" Information Retrieval System, developed by the specialists of the National Library to create an electronic database of the manuscript holdings.