Officers' Library at the Military Assembly of the Life Guards Horse Grenadier Regiment

The purpose of the article is to reconstruct the history of the formation and functioning of the officer library at the military assembly of the Life Guards of the Horse Grenadier regiment. The analysis of its rules, compiled by the librarian staff captain I. I. Luther (1893), have made it possible to identify indicators of the library's work. They are the procedure for maintaining the library; distribution of financial resources; accounting by the librarian of received books and periodicals and their binding; the role of the statement book; publications that have to be freely available without fail; issuing books for reading; penalties, etc. Based on the memoirs of I. I. Luther, some names of librarians are established and their personal contribution to the development of the regimental library is shown. The author assesses the activities of I. I. Luther himself as a regimental librarian. The catalogs of the library of the regiment's officer collection compiled by I. I. Luther (1890) and Lieutenant P. V. Filosofov (1897) are considered. They have helped to trace the dynamics of replenishment of the library fund, to establish the range of reading interests of cavalry officers and to determine the reasons for the discrepancy between the quantitative indicators of the library fund in two catalogs of books. Revealed is the library of the museum of the regiment, which have contained works, collections, poems and various books stored in the museum; articles and notes, literary and musical works and articles by officers of the regiment, military books and charters. The study clarifies the picture of the history of military librarianship in the Russian Empire and replenishes it with new facts.

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