RUSSIAN
UKRAINIANThe Library of KhAO
The library of the astronomical observatory of Kharkov national
state university and observatory had founded simultaneously. The
observatory begans to acquire magazins and books since the second
half of XIX centure, but as the department of observatory the library
was legalised in 50s years. Now two women works as librarians: T.
N.Mandrika, the Head librarian, and R.D.Ivanchenko, assistant.
There are about 50 000 different copies: about 8500 russian and
soviet books; about 1500 books in English, German, French; soviet
and foreign periodical publications, serials and preprints of soviet
and foreign observatories. We have not rare ancient copies, but
there are rather old issues, for example: Bode J.C.,Von den neue
endecten Planeten, 1784; Euler L., Einleitung in die Analyses, 1788;
Anales de l'observatoire de Kiev, 1879; Harvard Annals, 1890; Washburn
Publications, 1896 etc.
Our observatory was not an independent institution in the network
of soviet academy observatories. It depend on the university budget...Use
of the foreign currency was limited and was severe controlled, so
that only the central universities and academy institutions might
acquire the copies from "capitalist" countries. We might buy soviet
books and subscribe only periodical publications of USSR and socialist
countries and only astronomical issues. We have some foreign periodicals,
which publicated before revolution in 1917. Then some of them were
illegally reprinted in USSR until 1973, it were The Astrophysical
Journal, Journal of Geophysics Research etc. In 1973 USSR had joined
to Convention of Defence of Author Wrights and we lacked of this
information sources.
During all this time we receive the most of foreign literature by
the International Book Change. At the beginning we could send our
publications in exchange. The observatory had own publishing from
1893 til 1985, then all the ukrainian observatories began to publish
"Kinematics and physics of Celestial Bodies" instead of different
series of observatories. We tried to send copies of this magazines
but after 1989 it became impossible becouse of the deepest economic
crisis.
Now during last seven years we cannot buy any books and we prefer
to contact by e-mail becouse permanent lack of currency. Sometimes
we cannot even sent the letter to Russia before extremally limitted
university budget. And now only gifts and International Book Change
are the single source of literature. Inspite of the past years just
the Russian publications are not much accesible becouse of financial
impossibility of subscriptions. We thanks greatly our unknown colleagues,
who sed us the publications. Especially we thanks Heidelberg Astronomische
Rechen- Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstracts and US
Naval Observatory for The Astronomical Almanac. This copies are
single in Kharkov.
Since 1998 our library is computerised. We have an old IBM-286 with
winchester 40 Mb, it work only in DOS, but we can use DB3PL and
create dbf-files. Now we create base of current information and
we intend to make computer catalog of all the publications of our
library.
The Head librarian T.N.Mandrika.