Library Stock

Library stock is unique because of numerous gifts and acquisitions from famous Russian zoologists ever worked in the Museum. It includes personal book gatherings of such outstanding scholars as Ognev, Heptner, Dementiev, Gladkov, Shibanov, Turov etc.

 

Library of Biological Faculty of Moscow University in the Bony Hall of the Museum, 1951-1952

Due to this, the library now includes a unique sample very important and sometimes quite rare issues in systematic zoology, zoogeography and faunas, in animal anatomy and morphology. Some of them belong to classics of zoology, such as first editions of Linnaeus, Buffon, Lamarck, Darwin. Other represente most recent developments in the above fields, including monographs of Mayr, Sokal&Sneath, Hennig etc. It needless to say that the library includes most fundamental checklists of the faunas of Eurasia, Africa, North America, and (to a less degree) South America and Australia, the entire World Ocean and its seas, as well as monographic essays on thousands of animal taxa.

 

J. Gould's "Birds of Australia" with excellent drawings of the author

The large part of the stock consists of the issues of numerous periodicals in zoology. Among the oldest acquisitions are 95 issues of "Bulletin de la Societe Imperiale des Naturalistes de Moscou" donated by Comte Bobrinskoy. At present, the Museum exchanges its own annuals and other issues with a lot of foreign national and regional zoological mseums and instituitons.

In addition, there is a good set of information and reference books including encyclopedias, abstracts, dictionaries, geographic and anatomical atlases etc. Illustrated books and albums serve as important sources of animal images.