Northern State University students digitized the Library of Archbishop Feofan Prokopovich

One of the oldest private library collections in Russia, belonging to Archbishop Feofan Prokopovich of the 17th-18th centuries, has been digitized for the first time. The project was carried out by students from Sevastopol State University, Moscow State University, PSTGU and a student from the University of Bonn in Germany. A digital copy of the catalog was presented to Novgorod State University. Yaroslav the Wise (NovSU).

History student Dmitry Mayevsky and programmer from Northern State University Ivan Lazarev worked on the project online. The project was presented at NovSU at the Hanseatic and Baltic historical readings. A link to the manually compiled catalog is posted on the website of the Russian National Library and contains 260 titles. In the future, the list of books will be supplemented by employees of the Russian National Library and Novgorod State University.

The work began at the Hanseatic Summer School in Veliky Novgorod in July 2023 and lasted three months, until October 21. The project was positioned as a gift from Northern State University volunteers to Veliky Novgorod. Such a reconstruction of the Prokopovich library has never been carried out in Russia— The press service of the university quotes students.

For reference: Feofan Prokopovich — one of the most important associates of Peter I, first vice-president of the Holy Synod, Archbishop of Novgorod. Being a widely educated man, he collected a unique library, which by the death of Theophanes in 1736 numbered over 3,000 titles. In 1742, at the request of the Novgorod Archbishop Ambrose (Yushkevich), the books were transferred to the library of the newly established Novgorod Theological Seminary. To store them, in 1759, construction began on a stone building on the territory of the Anthony Monastery, where seminarians were trained. In the mid-1920s. the library of the Novgorod Theological Seminary was transferred to the State Public Library (now the Russian National Library, St. Petersburg).