Department of jurisprudence in Imperial Public Library

Even when the Imperial Public Library was established, the organizational structure of its collections was based on the bibliographic classification by A. N. Olenin. Among the created departments was the Department of Jurisprudence, or the Law Department, which also included literature on economics, trade and politics. The main difficulty in organizing the Library was the slow creation of catalogs on its collections. The administrative status of the Library departments was given by the order of M. A. Korf in 1850. The development of scientific knowledge, the differentiation of the branches of science and technology forced constantly to make changes in the library classification. The Department of Jurisprudence was the only one that retained the classification scheme developed in the 1860’s by V. E. Pfaff. In the article for the first time, including on the basis of preserved archival materials, the history of the activities of the Department of Jurisprudence of the Library was reconstructed until its closure in 1930. Information is provided on prominent figures of science and culture who worked in it.