Murmansk Regional Scientific Library

The Murmansk State Regional Universal Scientific Library is the largest cultural and educational, local history, and information center of the Murmansk Region.

The largest library in Murmansk is not only a house of knowledge, but also a place for interesting events. The Library actively develops international cooperation within the Barents Euro-Arctic region, holds international, all-Russian, and regional scientific and practical conferences, round tables, seminars, and literary meetings with foreign writers. The library's universal collection includes more than 1.2 million publications in print, audio-visual, and electronic form. The library has the largest collection of literature in the region in all branches of knowledge, including its own and acquired databases, a collection of publications about the Murmansk region, including in the Sami language, as well as a unique collection of rare books, which contains editions of the XVII — early XX centuries.

It was decided to create the Murmansk State Regional Universal Scientific Library in 1938. During the war, it was evacuated to Monchegorsk, and in the post-war years, for the first time, it was located on the first floor of a two-story building on Zelenaya Street. But the fund grew at a rapid pace: only in the first four years after the Victory, it increased from 17 thousand units to 100 thousand. Therefore, the question of a new room became acute. First, the library moved in 1946 to the house number 53 on Sofya Perovskaya Street, and a few years later to Stalin Avenue (now Lenin Avenue). And then registered at the current address in the house number 21A. The library building houses the Center for Contemporary Art and Planetarium.

The library building was built according to a special project of Perm architects. Its total area was 6000 sq. m. In the interior design, works of decorative and applied art created by local artists based on northern motifs were used. In 1994, the department of local history and Sami literature began to work. In 2003, the regional reading center "Open Book" and the Center for Ecological Culture were opened here. The regional scientific library often became the winner and prize-winner of various competitions: the winner of the first competition among the provincial cultural institutions of the Russian Federation " Window in Russia" in the category "Library of the Year", winner of the All-Russian competition " Business Library: Ideas, Concepts, Developments "in the category"Best Business Library".

The library has an electronic subscription, an online consultant and information about new arrivals. It hosts book presentations, literary club meetings, photo exhibitions, film screenings, musical evenings, and quizzes. The staff organizes themed exhibitions. Periodically, the library organizes quests and "Night in the Library", when you can see the inside of a closed book depository, an elevator and learn a lot of interesting information. One of the interesting promotions is "Cat in a Poke", when the reader is given a book "blindly".

There are conditions for self-education and intellectual leisure. Northerners attend popular science lectures, literary and musical evenings, book and exhibition presentations, trainings and master classes, computer and financial literacy classes, take part in thematic events, quizzes and quests. Participation in large-scale all-Russian actions became traditional: "Biblionoch", "Movie Night", "Night of Arts", "Give books with love". Twice the library became a platform for the"Great Ethnographic Dictation".