Department of theology at the imperial public library

The Imperial Public Library (IPL) for many years, was having a branch system based on the structure, developed by A. N. Olenin. It was considered as a huge achievement for its time, but it was not put in the basis of the administrative structure of the Library. The cardinal changes in the structure of the Library occurred in the 1850s under M. A. Korf, who, by his order of April 14, 1850 laid the groundwork for the decentralized fractional structure of IPL - by branches. The library's separate structure, which existed until 1930, was administratively convenient, but gradually it led to the isolation and isolation of offices, the dispersal of catalogs by departments, and the absence of unified general library catalogs. Among the divisions that were created was the Division of theology, which by 1917 was the largest in size than all other branches of books in foreign languages and contained 185,000 books. For the first time, including on archival material, the full history of the existence of this department was reconstructed, the role of IPL was studied in the rescue of the library's collections, which has ceased to exist Petrograd Theological Academy. The contribution of the employees of the Petrograd Theological Academy to the activities of IPL is shown