500 Years of Belarusian Book Printing

MINSK, 5 May (BelTA) – The National Library of Belarus has donated the facsimile edition “Francysk Skaryna’s Book Legacy” to Lithuanian libraries, BelTA learned from Belarus’ National Library.

The Martynas Mazvydas National Library of Lithuania hosted a roundtable “Francysk Skaryna. 500th Anniversary of Book Printing in Belarus and Lithuania” on 4 May. Director of Belarus’ National Library Roman Motulsky held a presentation as part of the event and donated copies of the facsimile edition “Francysk Skaryna’s Book Legacy” to the Martynas Mazvydas National Library of Lithuania, the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, Vilnius University Library, and the Francysk Skaryna gymnasium in Vilnius. Representatives of the Lithuanian libraries thanked BelVEB Bank and the National Library of Belarus, the initiators and major implementing partners of the national publishing project “Francysk Skaryna’s Book Legacy”, for the valuable present.

The project to publish a facsimile edition of Francysk Skaryna’s books was launched in 2013. The National Library of Belarus and BelVEB Bank signed an agreement on the project to issue a facsimile edition of Skaryna’s legacy on 22 April. The parties joined their efforts to achieve a common goal to collect electronic copies of Francysk Skaryna’s books from different parts of the world and put them into one facsimile collection by the year 2017.

“The National Library of Belarus and BelVEB Bank have been working together to make a maximum use of their potential to implement the project. As a result, the project designed to run for five years is nearing its completion in 2017, the year that celebrates the 500th anniversary of the Belarusian book printing,” the National Library of Belarus noted.