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Belarus’ National Library to celebrate first national encyclopedia

MINSK, 16 December (BelTA) – The exhibition “Encyclopedia. National Project” marking the 50th anniversary of the first Belarusian universal encyclopedia will open at the Book Museum of Belarus’ National Library on 17 December, BelTA learned from the Petrus Brovka Belarusian Encyclopedia Publishing House.

“The exhibition will be dedicated to the history of the national encyclopedia. It will display Cyrillic lexicons, archive materials and editions illustrating the first attempts to compile a Belarusian encyclopedia in the 1920s-1930s and the 1950s. It will also exhibit unique documents, photos, and work materials of the team of Belarusian encyclopedists led by editor-in-chief Petrus Brovka. The centerpiece of the exhibition will be the academic universal Byelorussian Soviet Encyclopedia (1969-1975) which celebrates its anniversary and the Belarusian Encyclopedia (1996-2004),” the organizers of the exhibition said.

The exhibition will also demonstrate the history of European encyclopedias from the ancient times to the present. For example, it will illustrate the history of the prototype of European universal encyclopedias – Pliny’s “Natural History” (the 16th-century Lyon edition), the first encyclopedia of the modern type, the French masterpiece of the Enlightenment – Denis Diderot's “Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts” (1751), the most respected universal encyclopedia in the English language “Britannica” (1875), the most successful German encyclopedia “Brockhaus Encyclopedia” (1882), and universal encyclopedias in the national languages of Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia, and Ukraine (19th-20th centuries).

The exhibition will also showcase the best books of the Petrus Brovka Belarusian Encyclopedia Publishing House which received awards at national and international competitions.

The exhibition will comprise items from the holdings of the National Library, the Petrus Brovka Belarusian Encyclopedia Publishing House, the National Archives of Belarus, and the Petrus Brovka Literary Museum (an affiliate of the State Museum of the History of Belarusian Literature). The “Encyclopedia. National Project” exhibition will be on view till 17 February 2020.

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