A valuable book gift

Recently, our old friend and partner, the chairman of the Trade Union of Students of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Ihor Stepaniuk, visited the Library. And he brought an unexpected gift.

In one of the residential buildings on the campus, we found five books published in 1869-1906. All of them are devoted to paper production, and the author of four of these books is Mykola Petrovych Melnykov, a paper production engineer and technologist, a graduate of the First Kyiv Gymnasium, the Nizhyn Lyceum of Prince Bezborodko, and the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology.

His books include “Paper Production. Composition of Papers” (Odesa, 1875), ”Paper Production. Composition of Papers” (second edition, Moscow, 1899), ‘A Short Course in Pulp and Paper Production’ (St. Petersburg, 1906), ‘Wood and Pulp Production According to Modern Data’ (St. Petersburg, 1906), as well as the ninth issue of the technical encyclopedia edited by D. Mendeleev – ‘Paper and Pulp Production’ by the first category technologist A. Belov (St. Petersburg, 1869).

The books contain many marginalia, such as handwritten notes, comments, owner’s and donor’s inscriptions. It is evident that these editions were actively studied and used; nevertheless, their condition is absolutely satisfactory.

The title pages of some of the conciliators bear the stamps of the Student Library: from the first years of the KPI’s existence, circles (mechanical, engineering, chemical, and electrical) were founded, which had their own libraries. In addition, in the 1930s, a branch of the library functioned at the Faculty of Chemistry, with its own collection and reading room, which served students of the Faculties of Chemical Technology and Pulp and Paper. It is likely that these found books were once kept in one of these libraries. Now they are in our department of rare and valuable documents, and we continue to study them.

We thank our friends for such a valuable book gift!