Voronezh Regional Universal Scientific Library named after I.S. Nikitin

Voronezh Regional Universal Scientific Library named after I.S. Nikitin is one of the oldest and largest in the Russian cultural province. It was opened in 1864 on the initiative of a group of advanced intelligentsia of Voronezh. The foundation of the fund was donations to the public of the city and individuals. And the further development of the library owes much to the residents of the city, trustees. By the time of its opening, the library had an extensive collection of books, as well as handwritten, pictorial and other materials.

In 1963 the library was named after the Voronezh poet Ivan Savvich Nikitin. In 1965, the library received scientific status.

The library today is an information, educational, cultural institution, the central repository of the universal collection of documents, the center of local history, bibliography. Technologies of the main library and information processes are automated, access to the world information network Internet is carried out.

The library has more than three million different printed, audiovisual and electronic materials. A valuable part of the fund is the collection of the Voronezh writer and literary critic O.G. Lasunsky (about 800 items of storage), containing books with author's gift inscriptions and marginalia, the first works of the Voronezh provincial printing house, booklets, postcards and other printed materials mainly of local history. The library is used annually by more than 59 thousand people.