Academician Vasiliy M. Alekseev’ Book Collection in The Sinological Library: History and Specifics of the Fund

The book funds of the Sinological library as a part of the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences, RAS (Moscow) hold approximately four thousand entries of books, journals, maps, imprints that had originally belonged to the prominent Russian-Soviet sinologist Academician Vasiliy M. Alekseev (1881–1951), and upon his death had been transferred from the library of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Union Academy of Sciences to the library of the Institute of Chinese studies of the Soviet Union Academy of Sciences in 1959. This bulk of valuable materials laid a foundation of the Sinological library established in 1958 at the Institute of Chinese studies. Currently the bulk of these entries has not been fully singled out from the remaining book fund of the Sinological library, which is being currently input into the electronic library system IRBIS by the staff, only small portion of Alekseev’s materials has been recorded on paper cards, Alekseev’s books have “Ал” letters in their inventory number which allows their identification. This study aims to summarize the information available on this fund, provides details on the history of Alekseev’s book acquisition efforts, cites acts of the Aleskeev’s fund transfer from one library to another in 1959 with the inventory of the transferred items, analyzes recorded part of the fund by subject matter and provides more detailed description of several randomly selected books dated by 18th – early 20th centuries.