was to be opened for the public in 1812 but, as the more valuable collections had to be evacuated because of Napoleon’s invasion, the inauguration was postponed for two years. Under Count Alexander Stroganov, who managed the library during the first decade of the 19th century, the Rossica project was inaugurated, a vast collection of foreign books touching on Russia. It was Stroganov who secured for the library some of its most invaluable treasures, namely the Ostromir Gospel, the earliest book written in the Old East Slavic dialect of Church Slavonic (which was to eventually develop into the Russian language), and the Hypatian Codex of the Russian Primary Chronicle. He, along with other bibliophiles, also reviewed the collection of manuscripts and letters brought by Peter P. Dubrowsky (1754-1816) who had stayed in the diplomatic service for more than 20 years outside the fatherland. Based on the review, Stroganov recommended to Alexander I the creation of a manuscript depot. Alexander decreed the creation of such a department on February 27, 1805, and named Dubrowsky as the first keeper of the depot of manuscripts. 1814–1917 The Imperial Public Library was inaugurated on in the presence of Gavrila Derzhavin and Ivan Krylov. Over 100 thousand titles were issued to the visitors in the first three decades, and the second Library building (designed by Carlo Rossi) facing the Catherine Garden was erected between 1832-1835 to accommodate the growing collections. The library's third, and arguably most famous, director was Aleksey Olenin (1763–1843). His 32-year tenure at the helm, with Sergey Uvarov serving as his deputy, raised the profile of the library among Russian intellectuals. The library staff included prominent men of letters and scholars like Ivan Krylov, Konstantin Batyushkov, Nikolay Gnedich, Anton Delvig, Mikhail Zagoskin, Alexander Vostokov, and Father Ioakinf, to name but a few. Librarianship progressed to a new level in the 1850s. The reader community grew several times, enlarged by common people. At the same time, many gifts of books were offered to the library. Consequently, collection growth rates in the 1850s were five times higher than the annual growth rate of five thousand new acquired during the first part of the century. In 1859, Vasily Sobolshchikov prepared the first national manual of library science for the library entitled Public Library Facilities and Cataloguing. By 1864, the Public Library held almost 90 per cent of all Russian printed output. The influx of new