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Manuscripts and First Printed Books

The museum's reserves of hand-written and early printed books number about 10,000 items. This is only a small part of the once enormous collection, almost entirely lost during the days of World War II. It consists of fragments taken from public and private libraries and can't be called an integral collection.

However, the museum's reserves contain different types of religious and prayer books of the 11th - 20th centuries; chronicles of the 17th - 18th centuries, synopses, collections of historical works, synodics, numerous hagiographies, original literary documents, geographical and ethnographic descriptions, samples of the Russian religious and secular legislative codes ("Sobornoye Ulozhenie," "Kormchiye Knigi"), old musical documents, rare examples of domestic book-printing ("Anonymous Gospel," "Ostrozh Bible," "Apostles" by Ivan Fyodorov, publications by the Iversky Printing House).

Many books are quite valuable from the artistic point of view ("Lestvitsa" 1400-1410, "Gospel Aprakos" 1496, "Gospel Andreychina" 1575). The collection is partially displayed at the exposition "History of Novgorod and the Novgorod Region" accommodatedin the building of the former Public Offices Ð on the territory of the Novgorod Kremlin.