Today we celebrate our birthday!
Eighty-five years ago, an official decree appointed Iosif Bentsianovich Simanovsky Director of the State Scientific Medical Library at the Minsk Medical Institute. This date is considered the founding day of the library.
Eighty-five years is a long journey. It is thousands of people, hundred of thousands of people and stories. It is millions of pages opened in the search of knowledge. Years of dedicated work, challanges, and transformations. Much has changed over time: books, technologies, the building, even the name. Yet one thing has always remained unchanged – our love for knowledge and our desire to share it.
When in 1940 the medical library in Minsk began to develop rapidly with the prospect of becoming the methodological center of the emerging republican network of medical libraries, no one could have imagined that within a year this fragile yet vital institution would have to endure the hardships of war.
In 1941, the halls stood empty, and the collections were virtually destroyed. It seemed as though everything was lost. But by 1944 the library began to reassemble itself piece by piece. Books were sought across the country, ordered, delivered, and carefully placed on the shelves. There were no convenient catalogs, no modern facilities – only a great determination to preserve the knowledge that saves lives.
We grew together with medicine. In the 1950s, the library became an independent institution; in the 1970s, it acquired its own home — the building on Fabrytsyusa Street. In the 1990s, like the whole country, the Republican Scientific Medical Library entered the era of informatization: an electronic catalog was introduced, along with access to global medical databases and new information retrieval technologies.
Today our library is the main information center in Belarus in the field of healthcare. The RSML holds the richest collection of medical literature, available to readers even in the most remote corners of the country. In addition to the cozy reading room at 28 Fabrytsyusa Street, readers have access to a full range of online services: the electronic medical library, electronic document delivery, individual information mailout, a virtual reference service, and more.
But do you know what the most valuable part of our history is? People. The people who, for decades, preserved the books, passed down traditions, helped students find the right article, and guided doctors toward the most up-to-date treatment methods. The people who come here for knowledge, advice, and discovery. A library is a living organism that exists thanks to those who believe in it.
This year we are 85. Throughout the jubilee year we will delight you with new projects. The official celebrations are still ahead, but for now we want to share the story of how it all began.
Today we are launching a new series: “85 Years. Year by Year.” Each week, together with you, we will open our archives and recall what the RSML experienced in different years: the challenges we faced, the discoveries we made, and how, step by step, we became what we are today.
This is not only our history. It is the history of everyone who has ever crossed the threshold of our library.
Thank you for being with us!
