Attribution of Rare Printed Books at V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine

The article presents some results of activity in attributions of printed ancient and different kinds of rare books that had been considered in publications by researchers of the Institute of Book Studies at V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine in recent years. By attributions of rare printed books we mean discerning of original information (author, title, place and time of publications) on defect (partial, incomplete, damaged) issues and editions without proper original data. The publications had been structured according to different kinds of editions, profiles of activities of the Institute of Book Studies departments and also according to styles of attribution: identification of authorship and time of the publication, discovering false copies have also been taken into consideration; the importance of watermark researches, Internet resources, identification of ownership marks for clarification of the origins of issues from certain historical collections. As an example we have considered the attribution of old printed books in Cyrillic and Latin scripts, the role of fingerprint identification for old printed books attribution, contrafacting Berdychiv and Lutsk printed books of the 18th century within V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine collection; attribution of editions of printed reproductions; problems of attribution of rare records, authorship of music works; attribution of sheet documents – political proclamations, postcards, engraving portraits of the 17–19th centuries. The research exposes considerable experience and priority of research school which formed in the Institute of Book Studies at V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine in the field of attribution of rare printed books and other documents of history and culture. This is evidenced either by the number of publications or by the very level of scholars' studies and methods of attribution they use. The importance of the above mentioned methods are proved.