Biobibliographic Indexes of Scholarly Publications as a Source of Information about the Biographies and Intellectual Heritage of Previous Generations of Scientists

Abstract

Objective. Biobibliographic indexes of scientists’ scholarly publications who worked in a particular educational institution or research institute in the twentieth century are an important source of information about the intellectual heritage of previous generations of scholars. One of the main tasks of scientific library workers is to compile the indicated indexes. While performing such work, it is worth taking into account not only purely scientists’ scholarly publications but also materials from local periodicals. This will allow for a more voluminous imagination concerning the heritage of this or that scientist. It should be especially emphasizing the critically small number of Ukrainian-language scholarly publications in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (1922–1991), which was due to the state policy of linguicide. This is precisely the focus of the proposed article. Methods. During the processing of the information array, the authors used methods of content- and bibliographic analysis, and synthesis to separate relevant information from unnecessary (so-called information noise). Results. We analysed more than 75 thousand local periodicals of the Dnieper region for the period 1945–2020, which are in the Scientific Library of the Ukrainian State University of Science and Technologies and the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Scientific Library named after the First Slavic Teachers Cyril and Methodius, with the aim of in-depth study of the intellectual achievements of Academician Kirill Fedorovych Starodubov. The work was dedicated to the 120th anniversary of the scientist's birth, which fell on April 19, 2024. Conclusions. The versatility of Academician Starodubov's creative nature is evident in his heritage as a popularizer of science and an outstanding public figure with an indefatigable temperament. This is evidenced by about 520 sources that were included in the biobibliographic index of the scientist's works from 1928 to 2023. Moreover, a separate array of processed sources is the works of the academician's students and followers, in which they respectfully mention their teacher.