INTRODUCTION

This electronic issue is devoted to bicentenary since birthday of Napoleon Orda, an outstanding person of Belarus, a famous composer, a teacher and an artist. It represents his creative heritage that is preserved in funds of the National Library of Belarus.

CD-Rom contains Napoleon Orda’s biography, bibliography of his works, the main literature about him and what is more – digital copies of his works.

The creative heritage of Napoleon Orda in the National Library is primary the collection of lithographs including 187 pictures of historical places of Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine (total volume of collection with duplicates of lithographs consists 312 sheets). It is almost complete issues of the first, second, fourth (almost Belarusian), fifth and sixth series and single sheets from other series published in Warsaw in 1873 – 1883.  A part of them had already been in prewar funds of the Library, another part was received from the largest libraries of the former USSR exchange fund. For example, the album variant of the fourth series was received in 1987 from the State Public Library named after Soltykov-Schedrin (now – the National Library of Russia). That is why there are so many stamps of different book depositories on the margins and on the back side of the lithographs. There are 34 lithographs representing different places of Belarus – Grodno province, Vilno province, Vitebsk province, Minsk and Mogilev provinces.

The engravings are grouped according to the countries: Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Ukraine and their electronic copies have the original texts in Polish and French and their translation in Belarusian and English. They also contain the name of their current region location. The geographic alphabetical index of places reproduced in lithographs is created for more comfortable use of CD.

The disk introduces full-text copies of N. Orda’s publications – “Grammaire analytigue et pratique de la langue polonaise a l’usage des francais”. Paris, 1856 (“The Polish language Grammar”) and “Gramatyka muzyki czyli wyklad rozbiorowy i praktyczny melodyi i harmonii”. Warszawa, 1873 (“The Music Grammar”).

Disk contains also electronic copies of some archival materials. The Orda’s letters written to different famous people were digitized and in 2005 their electronic copies were presented to the Museum in Ivanovo, the Motherland of the artist, and to the National Library of Belarus. The original letters are preserved at the Polish Library in Paris.

CD-Rom contains also musical Napoleon Orda’s works.

N. Orda’s heritage was popular among different readers all the time. That is why an electronic issue makes it possible for everyone to have an access to unique materials on the one hand and to preserve the originals on the other hand.

The issue is for general public auditory – pupils, students, teachers, researchers, amateurs- and everyone who is interested in Belarusian history and culture.

CD-Rom is prepared by the Bibliology Research Department in cooperation with the Department of Information Supply of Humanities, the Department of Electronic Processing of Funds and Publishing Department.