General information on the collections

The State Historical Museum contains a gigantic collection of nearly 4.5 million museum objects and over 15 million sheets of documental materials. The SHM’s collection represented basically by all kinds of museum materials (except for natural items) is housed in 14 holdings departments and three branches. For detailed description of holdings departments’ acquisition history, characteristics of Museum collections’ structure and composition, you may refer to the album "State Historical Museum" released in 2006 by the Interbook Business Publishing House.
In the Museum there are three holdings departments having their own reference rooms to consult museum materials: Department of Written Sources, Department of Manuscripts and Early Printed Books, Department of Books Collection. Reference rooms’ rules of registration and use are in the parts dedicated to the overview of relevant departments’ collections.
The use of other holdings departments’ materials is limited and rigorously defined by the rules. The demands to work in holdings departments are considered by the SHM director and SHM associate director for holdings work with reference to the letter written in the pre-printed form of the organization presented a researcher and indicated his subject matter and intended terms of the work. The days to visit the holdings departments are fixed individually by the SHM associate director for holdings work and the head of department. The diploma students can work in holdings departments in certain cases, given an Institution of Higher Education’s letter that indicates a motivation and reasons determining the reference to original museum objects.In 2006-2007, because of the global inspection of museum collections, the work of outside visitors in the departments without proper reference rooms is suspended.
All services - copying, photo shooting, scanning, xeroxing, shooting on film , video shooting and others, intended to use the SHM’s materials, are fee-paying.