A bibliography in the literal sense is book science. The bibliography as a whole is a scientific discipline that deals with the description, systematization and record keeping of books, as well as journalistic publications, articles, dissertations, etc.
What is narrow bibliography
This is a list of literature involved in a particular text. For example, when writing an abstract, the sources are indicated - where did the information come from. Also, the bibliography is used when writing dissertations and other scientific works. The author of the work is obliged to indicate which primary sources he relied on.
What are the types of bibliography?
There are bibliographies of writers. They include a list of all texts written by an individual author, and also include all biographical and other works written about this writer or his works by other authors. A huge list is, for example, the bibliography of Pushkin A. S. or Tolstoy L. N.
There is also a bibliography of the second degree. That is, the bibliography of all bibliographic texts. It keeps records in chronological order of all bibliographies, divided by subject.
A separate science is industry bibliography. It caters to specific industries or theoretical sciences.
A retrospective bibliography (department of science) covers all printed works of fiction and journalism for a certain period of time. It can be either a year or one week.
There are also many other types of bibliography. For example, Russian historical, taking into account and systematizing all texts on history published in Russian. It can be attributed to industry bibliography. There is a bibliography of the book, that is, a checklist of literary texts relating to one particular book. Such lists can be seen, for example, at the end of educational or scientific publications.
From all these definitions, it is clear what bibliography is. In a broad sense, it is always a list of references on a certain topic. This type of science or book science has its own history. If you understand what a bibliography is, then it becomes clear what its history is. This is how science has evolved and developed in different countries.
A Brief History of Bibliography in Russia
In Russia, from the 18th century, a bibliography began to develop. It all started with the publication of bookselling books and recommendatory lists of books or journalism in magazines. In the 18th century, literature in Russia developed very actively. Russian writers and journalists were catching up and overtaking the West, developed in culture. The concept of what bibliography is, of course, also came from abroad.
The first of its kind were the magazines Bibliographic Notes and Bibliographer. They published book reviews, lists of various manuscripts stored in libraries, catalogs of recently published books, and lists of periodicals.
In 1889, the first bibliographic circle appeared in Moscow. Its initiator was Toropov. In 1900, it was transformed into the Russian Bibliographic Society, which was a part of Moscow University. They organized their magazines. Under the editorship of Bodnarsky, Bibliographic News and Book Science were published.
In 1907 and 1908, the society published a “Bibliographic Collection”, to which an alphabetical index was attached to facilitate the search for the necessary information. The collection published objective reviews of books and indexes of published editions.
Bibliography of Russia of the 19-20th centuries
Over these two centuries, the Russian bibliography has flourished and expanded. Scientists are more closely engaged in this science. They began to rely more on facts than on opinions. And in our century, bibliographic lists of the 19-20th centuries greatly help bibliographers and philologists.
In the 20th century, a generalization of all accumulated knowledge in the bibliography took place. Book science and source study of bibliography began to be taught at universities. Bibliographers lifted old archives and restored the works of long-forgotten writers, as well as those who were repressed and intentionally forgotten during the reign of Stalin. A large layer of Russian literature and journalism was raised and restored. However, the history of the Soviet bibliography is still not fully understood; new sources and archives are still being opened. Bibliographers have a lot of painstaking work.