two copies of the Statut of the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania, Alexander Guagnini's Sarmatiae Europeae descriptio, Albert Koialowicz's Historiae Lituanae; a number of New Testaments and liturgical and prayer books published in Belarusian printing houses.

Its collection contains examples of the 18th-century Słuckija pajasy woven with gold and silk thread and a priest's chasuble made of these and similar girdles from Hrodna.

There is a small collection of coins from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania temporary banknotes issued in 1918 by the local authorities in Słuck, Mahilioŭ and Homieĺ in the absence of central government.

There are examples of Belarusian religious art and items which poet Łarysa Hienijuš and Jazep Hiermanovic, a priest, from back from the time of imprisonment in the Soviet concentration camps.

[10] The history of the Library collection began with the establishment of the Belarusian Catholic Mission in London in 1947 and its move to Marian House on Holden Avenue in the following year.

There, a small (two to three hundred) but valuable collection of Belarusian books brought to England by Fr Česlaus Sipovič was housed in the southward-facing room on the first floor, immediately above the Mission's chapel.

The Library served as a study centre and meeting place for the student associations Žyćcio and Ruń, and was used by a number of scholars interested in Belarusian heritage.

[11] In the following decade, the book collection increased tenfold and by 1957 was supplemented by subscriptions to all the main periodicals appearing in the BSSR and Belarusian diaspora.

[13] In 1969, Ceslaus Sipovich, Auberon Herbert, and Paval Navara organised a successful fundraising campaign which allowed the acquisition of a building in North London to house the collection.

[18] The institution was conceived as a reference library for supporting Belarus-related research; its chief aim was defined as "to collect all material, both in printed and manuscript forms, relating to Byelorussia, and to make it accessible to all those interested in any aspect of Byelorussian studies".

[19] For the large part of the 1990s and 2000s, Prof Adam Maldzis (Minsk) singlehandedly supplied the Library with books and periodicals appearing in Belarus.

[5][4] As the health of Fr Alexander Nadson, the long-standing head of the board of trustees and primary keeper of the institution, started deteriorating, the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum entered the period of decline.

[25] Since then, it began a programme of cataloguing and digitisation of its most valuable and rare books and items, series of events and collaborative working with other institutions in Belarus and other countries.