Research

Scientific research work is one of the main directions in reserve work, that gives the background for other kinds of museum's activities such as scientific acquisition, restoration, collections storing, educational and methodical work. Scientific-research work foresees the studies of the origin source and is carried on in accordance with specialization of present existing and future museums and with the plan of museum's development of the unique historical area of Polotsk. It is carried on according to the following directions: museology, history, architecture, literature, art, Belarus book-printing and printing activity, pedagogy, museum's sociology, nature of the region, ecology, ethnography.

In recent years staff scientists of the Reserve have been working over the following themes:

• Preservation of historical and cultural values. Architectural heritage of Polotsk;
• Archaeological research of Polotsk monuments;
• Historical map of Belarus: architectural monuments, organisations, people;
• Technology, typology and chronology of nonferrous metal products of 10^th-17^th centuries from the Reserve collections;
• Polotsk educational institutions in the second half of the 19^th - beginning of the 20^th centuries;
• Social and political life of Polotsk in the Russian Empire;
• Polotsk in time of postwar recovery and economic development in 1944-1985;
• National minorities sub-division of Polotsk Board of Education (1919-1930);
• Polotsk educational institutions in 1918-1941;
• Polotsk in the War of 1812;
• Catalogue of unique objects from the Museum-Reserve collections;
• Catalogue of the museum-reserve’s iconography collection
• Catalogue of the museum-reserve’s plinth bricks collection
• Catalogue of the museum-reserve’s iron collection
• Catalogue of the museum-reserve’s collection “Russian coins of 1700-1917 as a part of numismatic collection”
• Catalogue of personal collection of the historian and specialist in local studies M. Manis
• Cyrillic editions from the Museum-Reserve collections;
• Books of russian civil press of the 18th-beginning of the 20th centuries from the museum-reserve’s collection
• Belarusian editions from the Museum-Reserve collections (1945-1955);
• Belarusian latin-pole editions of 16^th-18^th centuries from the Museum-Reserve collections;
• 46th aviation division of the Western front in the defensive battle in Polotsk land on Summer 1941;
• Development of soviet land fortification in 1920-1930-s on the example of Polotsk fortified district;
• Little-known pages of the Hero of Soviet Union Z.M. tusnolobova-Marchenko’s life;
• Exposition of the 3rd hall of the Children’s Museum in the context of the museum communication theory;
• Role of Belarussian folk tales in the exposition of the 3rd hall of the Children’s Museum;
• Phycological and pedagogical justification of the 3rd hall of the Children’s Museum;
• Virtual museum of Podvinye traditional culture;
• Art and philosophy of A. Konovalov;
• Ivan Stolyarov. Artist and educator;
• Musefication of murals complex of 12^th-19^th centuries in Holy Transfiguration church of Euphrosyne convent in Polotsk;

Scientific research of the museum collections is based on estimation of the value and material idea of an object. Scientific collections structure is designed to define the meaning of museum objects for science, culture in general, and directly for the given museum or the reserve, and its exact legal position to create the conditions, that would ensure their long preservation, investigation and use for museum purposes.