The article is dedicated to the history of development and description of the early printed cyrillic books collection in the Russian National Library in 19th century. The special attention is paid to the circumstances of acquisition and analysis of composition of I. Raratayev’s collection. There is the discussion during 19th century on peculiarities of elaboration and system presentation of the data on the content and accession of Imperial Public Library Cyrillic press collection. Novelty of the research is ensured by including the previously unpublished material from department of archival documents of the Russian National Library.