June 27 marks the 160th anniversary of the birth of Yervand Taghianosyan, the second director of the National Library of Armenia. Taghianosyan was born in Yerevan in 1864. He studied at the Gevorgyan Seminary in Etchmiadzin, and then at Moscow University. In 1895-1899 he was a librarian and tutor at the Lazarus Seminary. Since 1899, he worked in various institutions in Baku (Armenian Humanitarian and Armenian Publishing Societies, etc.).

In 1922-1928 Taghianosyan worked as the director of the State Public Library. The groundwork for the creation of alphabetical indexes, scientific processing, and collection classification was established during the years he oversaw the library. Yervand Taghianosyan was one of the outstanding intellectuals of his time. He translated the works of Rabelais, Verne, Maxim Gorky, and other writers into Armenian.