Conrad Gessner is the father of West European bibliography (to 500^th anniversary of the author of «Bibliotheca Universalis»)

The article consists of two parts. The first is dedicated to the 500th anniversary of Conrad Gessner (1516-1565), an outstanding Swiss scholar and bibliographer. He entered the history of bibliography and librarianship as a compiler of «Bibliotheca Universalis» published in 1545 at Christopher Froshower’s Printing House in Zurich. «Bibliotheca Universalis» is the first attempt to create an international bibliography of books printed in Greek, Latin and Judish, as well as biographical information about authors and their writings. In total, he described about 15,000 books belonging to almost five thousand authors. Over 12,000 books were systematized according to 21 sections (pandects), which had more than 250 subject-thematic headings. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the bibliographic language of «Bibliotheca Universalis». The second part of the article contains a description of the jubilee events dedicated to Conrad Hessner. They were the following: 1916 - the 400th anniversary celebration in Chicago; 1965 - meeting in Oxford, and 2016 - program of events in Switzerland.