The book was the first and for many decades the unique scholarly reference publication on the topic; it was based on the data about various collections of Old Belevers’ manuscripts, including recent acquisitions at the manuscript departments of the biggest libraries, and private Old Believers’ collections and libraries. The work made by D. shown a rather low level of methodology of archeographic research of the epoch, as well as insufficient knowledge on the Old Believers’ writing tradition, in general.
The first part of the book contains the list of compositions in the alphabetic order of author; in the second part the list of the same texts is ordered according the first word of the titles with additional thematic references. There is also an additional index of the first lines of the texts of those compositions (incipit). The contemporaries noted that the work by D. became a factor of actualization of Russian antiquity, and attracted attention of scholars to the necessity of deeper studying monuments of Old Believers.