Presidential Library: First videoconference launched for users of the Remote Electronic Reading Room in Minsk

On September 16, 2011 at the Electronic Reading Room of the Presidential Library debuted the videoconference for patrons of the Remote Electronic Reading Room founded at the facility of the Russian Center of Science and Culture in Minsk.

Via Skype the staff members of patron service department held an interactive presentation focused on particular features of work with resources of the Presidential Library on the web portal, which featured the show of various types of documents, including multimedia content, and also possibilities to view them in several formats.

Particular attention was turned to the collection principle of shaping the electronic resource. In particular, the spotlight was turned to projects completed in 2010-2011 (“State authority” and “Territory of Russia”), thematic collections “The Emancipation Reform of 1861” and “The Great Victory Memory”. What is more, on the agenda were discussion of such sections of the portal as: “Day in History”, ”News”, “Current events” and “Events” etc., which not only contain information, but also may represent another access point to the Presidential Library resources.

Later on were displayed various opportunities of documents search, as well as advantages of work in “Personal Office” for registered users. The videoconference brought together graduates of the faculties of law, history, philology and medicine of Belarusian State University.

“Question - answer” briefing was the finale of the presentation and touched upon the following issues:

- Advantages of work at the Remote Electronic Reading Room over accessing the portal from other sites;

- Work with theses;

- Opportunity of compiling collections being in demand at the Remote Electronic Reading Room in Minsk;

- Access to modern editions in Presidential Library holdings;

- Opportunity to hold subject-based videoconferences on jurisprudence, history, Russian language (including Russian as a foreign language) with staff members of the Presidential Library;

- Order for electronic copies and copyright issues;

- Acquisition and selection of editions for digitization, along with possibilities to introduce proposals regarding acquisition.