Society and reading: A large-scale interregional book conference is held in Altai region

The conference “Makushinskie readings” is held on May 15-16, 2012 in Barnaul. It is held every three years on the initiative of the State Public scientific technical library of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences in the largest libraries of Siberia. In previous years it was held in Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk and Tomsk. This year the host’s the capital of Altai region.

The IX Makushkinskie readings are attended by scientists, professors, graduate students, librarians-practitioners from different cities of Siberia like Barnaul, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Tomsk, Tyumen and Kyzyl. The thematic range of the speeches is various: from the book history and book publishing to the introduction of information technologies to the book business and to the creation of electronic documents.

As noted in the V. Y. Shishkov Altai Regional Library, this conference is a major scientific platform to discuss issues at the intersection of science and practice. This year the Interregional Scientific- Practical conference “IX Makushkinskie readings” is included to the federal target program of “Culture of Russia”.

The conference opened with a plenary session. The reports and presentations were made by scientists and specialists of the State Public Scientific-technical library of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Also there were held meetings in subgroups on the main areas of both - book and library sciences: manuscripts, incunabula and rare books; the history of book culture; modern problems of reading; topical issues of librarianship and bibliography; information technologies in a book business.

The conference is named after a famous figure of the Siberian education, bookseller, book and private newspaper publisher, creator of the first bookstores and public libraries in Siberia, Peter Ivanovich Makushin (1844-1926). The purpose of the conference is to consolidate the efforts of regional scholars and librarians-practitioners to study the history and current state of book culture and librarianship of Siberia and Far East as well as the dissemination and implementation of the results of the scientific research to the practice of the libraries’ work.