The Regional Center of the Presidential Library opened in Karelia

The opening ceremony of the Regional Center of the Presidential Library, located on the territory of the National Library of the Republic of Karelia, took place in Petrozavodsk.

The regional center of the Presidential Library in Petrozavodsk became the 40th in a row in the Russian Federation. Its opening was made possible thanks to the cooperation, which began in 2010 with the signing by the Presidential Library of an agreement with the Government of the region. The National Library of Karelia has been connected to the resources of the Presidential Library since 2013. In addition, the region has remote electronic reading rooms in the Karelian branch of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation, the Arbitration Court of the Republic of Karelia and the Petrozavodsk Pedagogical College.  

The Regional Center opened in Petrozavodsk will allow providing a well-functioning system of interaction between local libraries and educational institutions using the resources of the Presidential Library. One of its tasks will also be the creation of thematic digital collections related to the history and culture of the region.

Many materials devoted to Karelia are available thanks to an access to the Presidential Library’s collections, including digital copies of various publications, archival documents, photographs, audio and video recordings which spotlight the centuries-old history of Russian statehood, theory and practice of law, as well as the Russian language.

The Presidential Library’s portal provided access to Republic of Karelia. Pages of History electronic collection, which includes archival materials of the 19th – 20th centuries, pre-revolutionary, Soviet and modern scientific studies, periodicals, historical and current legislative acts, cartographic and visual materials, as well as the demographic and ethnic composition of the population.

The collection is constantly growing: today it contains 183 items. Among the rare editions, one can note Brief description of marble and other stone scraps, mountains and stone rocks found in Russian Karelia, composed by Samuel Alopaeus of 1787, Notes on the Olonets province, compiled by the late teacher of the Petrozavodsk district school Alexander Andreev, published in 1855, Onega epics. Among handwritten documents the Presidential Library’s collections provide access the Collection of Services for Selected Saints and Holidays for January-April of the 16th century, the Scribe Book of the Obonezhsky Pyatina, the Zaonezhsky half, the Olonets Christmas Graveyard of the 17th century and others. History lovers will certainly be interested in periodicals - they can “flip through” the pages of newspapers such as the Olonets Provincial Gazette of 1838–1893, the Bulletin of the Society for the Study of the Olonets Province, 1913–1917, and newspapers from the Great Patriotic War (Belomorskaya Tribuna, Military Watch and others), which are available on the Presidential Library’s portal.

Representatives of the Karelian Republic are frequent participants in events held by the Presidential Library. Thus, for example, in 2010 at the Senate Square, 3 in the framework of the International Festival "Land of Kalevala - 2010" was inaugurated the exhibition "Republic of Karelia: marking the 90th anniversary of statehood". Three years later, specialists of the Presidential Library held an interregional training seminar in the National Library of the Republic of Karelia entitled “Methodology and Practice of Digital Content Formation of the Presidential Library”. This year, the National Library of Karelia took part in two events in the framework of “Knowledge of Russia” video lecture, organized by the Presidential Library.

Every year, Karelian graduates and applicants take part in the Olympiad of the Presidential Library "Russia in the Electronic World".

A master class “The Presidential Library among the Cultural Heritage: Cooperation of Libraries, Archives and Museums” was held on the day of the opening of the Regional Center in Petrozavodsk.