The Presidential Library Celebrates 11th Anniversary

May 27, 2020 marks the All-Russian Day of Libraries and the birthday of the Presidential Library, which was first opened for visitors in 2009.

The Presidential Library is the first electronic national library in Russia and is administered by the Directorate of the President of the Russian Federation.

Located in the historic center of St. Petersburg, in the building of the Holy Synod, built in the second quarter of the 19th century according to the project of the outstanding architect Karl Rossi, the Presidential Library is the largest multifunctional information, scientific, educational and cultural center, which includes an electronic reading and exhibition halls, a conference room, multimedia and television complexes.

Combining historical traditions and the latest technology, the Presidential Library forms a national electronic resource, which digitally features books and periodicals, archival documents, newsreels, photographs, educational films, abstracts of dissertations, as well as other materials spotlighting the long history of Russian statehood, theory and practice of law, the Russian language as the state language of the Russian Federation. The volume of the electronic collections of the Presidential Library today is near 1000000 depository items.

Full access to the Presidential Library is organized through a network of remote access centers. About 1000 remote electronic reading rooms are open in all 85 constituent entities of the Russian Federation at central libraries in the regions, as well as in government bodies, museums, archives, and educational institutions. 39 external access centers are located abroad at the Russian centers of science and culture and other organizations in 30 countries.

The Presidential Library actively cooperates with federal and regional libraries, archives, museums, universities, authorities, the media, public organizations and private individuals. Partners participate not only in the formation of the electronic collections of the Presidential Library, its scientific, educational and enlightenment projects, but also in events organized at the library, including through the video conferencing system.

It has become possible today to visit the Presidential Library via self-isolation mode thanks to a virtual tour available on the institution’s portal. The tour was prepared through a 3D tour around the historic building of the Synod, where the library is located today, the live story of the guide makes the online visit more interesting and informatively saturated.

The guide will help the virtual guest to navigate in the center of St. Petersburg, where the Presidential Library is located, tell how the Senate and Synod ensemble was created according to the project of the great master Karl Rossi, and introduce the details of its rich architectural and interior decoration.

From any corner of the world today one can visit the representative conference hall of the Presidential Library, where events are held, including the highest state level, a high-tech multimedia hall, the House Church of the Holy Fathers of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, exhibition halls that house temporary exhibitions, as well as the Constitution Hall dedicated to the history of the main document of the Russian Federation. The visitor will be told how to work with materials in the electronic reading room with the extensive collections of the national electronic repository, including remotely.

One can learn in more detail about the history of the building on Senate Square, 3 thanks to the already mentioned virtual tour, where a significant amount of additional information is integrated. For example, infographics based on digitized documents will tell about the history of the development of the territory where the Synod building is located, starting from 1703 until 1825.