The Presidential Library hosted online session of the Russian National Libraries Cooperation Council

The XXIV session of the Russian National Libraries Cooperation Council was held in cooperation with the Russian State Library, the National Library of Russia and the Presidential Library. National Libraries summed up the results of joint work for 2020. They also discussed the prospects for further cooperation in 2021. For the first time, the event was held remotely on the technological platform of the Presidential Library.

Acting Director General of the Presidential Library Pavel Tereshchenko opened a session with a greeting from the Deputy Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Olga Yarilova. In particular, it states: "National libraries are an important social and communicative institution, an integral part of the information society, a Russian unified digital space of knowledge and the national security system. I am convinced that the national library's cooperation will promote the strategic national projects, state cultural policy and the formation of a national digital economy".

The greeting from the Administrative Directorate of the President of the Russian Federation, the founder of the Presidential Library, tells that the activities of the Cooperation Council of National Libraries are an example of effective interagency cooperation: "The Presidential Library became a full member of the Cooperation Council in 2009. Over the past 11 years, it has been involved in all significant initiatives of national libraries from the development of a series of national standards to the implementation of a strategy for the libraries development in the Russian Federation until 2030. It also takes part in the joint work on the development of the goals and objectives of the national project "Culture".

"2020 was not easy due to the restrictions caused by the pandemic. The session participants spoke about the passing year results, challenges of the time that brought a new experience, shared plans and discussed specific tasks, which solution demands consolidated efforts of the three Russian national libraries. Priorities include continued modernization of the library network and support for municipal libraries; preservation and acquisition of library collections, digitization of library activities, scientific activities, advanced training of librarians and improvement of the massed practice of learning.

The session discussed the results of the national project "Culture".  The participants noted that, despite all the difficulties, this work may be considered successful: in 2020, 172 model libraries were opened; the "Book monuments" project acquired more than 8 thousand documents - before the release on the National Electronic Library’s portal, they were digitized and listed in the Register. Besides national libraries, other Russian libraries were also involved in this work. The number of requests to the National Electronic Library's resources increased four times. To improve the efficiency of work, it was proposed to create a coordinating council of national libraries, as well as working groups on general national projects.

According to Vadim Duda, Director General of the Russian State Library, "a common result may be achieved by distributed, well-organized work of national, federal and largest regional libraries, a clear focus of each participant on the solution of the task. The key to success is uniting forces and joint projects".

The session also focused on digital library collections, becoming more popular. Thus, 2 million users explored information and digital documents of the Presidential Library in 2019. In 2020, the Presidential Library provided already 3.5 million requests. However, the virtualization of the information space demands from libraries to develop new formats of work with the user. Alexander Vershinin, Director General of the National Library of Russia, insisted that this could be done only by joint efforts with other libraries, especially national ones.

Besides the plenary meeting, the XXIV session of the Russian National Libraries Cooperation Council included the meetings of working groups.

The participants of the working group "Organization of scientific-research, scientific-methodological and scientific-educational activities" discussed the arrangement of a collective monograph "Scientific Research in a Modern Library: Topics, Organization, Presentation of Results", as well as educational programs and projects of national libraries, development of the National Electronic Library section "Library science experts" and other questions. The result was the decision to issue a collective monograph by the end of 2021 and create a draft regulation on the research activities of libraries.

The meeting of the "Book monuments" working group considered issues of creating a register of rare books, plans for their digitization and accessibility in the National Electronic Library. It was decided to improve the methodic recommendations to include rare books into the Register and provide all regional libraries with these documents.

The working group "Creation of Model Libraries" focused on the scientific and methodological support of the national project "Culture" in the field of creating model libraries of a new generation, monitoring the acquisition of library collections of model municipal libraries, experience and prospects for the development of remote access centers of the Presidential Library based on model libraries. The All-Russian Forum of Public Libraries was proposed to be held at the Presidential Library in 2021.