The Presidential Library celebrates its birthday

The Presidential Library celebrates the anniversary of its foundation on May 27 marking the All-Russian Day of Libraries.

The library is the first electronic national library in Russia which is administered by the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation. The institution is located in the very center of St. Petersburg in the Holy Synod historic building, which was built in the second quarter of the 19th century according to the project of the outstanding architect Carlo Rossi.

The Presidential Library is the largest multifunctional information, scientific, educational and cultural center, which includes an electronic reading and exhibition halls, a conference hall, multimedia and TV complexes.

Combining historical traditions and the latest technologies, the Presidential Library forms a nationwide electronic resource, where books and periodicals, archival documents, newsreels, photographs, scientific and educational films, abstracts of dissertations, as well as other materials spotlighting the centuries-old history of Russian statehood, theory and practice of law, the Russian language as the state language of Russia are available in digital form.

About 1,000 organizations and citizens cooperate in the creation of a national electronic resource with the Presidential Library.

Since 2009, the library’s electronic collections have increased significantly. If 13 years ago it was 42,000 million depository items, then at the moment the volume of the collections is already more than a million depository items.

Full access to the Presidential Library's collections is organized at Senate Square, 3, in the Reserve Center in Moscow, a branch of the Presidential Library in Tyumen, through a network of remote access centers opened in federal and regional institutions of culture and education, as well as outside the Russian Federation. Today, the Presidential Library has opened about 1,400 remote access centers in all 85 constituent entities of the Russian Federation; 46 remote access centers are open abroad in 31 countries.

Marking the anniversary of its birthday, the Presidential Library has prepared an annual report for 2021. The past year, declared the Year of Science and Technology by the President of Russia Vladimir Putin, has become special for the Presidential Library. Issues of science and technology have become the topics of two new publicly available digital collections of documents from the library collections (“The Academy of Sciences and the Development of Russian Science”, “Russian Invention: Pages of History”). In addition, the Presidential Library has become a venue, organizer and participant of many major scientific events on the theme of the year.

Last year, the Presidential Library acted as one of the venues for the informal summit of the member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The II International Scientific and Practical Conference on countering the new coronavirus infection and other infectious diseases was held at the library. Leading Russian and foreign scientists, representatives of the CIS countries, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and other officials took part in it.

The connection between the advanced achievements of science and information technology has been demonstrated by the participants of the all-Russian scientific conference "Vector of the Future: Frontier Scientific Research and Artificial Intelligence Technologies". Leading universities of the country, manufacturers of computer equipment and software presented joint projects in the field of artificial intelligence.

The Presidential Library pays much attention to educational and cultural projects, including the Olympiad for schoolchildren Russia in the Electronic World, multimedia lessons, excursions, cinema club meetings, video lectures and much more.

The publishing activity of the institution is actively developing. For 13 years, hundreds of publications have been published on the history of Russia, the theory, history and practice of Russian law, and the promotion of national cultural heritage in the electronic environment.

An important date is celebrated in Russia in 2022: the 350th anniversary of the birth of Peter I. From June 9, a new collection dedicated to the first Russian emperor will be available to visitors of the Presidential Library’s portal at once. The collection will feature new editions and archival materials related to the Peter the Great era and the memory of Peter I, as well as documents from the current Peter the Great collection.

The collection's section "Peter's Era Editions" will include publications of the Peter's Era: fundamental state and naval documents ("Table of Ranks", "General Regulations", "Marine Charter", etc.).

From May 13 to August 14, 2022 two exhibitions dedicated to the 350th anniversary of the Russian Emperor Peter I are open at the Presidential Library. More information about them is available on the Presidential Library’s portal at https://www.prlib.ru/afisha/1334040.

The Presidential Library is actively developing. The plans are to continue entering the collections with historically important, reliable materials about the history of Russia, providing wide access to documents so that as many people as possible had opportunity to use the unique library collections.

Detailed information about the Presidential Library and its resources is available on the www.prlib.ru portal and the official page on the VKontakte social network, as well as on the Rutube- and Telegram-channels of the institution.