The Presidential Library’s reading room opened in Republic of Belarus

On January 30, 2023 the Presidential Library’s remote electronic reading room was opened at the St. Cyril of Turov of the Belarusian Orthodox Church Minsk Theological Academy. It became the 7th remote access center to the collections of the national electronic repository located in Republic of Belarus.

According to Director General of the Presidential Library Yuri Nosov, “visitors of the new remote electronic reading room at the Minsk Theological Academy now have an opportunity to get online access to the entire collections of the Presidential Library, which today involve more than a million depository items. These are digital copies of rare books, archives, research papers, audio and video recordings and other materials”.

On the same day, a cooperation agreement between the Presidential Library and the St. Cyril of Turov of the Belarusian Orthodox Church Minsk Theological Academy was signed online. The document was signed by Director General of the Presidential Library Yuri Nosov and Rector of the Minsk Theological Academy Archimandrite Athanasius (Sokolov).

The event was attended by Yury Makushin, head of the Representative Office of Rossotrudnichestvo in Republic of Belarus - the Russian Center of Science and Culture in Minsk, Viktor Pshibytko, Deputy Director General of the National Library of Belarus, rector of the house church in honor of the Holy Right-believing Grand Prince Alexander Nevsky in the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and the Church of the Holy Fathers Seven Ecumenical Councils in the building of the Synod, Archpriest Father Alexy and others.

The agreement provides for the exchange of copies of electronic documents to enter the collections of the Presidential Library and the Minsk Theological Academy. Thus, the cooperation agreement marks a new stage in the joint activities of institutions in the cultural and educational sphere. 

The rector of the Minsk Theological Academy, Archimandrite Athanasius, emphasized: “The unique collections of documents available in the Presidential Library are a treasure trove of information in the diverse fields of science and culture of both the Slavic peoples and the entire world community”.

The Presidential Library has been developing cooperation with institutions of Republic of Belarus since 2010. Remote electronic reading rooms are available at the Russian Centers of Science and Culture in Gomel, Brest, Minsk, the M. Gorky Brest Regional Library and the National Historical as well as Cultural Museum-Reserve "Nesvizh" in the National Historical Archives of Belarus in Minsk. In addition, since 2019, the Presidential Library has opened an access center to the ETALON-ONLINE information retrieval system, developed by the Belarusian National Center for Legal Information.

The regional and foreign network of the Presidential Library is constantly expanding. The remote electronic reading room at the St. Cyril of Turov of the Belarusian Orthodox Church Minsk Theological Academy has become the 49th center opened abroad. Access centers to the resources of the Presidential Library are available in 33 countries. More than 1,400 remote electronic reading rooms are open in the Russian Federation.

It should also be noted that one of the key areas of activity of the Presidential Library is cooperation with higher educational institutions. To date, about 180 universities are partners of the library only in the territory of the Russian Federation.

The Presidential Library’s portal features the electronic collection Belarus: the History of Fraternal People. Official documents, publications of a historical and legal nature, spiritual literature, essays, memoirs, ethnographic collections, as well as pictorial and cartographic materials included in the collection, spotlight various aspects of the life of the country in the period from the 16th to the early 20th century.