Delegation of the Presidential Library attended the World Digital Library conference

June 21-27, 2010 the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library delegation led by the Director General A. P. Vershinin visited the USA. As a part of the business trip the Library employees attended the meeting organized by the Library of Congress and dedicated to the development of the World Digital Library. As a result of the meeting it was agreed that the Presidential Library would provide some of its electronic collections for the holdings of the World Digital Library.

According to the Presidential Library Director General A. P. Vershinin, information resources of the World Digital Library enable to provide access to important and interesting documents for users from all over the world. In September the World Digital Library will receive the ‘Territory of Russia’ collection. The action is timed for the Knowledge Day traditionally held in the Presidential Library on September 1st. The topic of 2010 event will be the ‘Territory of Russia in digital space’.

On behalf of the Presidential Library delegation E. D. Zhabko, Director General Deputy for information resources, spoke at the meeting of partners of the World Digital Library. Her presentation covered the issues of cooperation between the two electronic libraries.

The main reason for the visit of the Presidential Library delegation was its participation in the scheduled meeting of the Russian-American Working group on library collaboration. The meeting’s work has been concentrated in four subgroups: ‘Technologies and experience exchange’, ‘Content and materials exchange’, ‘Right for the information’ and ‘Joint digital projects’. During the meeting were discussed the issues of information exchange on the basis of joint projects and elaboration of legal foundations for electronic resources’ use.

The experts of the Presidential Library and the Library of Congress have exchanged the ideas on the areas of cooperation and defined the ways of realization of joint projects. As a result of negotiations the parties have agreed that the Library of Congress would participate in the ‘Territory of Russia’ project.

The meetings were held in accordance with Memorandum ‘On collaboration between the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library and the Library of Congress’ signed on October 15, 2009 as the result of the Second meeting of the Russian-American Working group.