The Presidential Library develops new projects with partner museums

The Presidential Library develops an active cooperation with museums, so that unique documents from their collections become available to a wide audience.

Among the partners there are 32 museums, including 7 museums of federal significance: the State Hermitage Museum, the State Russian Museum, the Alexander Pushkin All-Russian Museum, the Pushkin State Historical and Literary Museum-Reserve (Mikhailovskoye), the Russian Ethnographic Museum, the History Museum of Artillery, Engineer and Signal Corps and the Museum of the History of Russian State Securities of the St. Petersburg Goznak Paper Mill.

It has been providing a huge work with a number of museums for a long time already to convert their priceless exhibits to the electronic format.

In particular, the Presidential Library and the State Russian Museum have already implemented a part of a large-scale joint project to digitize unique documents on the life and work of Great Russian artists. These are manuscripts, books, letters - like, for example, the letter of artist Vasily Shukhaev of 1950 to daughter Marina, which he accompanies with a drawing.

It is also scanned hand-written materials about Alexander Bryullov, Ivan Shishkin, Konstantin Makovsky, Mikhail Vrubel, Konstantin Somov, Mikhail Botkin and other painters. Previously, the fund of handwritten documents was opened only by admissible art critics. The project has been running since 2014 and is designed for five years. 

"Today, - said the head of the Scanning Department of the Presidential Library, Sergei Tikhonov, - we have scanned 28 160 various documents of the State Russian Museum, they substantially supplement our knowledge of our beloved national artists". 

Scanners of the Presidential Library also operate in the Military Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineer and Signal Corps. Thanks to the agreement concluded with the museum, a large-scale work related to the history of the First World War has already been implemented: "The file of the Georgievsky Cavaliers of the Trophy Commission from the fund of the Military Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineer and Signal Corps. Index of names". Issued in 28 volumes, the edition contains 3,338 account cards. The information presented in them allows you to find out who, for what and what was awarded, where and when the feat was performed, where the decree on awarding was published.

No less impressive there is the material "Gallery of the Georgievsky Cavaliers of the First World War; Shpakovsky Arkady Albertovich, Colonel of the 14th Infantry of the Olonets Regiment", where the portrait of the hero is supplemented with reliable and complete information about his military feat.

Engaging in the theme of the war of 1812, one of the workers of the museum noticed in the old documents the error in the birth date of the genial commander M. I. Kutuzov, who "aged" the generalissimo for two years. Working together, the staff of the museum and the Presidential Library raised archival record books and other materials and, carefully studying them, restored the exact year of birth of the great commander.

In 2015, in the year of celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory, 8 regional museums took part in the formation of an extensive collection about the war: the Achinsk Museum of Local History (Krasnoyarsk Territory), the Derbent Historical, Architectural and Art Museum-Reserve (Republic of Dagestan), Surazh Local History Museum (Bryansk region) and others. Approximately 150 documents were added to the collection of the Presidential Library "Memory of the Great Victory" in the year of the 72nd anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. With this intensity, the formation of electronic collections of books and materials devoted to the military and labor exploits of the liberating people is continuing.

The work on the formation of the Presidential Library's fund, the Old Ladoga Museum-Reserve is also actively involving thanks to which the film staff of the Presidential Library created and demonstrated three documentary films about the first capital of Rus’ at the cinema club meeting.

And as a result of the cooperation of the cinema group of the Presidential Library, led by director Tatyana Dyakonova with the Novgorod Museum-Reserve, 12 films were released from the cycle "Saved murals". Currently, the release of films from the 4-series cycle about graffiti in the temples of Veliky Novgorod is being released. The film of the Presidential Library "Ratnaya Palata" was conceived and realized with the most active participation of the specialists of the State Museum-Reserve "Tsarskoye Selo".

In December 2016, the Presidential Library organized an exhibition "The Krasin Icebreaker", prepared jointly with the branch of the Museum of the World Ocean in St. Petersburg - it opened a series of jubilee events timed to the 100th anniversary of the icebreaker, which is widely celebrated in 2017.

Thanks to the close cooperation of the Presidential Library with the museums, in fact, a unique electronic repository of documents on the history of Russia is being created.