National libraries of Russia will eliminate repetition in the digitization

In 2018, the national libraries of Russia will eliminate repetition in book and document digitization. This was announced at the Council for Cooperation of the National Libraries (which was held yesterday in the Presidential Library) in course of examination of issues of the development of national electronic resources.

It bears reminding that in Russia there are three institutions with the status of a national library: the Russian State Library (RSL) in Moscow, and the National Library of Russia (NLR) and the Presidential Library both in St. Petersburg. It was pointed out that in 2018, on the assumption of coordination on cooperation, a work on the formation of digital collections, which can become a base for an exchange with the funds between the all three institutions, should continue. This will grant ample access to books, documents and, as a result, further lower information inequality in the regions. Only the Presidential Library alone has more than 400 remote electronic reading rooms in all constituent entities of the Russian Federation and in 30 countries around the world. With that, the Presidential Library was the first institution that disclose the plans on materials to digitize on its website. The annual fund replenishment of this institution is more than 10 million scans, or 100,000 entries. As it was pointed at the Cooperation Council, the National Library of Russia and the Russian State Library must also interact with each other and with the society with maximum transparency. This is especially important for the implementation of the “National Electronic Library” project, an operator of which is the RSL.

At the Cooperation Council the parties came to conclusion about a need for a complete transition to unified form of cataloging and describing of digital resources, a complete software import phase-out.

As the General Director of the Presidential Library Alexander Vershinin emphasized in his speech, current tasks of the national libraries should be solved together. This applies to the joint activities, fund acquisitions, collections building, and to saving, apart from the digital, also a material heritage. The Director General of the Russian National Library Alexander Visly drew attention to the fact that in 2018 his organization and the Presidential Library will present an electronic collection of rare books and materials dedicated to a part and a place of the national sport in history, the birth of football shortly before the World Cup. The head of the Russian State Library Vladimir Gnezdilov highly appreciated the experience of interaction with the Presidential Library for the preservation of book monuments and realizing cultural and educational projects.