Meeting of the Library Assembly of Eurasia. Developing an e-library
March 1st, 2017 at the Meeting Room of the Russian State Library (RSL), Moscow, there took place the meeting devoted to the problems of development an electronic library for the Library Assembly of Eurasia. The event was organized by the RSL Department of library cooperation with libraries of Russia and CIS states. At the meeting there were present the specialists of the following national libraries:
Azerbaijan National Library named after M.F. Akhundov,
National Academic Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan,
National Library of Armenia,
National Library of Belarus,
National Library of Moldova,
National Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan,
National Library of Tajikistan,
National Library of Uzbekistan,
National Library of the Kyrgyz Republic named after А. Osmonov,
and of the following libraries of Russia:
Russian State Library,
National Library of Russia,
Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library,
National Library of the Udmurt Republic,
Russian State Children Library,
All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature named after M.I. Rudomino.
The first speaker to greet the audience was Natalia Yu.Samoilenko, RSL director in external relations and exhibitions. She pointed out the importance of staying friendly with neighbouring states in the epoch of forming a new information space, the development of which would engender new means for storing knowledge. Ms Samoilenko wished the attendees success and fruitful work.
Natallia Yu.Samoilenko
Further on head of the RSL Administrative department of management and monitoring service for clients Nina V.Avdeeva was to speak. Ms#nbsp;Avdeeva brought forth her project "Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library", introduced the specialists working under it. After that she explained the choice of the topic for Tatyana A.Blinova's speech, which was "Digital Library of the Russian State Library, or From the experience of development and usage of electronic resources".
Nina V.Avdeeva
In her turn, Ms Blinova, head of the Department of support of access to digital resources of the RSL, clarified the goals of the DDL RSL project, told about its stages and described all the collections of the Digital Library of the Russian State Library. The issue of her thorough concern was "Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library" which was a collection of a greatest demand among all the others available via the DDL RSL project. Then the speaker would mention the online services offered by the RSL to its users. Ms Blinova brought up the theme of collaboration of the Russian State Library, the Intergovernmental Foundation for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Cooperation (IFESCCO) and the Library Assembly of Eurasia. In addition, upon Ms Avdeeva's request, Tatyana Aleksandrovna highlighted the new service of the RSL which was "Selling extra editions written off the RSL collections" available on the RSL Internet Store of Services.
Tatyana A. Blinova
The next speaker to address the audience was Irina L. Sakirko, head of the RSL Department of dissertations. She reminded the participants of the meeting about the importance of work with the original dissertations and author's abstracts in physical format. Ms Sakirko recounted the history of the dissertation collection as it had been stored at the RSL from the year of 1944. She would point out the uniqueness of the resource and the importance of preserving it for the needs of the academic community and any other kinds of readers. Still the questions to follow were connected with Federal Law "About legal deposit copies" which had come into force January 1st, 2017. Then the guests of the meeting were offered an excursion during which there was demonstrated work of the RSL departments.
Irina L.Sakirko
Alexander A. Mitreykin, head of the RSL Department of scanning, spoke on the work of his department. The visit to the department which followed in a little while helped the participants of the meeting to get acquainted with the details of the scanning processes as they were carried out at the establishment. They could see how the scanned copies were processed. The issue of a particular concern of the specialists of the Department of scanning remained quality of service, for that aspect did influence the volumes of the work performed and the capacity utilization. The delegates of the CIS national libraries showed their interest towards the scanning processes as they were organized at the RSL for its collections. In order to maximally clarify every possible detail, the RSL specialists demonstrated a complete scanning cycle over one of the books prepared. Thus their visit to the Department of organizing and running the RSL e-lirary collections helped the guests of the event to understand better the technology details of acquiring electronic copies by the RSL digital library. Tatyana S. Belous, head of the Sector of cataloguing electronic resources spoke on the process of creating a bibliographic record with the help of the "Aleph" software. Another issue she touched upon was the system of assignment of access codes and collection codes for the items entering the electronic library.
The RSL Department of Scanning
Anton A. Yerpuliov, head of the Department of organizing and running the e-library collections, told about the functional of the software for receiving legal deposit copies in the electronic form. The aspect of a particular interest turned out to be the criteria of evaluation of the documents acquired and format of evaluating technical characteristics of the copies received. For illustration, there was demonstrated system functionality on the example of work in operator's account.
In her turn, Nadezhda R. Davydova, main librarian of the RSL Sector of informational service of the Department of library and information service, spoke on the way the RSL e-resources could be accessed at the reading rooms of the Russian State Library. She would explain the principles of work with the RSL digital catalogue, then she focused on discovering documents of the digital library and of the remote network resources the RSL was providing to its readers. Among other issues of interest the speaker touched upon there could be mentioned the basics of work with data on optical CDs, settings of configurations of information systems at users' PCs at VRRs RSL, peculiarities of access to the RSL resources with proper enforcement of copyright, etc. Meanwhile, there were specified rules for serving different kinds of users at the library, such as teenagers under 18 (readers over 14 could enroll upon the RSL user rules), visually impaired (with use of a specialized software), citizens socially vulnerable, as well as other kinds or readers.
Nadezhda R.Davydova
The National Electronic Library (NEL) was the topic of Valery#nbsp;Ye.Kornev's speech. Head of the Department of running the National Electronic Library of the RSL, together with Ruslan#nbsp;V.Bobrik, head of the NEL Administrative department of the RSL emphasised the fact that the NEL was a national information system consolidating the collections of public libraries of the Russian Federation. Upon the attendees' request, the speakers would focus on the technological platform of the NEL as well as on the interaction algorithm for NEL participants to form its collections. Another aspect to be considered was access to the NEL resources within the territory of the Russian Federation. An issue of a particular attention was the problem of access to the incopyright works. The capabilities offered to readers on the NEL portal were demonstrated most clearly. The prospects for the NEL resource as it had been originally seen were to make it the main Russian electronic space of knowledge.
Valery Ye.Kornev
Then, the participants of the meeting shared their experience in e-library development. Besides, everyone was eager to know how the NEL was going to acquire editions after Federal Law "About legal deposit copies" (dated January#nbsp;1st,#nbsp;2017) came into force. Among other issues of interest there were collisions in legislation and methods of settling disputes between authors and publishers.
To conclude the working day, there was organized an excursion around the new exhibition space Ivanovsky Hall which had been opened not long before. The RSL guests had a chance to attend exhibition "Book as seen by a designer". They would also visit the departments of cultural and exhibition complex the "Pashkov's House".