On the 20^th of October 2009 there took place a ceremony of opening a Virtual Reading Room of the Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library at the Vernadsky National Library of the Ukraine (Kiev) which was realized due to cooperation of the RSL with the Intergovernmental Foundation for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Cooperation of the CIS Countries (IFESCCO).

The Director General of the Vernadsky National Library Aleksey Onishchenko was solemnly handed a plaque “Virtual Reading Room of the Russian State Library”. Within the framework of the event there were made the following speeches:

120 specialists of the Vernadsky National Library of the Ukraine participated in the opening. This event started a new phase of relationship between the libraries and the IFESCCO.

The Vernadsky National Library of the Ukraine was founded on the 2^nd (15t^h ) August 1918 as a national library of the State of the Ukraine. It was named after V.I.Vernadsky in 1988.

The stocks of the library comprise more than 15 million items. This unique collection includes books, magazines, periodicals, maps, music editions, artistic works, manuscripts, old printed editions, newspapers, documents filed into untraditional devices. The library possesses a most full collection of Slavic documents and manuscript books, archives and works by prominent people of the Ukrainian and world art and science. Among the component parts of the collection of the library one can name the library and archives collection “The Funds of the Presidents of the Ukraine”, the archives of the Ukrainian press dated from 1917, the archives of the National Academy of Sciences of the Ukraine.

The library accepts 160-180,000 documents annually (books, magazines, newspapers, etc). The library is being supplied by all the Ukrainian editions; it receives dissertations defended at the territory of the state; it carries out international book exchange with more than 1,500 scientific institutions and libraries of 80 countries of the world. As a depository of the UN documents and materials, the library receives publications of this organization and its specialized establishments. From 1998 the library has been purposely replenished by electronic resources.

The unique information resources are used by approximately 500,000 readers who borrow up to 5 million documents annually. Every day the library is visited by more than 2,000 scientists, specialists, students and post graduate students. A special category of clients is represented by members of information services of the government, such as the Supreme Council of the Ukraine, the Administration of the President of the Ukraine and the Cabinet of Ministers of the Ukraine.

The Vernadsky National Library of the Ukraine is also a science and research centre in the sphere of information sciences, library studies and the adjacent sciences. It has post graduate courses and houses a specialized committee on candidate’s and doctor’s dissertations; it publishes the magazine of Science Bulletin and holds international scientific conferences.

The library is made up of more than forty departments. According to the directions of their research work they are grouped into institutes (of library studies, of Ukrainian book studies, of manuscript studies, of archives studies, of biographical studies, etc), centres (of conservation and restoration, of culture and education, of computer technologies, editorial ones, etc), the Fund of the Presidents of the Ukraine and the Service of Government Information and Analysis Supply. More than 900 people work at the library, among which there are 70% librarians, 17% scientists and 13% auxiliaries.

Now all the clients of the Vernadsky National Library of the Ukraine enjoy open access to the full texts of the Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library.