13 – 17 September 2010, in a picturesque place by lake Baikal, in the settlement of Listvianka (Irkutsk region) Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, Russian State Library, Main Information and Calculation Centre of MinCulture of Russia, Russian Association of Digital Libraries (NPP ELBI) and foundation "Digital Century of Culture" held the Ninth international research and practical conference "Digital Century of Culture".

The centre of attention of such conferences have traditionally been matters like identification and discussing ways of informatization of different branches of culture, getting to know the latest achievements in the field of digitization of information, and also new ways of transferring, interchange and storage of information.

This year the conference “Digital Century of Culture” accepted more than 130 participants – professionals from different organizations of culture and education, and also commercial structures working in the field of digital resources.

14 September 2010, within the framework of plenary meeting “Digital Resources of Culture: Freedom of Access and Copyright”, vice – chairman of the Government of Irkutsk region Alexander Moiseev gave a greeting word. Then, the director of Department of Science and Education of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation Oleg Neretin read out the message of the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Alexander Avdeev to the participants of the conference.

The director general of the RSL Alexander Visly, with his speech “Libraries, what are we going to do with Google?”, set the pace of the event.

The reports of the participants of the conference were devoted to such topics as: opportunities of libraries and aggregating agents to make their work comply with Part 4 of the Civil Code of the RF while digitizing works, protecting intellectual property on the Internet, realizing of the project of National library resource; creating quality digital resources.

At the special seminar on the full – textual search presided by Igor Gruzdev, there took place a discussion on methods of assessment of search possibilities and ways of development of search engines. In the discussion there participated specialists from the RSL, public corporation “Armada”, Softline and limited liability company “IT Systems”.

At the plenary meeting “Level of Digitization of the Higher Education Institution is the Basis for Success for Future Specialists”, which was held 15 September 2010, there were discussed technological solutions of problems of automation in organizations of culture, media educational potential and computer – aided systems of managing the educational process in the higher education institutions of culture and arts; and also the necessity to introduce a regular educational course in copyright, problems of electronic library systems of higher education institutions – and many other problems connected with digitization of higher education institutions of culture and arts.

16 September 2010 there was held plenary meeting “Digital Libraries” as a part of the annual research and practical conference of the Russian Association of Digital Libraries, which in this year coincided with the conference “Digital Century of Culture”.

The meeting was presided by the director general of the RSL Alexander Visly, the director of the non – commercial partnership “Digital Libraries” and the IT director of the RSL Igor Gruzdev, as well as the deputy IT director of the non – commercial partnership “Digital Libraries” and head manager of the “Digital Dissertation Library of the RSL” project Nina Avdeeva. The first to speak was Alexander Visly. He presented his report “Open Access: Myths and Reality”. The next was Igor Gruzdev with his report “Russian Association of Digital Libraries”, in which he presented the main aims of the association functioning.

As the Russian Association of Digital Libraries is one of the chief organizations dealing with encouragement of development of Russian information resources accessible on the Internet, and also with the questions of legal foundation of starting digital libraries, - the further speeches of the participants of the meeting were devoted to the structure of the projects realized by the Association, and their practical importance.

At the conference the participants shared their experience in the sphere of digitization in different branches of culture and education, they also got to know the peculiarities of development of higher education institutions of culture and arts; they discussed the present and the future of digital libraries; they met the representatives of business structures working in the field of culture and education.

All the events of the Ninth international research and practical conference “Digital Century of Culture” were broadcast on the website of the Russian Association of Digital Libraries www.aselibrary.ru, so that all users could take part in it, ask their questions in emails and receive answers on – line. According to the statistics, the broadcast was daily watched by more than 600 remote users.

The videos and the agenda of the conference “Digital Century of Culture" are all available over here.