27 October 2010 in the city of Tashkent of the Republic of Uzbekistan there was started the 6th international conference “Information and Library Resources in Science, Education, Culture and Business Central Asia 2010”. The audience was met by the greeting words of the representatives of the UzASI (the Uzbek agency of communication and digitization), Legislative Chamber Oliy Mazhlissa of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the Intergovernmental Foundation for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Cooperation (IFESCCO) and the agency of UzArchive.

The conference was organized by the Committee in Questions of Information and Telecommunications of the Legislative Chamber Oliy Mazhlissa of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the National Library of Uzbekistan named after Alisher Navoiy, Republican Information and Library Centre and Tashkent University of Information Technologies.

The event gathered specialists from Germany, Russia, the USA, Uzbekistan and representatives from international state and public organizations. On the first working day of the conference at the plenary meeting the participants of the conference exchanged their experience in the sphere of informatization of different branches of culture and education, discussed the present and the future of digital libraries and influence of information resources on the development of the society. Among other topics there were problems of forming digital information resources, creation of library systems and their usage inside libraries, information resource centres (IRCs), information library centres (ILCs) and archives.

Within the framework of the programme of the conference, 27 October 2010, at the section “Methods and means of development of information and library establishments of the republic”, Nina Avdeeva spoke on the topic of “Elimination of information inequality as a result of cooperation of the Russian State Library (RSL) and the Intergovernmental Foundation for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Cooperation (IFESCCO)”.

The main points of her speech:

• forming, stocking and developing DDL RSL;

• joint project of the RSL and IFESCCO: the results of the three – year cooperation;

• organization and access to the DDL RSL;

• rules for testing documents for plagiarism against the DDL RSL collections.

The users of the Republic of Uzbekistan turned out to be interested to the highest degree in the resource of the Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library. According to the statistics, Uzbekistan is at the third place in frequency of using the DDL RSL resource among the organizations which were granted the access to the resource within the framework of the joint project of the RSL and the IFESCCO.

That is why in July 2010, in the third year of cooperation of the RSL and the IFESCCO, they decided to grant access to the resource to the Urgench State University named after Al - Khoresmiy (the city of Urgench). Before that the access to the DDL RSL had only been realized at the National Library of Uzbekistan named after Alisher Navoiy.

27 October 2010 the representatives of the RSL and the guests of the conference visited the National Library of Uzbekistan named after Alisher Navoiy, where Nina Avdeeva spoke about the joint project of the Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library which was realized due to cooperation of the RSL and the Intergovernmental Foundation for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Cooperation. She also conducted a presentation of the new service introduced by the RSL “Testing texts for plagiarism against the DDL RSL using the Antiplagiat software”.

The National Library of Uzbekistan named after Alisher Navoiy was founded as Tashkent Public Library. 12 April 2002, the Chamber of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan issued a resolution � 123 “About the creation of the National Library of Uzbekistan named after Alisher Navoiy”. The resolution set the status of the library as the main state book repository for editions both national and foreign, as a multi – functional library and information establishment of science and research, as a methodological centre for all the libraries of the republic. The National Library of Uzbekistan was started on the basis of the State Library of the Republic of Uzbekistan named after Alisher Navoiy and the Republican Sci-tech Library. The most important library of the republic is now run by the Chamber of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

At the meeting the director of the National Library of Uzbekistan named after Alisher Navoiy, Abssalom Oumarov, was handed a plate “Virtual Reading Room of the Russian State Library”. Besides, there were discussed the results of the three – year cooperation of the RSL and the National Library of Uzbekistan named after Alisher Navoiy within the framework of the joint project of the RSL and the IFESCCO. The representatives of the RSL conducted a master class in work with the DDL RSL. Nina Avdeeva and Tatyana Blinova answered the questions on work with the DDL RSL and testing texts for plagiarism against the collections of the DDL RSL using the software of “Antiplagiat”.

The joint master class conducted by the representatives of the RSL and counsellor of the IFESCCO O. Barakaeva aroused high interest among such guests of the conference as David G. Hersh from the culture centre in Abu-Dabi (UAE) and Kit Condill (an Assistant Professor from Slavic & East European Library), the representative of the library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (http://www.library.illinois.edu/spx). The foreign guests pointed out that the project can develop successfully in one more important direction – i.e. in providing access to the resource of the DDL RSL at the territories of the libraries of the USA, namely those ones which deal with Slavonic studies.

According to the statistics of the Ministry of Higher Education of the Republic, in Uzbekistan there are 61 establishments of higher education, including 17 universities, 42 institutes and 2 academies. The reforms of education in Uzbekistan get financial and technical support from such organizations as World Bank, Asian Development Bank, OECF (the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund), GTZ (German “Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit”, i.e. “German Society of Technical Cooperation”), TACIS (Technical Assistance Community of the CIS countries), USAID (The United States Agency for International Development) and others. At present 25 higher education institutions participate in different projects.

The Urgench State University named after Al-Khoresmy (the city of Urgench) has been included into the joint project of the RSL and the IFESCCO “Virtual Reading Rooms of the Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library (DDL RSL) in national libraries and the libraries of the leading higher education institutions of the CIS countries” within the framework of the mega – project “The Vault of Commonwealth: Libraries” of this year.

28 October 2010 there took place an official opening of a Virtual Reading Room of the Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library at the territory of the library of the Urgench State University named after Al-Khoresmy (the city of Urgench), which was realized due to cooperation of the RSL and the IFESCCO.

Chancellor of the university, Razoumboy Eshchanov was handed the plaque “Virtual Reading Room of the Russian State Library”.

There also were made the following speeches:

• the greeting word by the chancellor of the Urgench State University named after Al-Khoresmy (the city of Urgench) Razoumboy Eshchanov;

• the greeting word from the Intergovernmental Foundation for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Cooperation by Olga Barakaeva, the counsellor of the IFESCCO;

• the report and the presentation “Eliminating of information inequality as a result of cooperation of the RSL and the IFESCCO” by the head of the department of support of access to digital resources of the RSL and head manager of the project DDL RSL Nina Avdeeva.

The guests of the conference, the counsellor of the IFESCCO and the representatives of the RSL visited the Virtual Reading Room and demonstrated how the web site of the Digital Dissertation Library works and how to access the resources of the DDL RSL.

Artem Poltorykhin, the chief technologist of the DLT (the department of long – term technologies), took an active part in organization and also took photographs of all the events which were attended by the representatives of the RSL and the IFESCCO during their visit to the Republic of Uzbekistan.

Thus, the cooperation of the Russian State Library and the Intergovernmental Foundation for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Cooperation fruited in opening in the Republic of Uzbekistan two Virtual Reading Rooms of the RSL, and now even more users not only in the capital of the republic, i.e. in the city of Tashkent, but also in the remote region like the city of Urgench, can access the full texts of the collections of the Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library.