9 November 2010 the Russian State Library (the RSL) hosted a regular seminar for representatives of regional libraries – winners of the competition programme “Model Rural Libraries”. Within the framework of the programme Russian rural libraries get personal computers, access to the Internet and to different digital resources for libraries free of charge, which is supposed to contribute to their development and raise the professional level of their specialists. The event was realized with the support of foundation “Pushkinskaya Library”.

The seminar was opened by the greeting speech of the RSL director general Alexander Visly. He asked the representatives of the libraries their opinion on the problem of providing individuals with access to the copyright digital resources. The discussion also touched upon the question of the so-called “readers” (special software tools for reading electronic books) in libraries.

The seminar was conducted by the staff members of the department of support of access to digital resources. They spoke on different subjects connected with the digital resources and services provided by the RSL.

Thus, head manager of the “Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library” (DDL RSL) project, N. Avdeeva reported on the Russian State Library in general, on its role in the modern society, and also on the DDL RSL with its development and prospects.

The coordinator of the DDL RSL project O. Chemodanova enumerated the main capabilities of the system for safe document viewing “DefView”. Besides, Olga Vladimirovna conducted a master – class in work with the search engine in the catalogue of dissertations and author’s abstracts of the DDL RSL on website diss.rsl.ru, and with the software of “DefView” in the real time.

The chief specialist of the “Open Digital Dissertation Library of the RSL” (ODDL) project M. Sergeyuk presented her report on the stages of development of the ODDL. For authors, she also highlighted the rules of transferring their works to the collections of the Open Digital Dissertation Library of the RSL.

T. Blinova, the chief specialist of the DDL RSL project, made a presentation on the topic of “Antiplagiat. Testing texts for plagiarism against the Digital Dissertation Library of the RSL”, in which she spoke about the project of “Antiplagiat (‘anti-plagiarism’)”, its aims and stages of development. She also informed the audience about the rules of application and signing the contract in order to get the work tested for plagiarism against the database of the DDL RSL. In the end the speaker presented a form of the resolution which is handed to the applicants as a result of the test performed.

Being a rich source of inspiration and a profound basis for research, the collections of the RSL Digital Dissertation Library help users of rural libraries to access the latest knowledge in all branches of science.

We owe thanks to the staff members of the department of support of access to digital resources for their high professionalism in conducting the event, and to the directors of the “Pushkinskaya Library” foundation for the opportunity to grant access to the collections of modern scientific information for the citizens of all the nooks of our country.