14 December 2010 in the city of Astana, which is the capital city of the Republic of Kazakhstan, there took place opening of a new Virtual Reading Room of the Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library (VRR RSL). The event was held at the National Academic Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan (NAL RK) due to the project “Virtual Reading Rooms of the Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library in national libraries and libraries of leading higher education institutions of the CIS countries” within the framework of the mega project “Vault of Commonwealth: Libraries”.

The event gathered directors of public libraries and libraries of higher education institutions of the city of Astana, heads of research departments, lecturers from higher education institutions, staff members and users of the NAL RK, and also such high – ranking guests as coordinator of the department of development of medical and innovative technologies of Ministry of Public Health of the RK, expert doctor Ssagadat Ssagandikova, director of the department of information resources of the corporation of Nazarbaev University Aliya Ssarcembinova, director of the National archives of the RK Risti Khaleskizi Ssarieva and a representative of the “KEGOC” corporation Kakharman Sultanbekov.

Within the framework of the opening of the VRR DDL RSL there were presented the following speeches:

• greeting word of the director general of the National Academic Library of the RK in the city of Astana Zhanna Shaimoukhanbetova;

• greeting word from the Russian State Library and the Intergovernmental Foundation for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Cooperation (IFESCCO) by Nina Avdeeva;

• report and presentation “Eliminating information inequality due to cooperation of RSL and IFESCCO” of the head of the department of support of access to digital resources of the RSL and head manager of the DDL RSL project Nina Avdeeva;

• report and presentation “Antiplagiat: testing texts for plagiarism against DDL RSL” of the chief specialist of project DDL RSL Tatyana Blinova.

In the end, the director general of the National Academic Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the city of Astana Zhanna Shaimoukhanbetova was handed a plaque “Virtual Reading Room of the Russian State Library”.

Journalists and reporters of the television of Astana, who were also present at the event, asked N. Avdeeva and T. Blinova numerous questions on the starting and developing the DDL RSL details. The issues of importance there also turned out to be the conditions of access and copyright matters.   

The collection of the NAL RK counts more than 600, 000 books. Besides, the library accepts more than 900 items of national and foreign periodicals in Kazakh and other languages. Library has more than 25, 000 users which are offered a wide range of electronic services: access to remote full-textual databases, information search through digital catalogues, virtual inquiry service, producing and emailing parts of copies of works from the NAL RK collections, online advance orders to reading rooms, remote enrolment, etc.

Readers can use the following rooms of the library: digital catalogue room, digital resource room, information and bibliographic service room, digital reading room of oil and gas subjects, department of world literature, scientific reading room, reading room for disabled people with the latest hi – tech equipment, etc. All in all, the library possesses 17 reading rooms with the seating capacity of 500.

The most important directions of the activity realized by the NAL RK are promotion of Kazakh book, works of Kazakh authors, cultivation of deep respect towards the historic past of the people of Kazakhstan, their cultural heritage, traditions and customs.

Thus the cooperation of the Russian State Library and the Intergovernmental Foundation for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Cooperation resulted in opening two virtual reading rooms in the Republic of Kazakhstan: at the National Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the city of Almaty and at the National Academic Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the city of Astana. Now even more readers not only in the ex – capital of the republic Almaty, but also in the modern capital Astana enjoy access to the full texts of the Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library.