Yerevan State University

18^th April 2012 in Yerevan, the capital city of the Republic of Armenia, there took place the ceremony of opening a Virtual Reading Room of the Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library (DDL RSL) in the Sarkis and Marie Izmirlian Library of the Yerevan State University (YSU) within the framework of the joint project of the Russian State Library and the Intergovernmental Foundation for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Cooperation (IFESCCO).

The delegation of the Russian State Library came to Armenia to conduct the ceremony. The delegation was represented by the head of the administrative department of managing and monitoring service for clients Nina Avdeeva, deputy head of the department of support of access to digital resources Tatyana Blinova and chief technologist of the department of prospective development Artem Poltorikhin.

A. Aleksanian, director of YSU library, is speaking

The ceremony was opened by the greeting word of the director of the Sarkis and Marie Izmirlian Library of the Yerevan State University (YSU), candidate of Political Sciences, associate professor Ashot Aleksanian. He thanked the IFESCCO and the RSL for the opportunity of getting access to modern scientific knowledge. He expressed his hope that this could strengthen international cooperation with Russia.

R. Markosian, YSU Vice – chancellor, is speaking

From the directors of the Yerevan State University the guests and participants of the ceremony were greeted by �andidate of Technical Sciences, Ruben Markosian, YSU Vice – chancellor in problems of students, graduates and public relations.

From the IFESCCO the participants of the event were greeted by Nina Avdeeva. Afterwards she presented her report “Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library is a leading resource for science and education”, in which she highlighted stages of development of the DDL RSL, rules of organization and access to the resource; she also spoke on the joint project of the RSL and the IFESCCO. Besides, she gave information on new collections of the Digital Library of the RSL (DL RSL) and statistics on its usage.

Chief specialist of DDL RSL project, T. Blinova’s speakin

Deputy head of the department of support of access to digital resources and chief specialist on the DDL RSL project Tatyana Blinova spoke on the “Software for Digital Dissertation Library of Russian State Library. Antiplagiat system by RSL”. She acquainted the audience with the software used for accessing DDL RSL and the service provided by the RSL “Testing texts for plagiarism against DDL RSL using Antiplagiat system”.

In conclusion the parties exchanged special deluxe editions of books. The RSL representatives presented the Sarkis and Marie Izmirlian Library with the book on the history of the Russian State Library from the 19^th century and till the present times. In their turn, they got an edition devoted to life and work of the famous Armenian artist Martiros Saryan.

Handing VRR plate

The director of the Sarkis and Marie Izmirlian Library of the YSU Ashot Aleksanian was handed plate “Virtual Reading Room of the Russian State Library”.

Participants of ceremony

The ceremony of opening the DDL RSL Virtual reading room took place at the YSU conference hall specially equipped for such events. All in all 50 people were present, mainly, the teachers and other staff, and also students.

Discussion with YSU Vice – chancellor

Later on, there took place a discussion with the YSU Vice – chancellor in problems of students, graduates and public relations Ruben Markosian. The participants discussed such problems as sto�king library collections and copyright, lack of well – qualified personnel, getting higher education in general and supplying students with specialized literature.

Master class in Virtual reading room of YSU library

The RSL delegation visited the reading rooms of the Sarkis and Marie Izmirlian Library of the YSU. In the reading room where there were accessible full texts of the dissertations and author’s abstracts from the DDL RSL, Tatyana Blinova hold a master class. She demonstrated how to form a request for searching documents from the DDL RSL, how to open the found document and how to work with it using the facilities of the special software for protected document viewing. All the participants had a good practice of it.

RSL Virtual Reading Room in YSU library

After the master class, the “Virtual Reading Room of the Russian State Library” plate was placed on the wall by the entrance to the digital reading room, and now all the readers of the YSU library have an opportunity to explore the resource.

The university starts its history 31^st January 1920. Then it could boast of only one department, the Department of History and Linguistics, for the 262 students and 32 teachers of those times.

Today the 20 departments of the Yerevan State University provide education for approximately 13 thousand students. The staff of 1200 teachers includes 200 Doctors and over 500 Candidates. More than 30 academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences work here, too. Highly qualified scientists of the university carry out fundamental and applied research in different spheres of modern science using the latest equipment.

The YSU library was founded 28^th February 1920. In 1927 its collections included 52 thousand books for only 530 readers. At present the library possesses about 2 million books, 1.2 million of which are scientific. 89 people are employed in the library. The library is stocked, mainly, by means of subscription, book exchange and commercial agreements. Besides, it regularly accepts gifts and financial aid.

 

Meeting director of National Library of Armenia

In the afternoon the RSL representatives paid a visit to the National Library of Armenia. At the National Library of Armenia the representatives of the RSL spoke to its director Tigran Zargarian. The latter pointed out the importance of cooperation between the two national libraries.

The participants of the discussion spoke on such matters as stocking funds of libraries, financing and jubilees. The Republic of Armenia is getting ready to meet the 500th anniversary of printing books in Armenia and 1,500th anniversary of establishing the new script of the language. The National Library of Armenia is planning to start the celebrations by exhibitions of Armenian old printed books from its collections. Tigran Zargarian praised highly the work of the RSL and expressed his hope to continue the cooperation. Then the director was handed plate “Virtual Reading Room of the Russian State Library”.

After that the head of the department of automation Nune Samvelian and the head of the department of bibliography Juliette Kostikian held an excursion around the rooms and departments of the National Library and demonstrated stands prepared for the jubilee exhibitions.

Talk to head of Department of old printed, rare and archives books

The representatives of the RSL paid their special attention to the Department of Old Printed, Rare and Archives Books. There they witnessed preparations for the jubilee of Armenian books. The head of the department Melania Karapetian showed the collections of the department, spoke on the work being done for the jubilee. She also draw the attention of her audience to the forming of the integrated Digital collection of the unique Armenian old printed books. She was especially interested in getting to know all about the experience of the RSL representatives in that question.

Demonstrating “Old Printed Books” collection

Nina Avdeeva spoke to the employees of the National Library of Armenia about the digital collections of the RSL, in particular, on the digital collection of old printed books, and demonstrated the rules of searching and viewing full texts of that collection.

The National Library of Armenia is the largest repository of printed Armenian materials in the world. The first Armenian printed book “Urbatagirq” (Venice 1512-1513), “Pataragatetr” (service book),”Akhtark” (astrology prophecies), “Parzatumar” (hagiography), “Tagaran” (book of songs of Armenian medieval poets), the first periodical “Azdarar” (Madras 1794), the first printed map “Hamatarats Ashkharhatsuyts” (Amsterdam 1695) and over 500 Armenian old printed books (1512 – 1800) and simply rare books are preserved in the National Library.

The history of the library begins in the year of 1832, when the library of the Classical school for male students was founded, on the basis of 18.000 volumes of which the Armenian National Library was formed. According to the law “About the State Public Repositories”, the library was awarded the status of the main national library of Armenia. The collection of the National Library of Armenia counts over 6.8million items, this including books, periodicals, maps, digital carriers, etc. The 14 specialized reading rooms of the library hand about 1.5million items to its readers annually. By the way, approximately 1,000 users visit the library every day. The National Library of Armenia organizes more than 100 events every year: exhibitions, presentations, meetings with well-known people of culture and science, literature nights. The library realizes loans with 160 organizations of 42 countries all over the world. Among the world library organizations cooperating with the National Library of Armenia there can be named IFLA, CENL, LAE. At present the library employs 350 people.