1 March 2017, the Conference Room of the Russian State Library (Moscow) hosted the working meeting devoted to the problems of the development of the digital library for the Library Assembly of Eurasia (ELBI BAE). The meeting was organized by the Russian State Library (RSL) and its Department of interlibrary cooperation of libraries of Russia and CIS. Among the guests of the event there could be named representatives of the Azerbaijan National Library, National Academic Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan, National Library of Armenia, National Library of Belarus, National Library of Moldova, National Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan, National Library of Tajikistan, National Library of Uzbekistan, National Library of the Republic of Kirgizia named after A. Osmonov and of the following Russian libraries: the Russian State Library, National Library of Russia, Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library, National Library of the Udmurt Republic, Russian State Child Library and the All – Russian State Library of Foreign Literature named after M. I. Rudomino.

The meeting was started by deputy director general on external cooperation and exhibition activity of the RSL Natalia Samoilenko who greeted the audience and pointed out the importance of keeping friendship especially at the age of the exploration of a new informational space. The collaborative development of the latter would bring forward new means for knowledge preservation. The speaker wished everyone fruitful work and essential results within the framework of the meeting.

Further on there was a speech pronounced by Nina Avdeeva, who was head of the Administrative department of management and monitoring service for clients of the Russian State Library and head manager of the “Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library” project. The speaker introduced project “Digital Dissertation Library of the RSL” and the staff members of her administrative department who were directly involved into the project work. After that she explained the choice of the subject matter for Tatyana Blinova, deputy head of the Department of support of access to digital resources of the RSL.

Then it was Tatyana Blinova’s turn to present her speech “Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library (an experience of development and usage of electronic resources)”. She gave the targets of the project, enumerated its stages and provided detailed descriptions of all the collections composing the Digital Library of the RSL. The collection of the greatest demand, that one of “Digital Dissertation Library of the RSL”, was described with focused attention. There were given online services functioning at the RSL for user’s ease. After that there was touched upon the theme of the RSL and its cooperation with the Intergovernmental Foundation for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Cooperation (IFESCCO) and Library Assembly of Eurasia.

In addition, as asked by N.Avdeeva, T.Blinova spoke about the service of “Selling redundant editions written off the RSL collections” accessible on the RSL Internet store of services.

The meeting was continued by head of RSL Dissertation department Irina Sakirko who reported to the audience the importance of work with paper copies of dissertations and author’s abstracts. The speaker gave the brief history of the collection of dissertations which had been started in 1944, emphasized its uniqueness and expressed her opinion concerning the necessity of preserving it safe for the research society and future generations. Meanwhile the audience turned out to be interested in problems connected with Federal Law “About Legal Deposits” currently in force since 01 January 2017, so there followed numerous questions with verbose answers. After that the guests of the event were invited to the excursion around the RSL with demonstration of work of its departments. Alexander Mitreikin, head of the Scanning department (OSK), spoke on document digitization at the Russian State Library. The participants of the meeting managed to see how documents were scanned and processed, and how digital copies were dealt with. The point of particular attention of the OSK department turned out to be quality of service support, for the latter influenced the volumes of work carried out and capacity utilization. The representatives of the delegation of CIS national libraries were captivated by the digitization processes they witnessed. For more understanding there was demonstrated a full cycle of scanning and processing materials with the example of a book. The excursion around the Department of organization and functioning of collections of RSL Digital Library shed light on the technology of acquisition of digital copies of printed books for the collections of Digital Library of the RSL. Head of the Sector of cataloguing digital resources Tatyana Belous spoke on the creation of a bibliographic description with the help of software Aleph, as well as about the system of assignment of access codes and collection codes for documents entering the electronic library.

Head of the Department of organization and functioning of collections of RSL Digital Library Anton Yerpuliov introduced to the audience the broad functionality of the system of acquisition of printed legal deposits in the electronic form. The problem of criteria for evaluation of the acquired copies and of format of evaluation of technical state of the electronic copy raised a keen interest. There was also demonstrated the functionality of the system with the example of work inside the operator’s virtual office.

Main librarian of the Sector of information service of the RSL Department of library and information service Nadezhda Davydova spoke on the order of providing access to digital resources of the Russian State Library inside reading rooms of the RSL, about work with digital catalogue, about document search over the digital library of the RSL and remote network resources acquired by the library for users, as well as about work with data on optic CDs, about configuration settings for information systems of users’ computers inside the RSL reading rooms and about peculiarities of access to the resources of the RSL in compliance with property rights of right – holders as stipulated in Russian laws. Then, the speaker pointed out differences in the services provided for diverse groups of readers, this including teenagers under 18 (the RSL accepts readers from the age of 14), the visually impaired (with usage of a specially designed software), socially undefended citizens and others.

The National Digital Library (NDL) was the theme of speeches by head of the Department of functioning of the National Digital Library Valery Kornev and head of the Administrative department of National Digital Library Ruslan Bobrik. There it was stated that the NDL was a national information system joining the collections of public libraries throughout the Russian Federation. As asked by the participants of the meeting, the speakers gave detailed descriptions of the technological platform of the NDL and algorithms of cooperation with NDL participants when forming its collections. They would also touch upon questions of access to documents of the NDL within the territory of the Russian Federation. Traditionally separate there was discussed the problem of copyright works. Users’ capabilities were demonstrated on the NDL portal. In prospects the NDL was viewed as the main national electronic space of knowledge.

The participants of the meeting shared their experience of digital library development. Besides, everyone proved to be anxious about stocking NDL with Federal Law “About Legal Deposits” currently in force since 01 January 2017, as well as about the internal law conflicts and methods of setting disputes with authors and publishers.

To conclude the working day, the participants of the meeting visited the recently opened exhibition space of the RSL Ivanovsky Hall. There the guests got acquainted with exhibition “Book. A Designer’s View”. After that they walked around the departments of culture and exhibition complex Pashkov Dom.

Thus, the first day of the meeting devoted to the problems of development of digital library of the Library Assembly of Eurasia turned out to have busy schedule and to be a success. The participants managed to discuss urgent matters within the framework of the general theme.

The materials of the working meeting are planned to be put on the official website of the Russian Association of Digital Libraries www.aselibrary.ru.