19 – 24 May, Kazan, which had been appointed the library capital of the year of 2024, hosted the All-Russia library congress — 28^th Annual conference of Russian Library Association. The general theme of the events was "Library in a multi-polar world".

Among the participants there were heads and experts of Russian libraries and of library communities of different world countries (such as Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Serbia, Cuba, China, India, etc.), publishers, specialists of the establishments of science and education, people of business, developers and producers of software and hardware. There were also presented speeches by the officials of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, Government of the Republic of Tatarstan and of special guests, among which there were Violetta Y. Askarova, head of the Centre of Reading of Chelyabinsk State Institute of Culture and Arts, and Kirill Mayevsky, producer and curator of book, music and educational projects, art director of the “Smena” Centre of modern culture in Kazan.

In course of the congress events, the participants discussed various problems of theory and practice of library work, such as role of libraries in the development of science and culture, promoting book and reading in the modern world, etc. Then, the aspects like acquisition, inter-departmental cooperation, legal perspective, personnel questions, artificial intelligence usage and so on were also considered with enthusiasm.

During section "Electronic resources and library and information service" and section of specialised research and technical libraries the officials of the Russian State Library Vadim A. Andrenyuk and Elena N. Ivanova presented their speech on the new capabilities of the RSL Digital Library. They also considered virtual reading rooms of the RSL with new options and advanced services. Another important aspect they spoke about was research library and the personality of a researcher of nowadays in the context of current changes, both technological and cultural ones. As for the new services of the Russian State Library in this respect, there were described in details digitisation of most interesting and frequently demanded documents from the RSL collections and composing thematic selections for the RSL virtual reading rooms. Another option introduced was a capability to request a digital copy of a document part from the RSL Digital Library.

Then, the All-Russian library congress witnessed one more event of importance, which turned out to be the elections to the RLA Government Board. The newly-elected president of Russian Library Association became Vadim V. Duda, the director general of the Russian State Library. The list of the new government board members can be viewed over here.

The materials of the All-Russia library congress – 28^th Annual conference of Russian Library Association are going to be published in the “RLA Information Bulletin".

There are also available the videos of the opening ceremony and of the plenary meeting.

Here you can join the streams of meeting "Russian Libraries in the Epoch of Global Challenges — Problems and Solutions", which took place in the National Library of the Republic of Tatarstan.

The videos of the final plenary meeting and of the closing ceremony of the congress can be watched on the link.