From 6^th till 9^th October 2009, the representatives of the Russian State Library were taking part in the international forum “Problems of Development of Information Society” which consisted of two conferences:

• The 6^th International Scientific and Practical Conference “Informatio – 2009: Digital Information Resources: Creation, Usage, Access “;

• The 12^th International Scientific and Practical Conference of the UkrINTEI “Building Information Society: Resources and Technology”.

On the first working day of the conference, the Head of the Department of Support of Access to Digital Resources of the RSL and the Head Manager of the Project of the DDL RSL Nina Avdeeva gave a speech on the theme of “The Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library: Development and Support”, in which she highlighted the main aspects, presented statistics, pointed out the new services provided within the framework of the project DDL RSL – such as, for example, testing documents on the subject of plagiarism.

Continuing the topic, Coordinator of the Project of the DDL RSL Olga Chemodanova reported on “Digital Dissertation Library of the RSL: Passing on to the New Programme Supply”. She explained how to work with the system of protected document viewing DefView.

Within the framework of the forum, on 9^th October 2009, there was an official opening of the Virtual Reading Room of the Digital Dissertation Library of the Russian State Library at the Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv, which became possible due to the cooperation of the Russian State Library with the Intergovernmental Foundation for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Cooperation of the CIS Countries (IFESCCO).

Deputy Director General Taras Paslavsky was solemnly handed a plaque “Virtual Reading Room of the Russian State Library”. Considerable help in the organization of the event was received from the Head of the Department of Information Technology Oleksandr Butyter and Junior Research Fellow of the Department of Information Technology Irina Derzhko.

The Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv (ukr. �������� ����������� ������� �������� ������ ����� �.���������) is one of the biggest libraries in the Ukraine. On the 10^th April 2008 it was given the status of National Library by the decree of the President of the Ukraine.

The Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv was founded on the 2^nd 1940. The library was created on the basis of 84 departmental and private libraries of not only Lviv, but of the whole western part of the Ukraine. Those comprise: the collections of the libraries of the Scientific Society named after Taras Shevchenko and of the libraries of the Pubic Home (approximately 500 items); the collections of the society “Prosvita” (“The Enlightenment”); a part of the collection of the library and the archives of the Stavropeeghean Institute; the expropriated collections of convents and monasteries; private collections, and also the collection of the library of the Ossolinsky Institute, at the territory of which the Lviv National Library found its home.

Here are stored the lifetime editions of works by A. Poushkin, M. Lermontov, T. Shevchenko, N. Gogol, L. Tolstoy, I. Frank, A. Chekhov, L. Ukrainka, M. Kotsiubinski, V. Hugo, O. Balzac, A. Diuma, Ch. Dickens, A. Mitskevitch and many other authors. Among the most valuable acquisitions of the library one can name the originals of the letters by B. Khmelnitsky, I. Frank, M. Gorky, L. Ukrainka, V. Hugo, V. Korolenko, O. Kobilianskaya, V. Stefanyk, O. Makovey. The book collection of the library comprises more than 7 mln items, among which there are more than 75,000 manuscripts and about 38,000 music editions.

Now all the readers of the Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv can enjoy access to the full texts of the Digital Dissertation Library of the RSL.