On 8–9 October, 2009, the V International Bibliological Readings “Electronic Libraries and Elimination of Information Inequality” took place in the National Library of Belarus.
Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Belarus, National Commission of the Republic of Belarus on UNESCO Affairs, National Libraries of Belarus and Czech Republic became organizers of the conference.
About 300 delegates participated in the forum. They represented leading specialists of national and foreign libraries, educational and scientific-research institutions and organizations, representatives of legislative sphere and executive power, public associations, producers of software, technical devices and information products. Kazakhstan was represented by Sarsembinova A.N., Deputy Director General of the National Academic Library of RK.
The following theme sections were organized in the frame of the V International Bibliological Readings: “Organizational-Technological Aspects of Electronic Libraries Functioning”, “Electronic Information Resources for Libraries: Content, Management, and Use”, “Serving of Library Users in Electronic Environment”.
Paper “Digital Initiative of Kazakhstan Librarians: KazNEB Project” was presented by Sarsembinova A.N. at the section “Organizational-Technological Aspects of Electronic Libraries Functioning”; after presentation there was a lively discussion on the presentation topic.
As Aliya Nurakhimovna noted, all the presented papers were urgent at the conference. Issue of creating electronic libraries (EL) was discussed in different aspects: “EL as a Social Institution”, “EL and Electronic Services”, “EL and Copyright”, “EL Definitions”, and etc. There were covered issues of national bibliography of National Library of Belarus; experience in statistical registration of serving users with information resources is of interest; use of web-technologies in serving users and rendering access to acquired data bases for oblast libraries with help of national library's possibilities; methods and approaches to digitization of publications. All the most interesting papers are published in the Conference Proceedings.
Conducting of scientific-practical seminar “European Electronic Library of Manuscripts and Books Published Formerly “MANUSCRIPTORIUM”: Interaction and Cooperation” became an important event. Workers of the Czech National Library presented new project of electronic library “MANUSCRIPTORIUM”. Interesting exchange of opinions took place, and invitation of NABRK to participate in that project with KazNEB project turned out to be a result of exchange.
The excursion round the library was organized to acquaint participants with the library. A new building of the National Library of Belarus (NBB) was opened for users in 2006, and since that time it has become a good example for all the national libraries of CIS. NBB building combines unique architectural- constructional and program-technical complex, it is rated at more than 14 million items of collection. For the time being, NBB collection includes more than 8 million books, 1300 staff, and 20 reading rooms on 2000 seats for readers.
Librarians here have opportunities for creative work, realization of the most interesting projects and ideas. Most of NBB staff has got special higher library education. In Minsk, at the Belarus University of Arts, department of information-document communications has been functioning for many years; it is a main supplier of skilled personnel for the library. The department makes a special intake for preparing personnel for NBB with definite periodicity. All this has a marked effect on high professionalism of NBB librarians, where even junior librarians present interesting, informative papers making good analysis and conclusions.
Forum participants could acquaint themselves with “TELELIFT” system possibilities during two days. Librarians working at the service points in storages and reading rooms confirmed that the system was simple in using and facilitated librarians' work considerably: it's necessary to comply with all the rules of operation. On CIS territory, “TELELIFT” system was introduced first by the National Library of Belarus. The second library introducing TELELIFT is the National Academic Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Works in the National Library of Russia (St. Petersburg) are on completion stage; works are being projected in the Russian State Library (Moscow) and National Library of Azerbaijan (Baku).
