Russia plans to launch national digital library in 2015

Work on developing electronic libraries across Russian is soon to begin, Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky said last week. At a joint meeting of the State Council and the Presidential Council on Culture and the Arts, Medinsky said that the new initiative will transform local libraries into modern information and cultural hubs, adding that citizens’ access to the service will be via the internet with a single electronic library ticket.

“Next year we will launch a national electronic library, set to be the largest collection of online texts, books, magazines and so on [in Russia],” Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky told regional governors. “We will send you an approved model of a library, the implementation of which will allow the libraries to be turned into modern information and cultural centres at minimum cost. Successful examples of this work can be seen already in Moscow, Murmansk and Belgorod.”

Work on the libraries will be begin in 2015.