Millions of scans for the preservation of history

In 2013, the Presidential Library will scan 6,000,000 pages of books and documents. Digitized publications and visual materials will reflect the subject matter and the profile of acquisition of the country's first national electronic library, development of the Russian state in general and specific historical periods, formation of the Russian language, law, and other areas.

Special attention will be paid to the continuation of conversion into electronic digital form of rare books and documents, including the rarities, whose originals are not on loan. For this Presidential Library is actively cooperating with the Russian State Historical Archive and other repositories for books and documents. Regions are also ready to convert into digital form the collections including materials of historical value. Recently, with the development of the Presidential Library, it receives more and more rare documents from family archives of private individuals. Thus people save them from the ravages of time, and the unique materials are made public in the electronic reading room and on the website of the Presidential Library.

Digitization enables to disclose documents, make public previously unknown pages of history. Increasingly significant part of the collections represents visual information: postcards, maps, newsreel. This further draws attention to the library's collections. In addition, to reflect the country's history through the events of daily life, the Presidential Library activates digitization of periodicals. This year many magazines and newspapers issued from 1843 to 1944 will be converted to electronic form. Among them are "Russian Gazette" of Katkov, "Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences", "Church Gazette" and other publications. After digitization the Presidential Library returns the original material to the institution that provided it.

Today the holdings of the first national electronic library include more than 220,000 units. In view of plans, by the end of 2013 the amount of materials will increase to reach the mark of 300, 000. At the same time will expand a network of electronic reading rooms, of regional centers, the interaction with the regions of the Federation on the contribution of republican and regional libraries in the enlargement of holdings.