Issues of preservation and use of audiovisual content in information environment were considered at the Presidential Library

Topical issues of preservation and use of audiovisual content in the modern information environment were considered in detail at the conference, "Cultural heritage: integration of resources in the digital space."

According to the Director of the Presidential Library for Information Resources, Elena Zhabko today any serious integrated resource, in addition to scanning books, documents, photographs, provides for mandatory treatment and preservation of audiovisual content. It is no exaggeration to say that the Presidential Library is today’s leader today in the process.

Its electronic collections include over 1,000 digital copies of audiovisual content - sound recordings, films and videos, as well as original multimedia resources, which amount to about 200 hours of listening and viewing. The Presidential Library, including its Tyumen branch, also carries out its own production of video and multimedia resources which represent one fifth of the total amount of audiovisual content, and almost 50% of the video content.

Among the resources there are audio recordings, such as music and speech; documentaries and non-fiction films; videos and video lectures. Of undoubted interest are video conferences - greetings and speeches of the participants, information and presentation videos, recordings of addresses of Russian Presidents, Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev at various meetings, newsreels, multimedia resources, video tours, video postcards, fragments of TV shows, presentations, themed videos, etc. Important supplement to video materials available in the Presidential Library collections are the movies provided by Gosfilmofond to join the collections timed to the centennial of the outbreak of the World War I, the 200th anniversary of the birth of Mikhail Lermontov, the 70th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War.

Audiovisual content is provided by various institutions of the country - the Ministry of Mass Communications of Russia, the official website of the President of the Russian Federation, libraries, archives, television and radio studios, recording studios and other organizations, whose activities are related to the production and distribution of audio and video products. All of them have become reliable partners of the Presidential Library, initiating interesting joint projects.  

One of the promising areas is the development of cooperation with the St. Petersburg Documentary Film Studio. One of the oldest studios in Russia, where Alexander Sokurov, Yefim Uchitel’, Pavel Kogan, Sergey Debizhev created their best documentaries, in the foreseeable future strives for digitization of its unique film archive and its promotion on the film market and target audience.

In conjunction with the Presidential Library the studio implements several projects. Not so long ago it signed a license agreement with the Presidential Library to give over for digitization five films, including a film about the symbols of state power and the world famous series of newsreels by Sergei Loznitsa, "Blockade" telling about Leningrad bestead by the fascist. There is also a joint project with the Presidential Library entitled "Sounds of the bygone era" which aims to digitize sounds and noises recorded in the studio in the period from the end of the 1950s to the 1990s. The collection of sounds of the bygone era was presented at the Cannes Film Festival and aroused great interest of the leading filmmakers of the world.