A joint project of the Presidential Library and Russian Institute of Art History presented at the Cultural Forum

December 8, 2014, as part of the III St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum, Russian Institute of Art History and Presidential Library presented a joint media research project "Anthem of A. F. Lvov "God Save the Tsar!" in cultural and political life of the Imperial Russia."

Russia's oldest art criticism center, Zubov Institute, as we sometimes call the RIAH in the old manner, for the first time in its history presented a research product, which had been realized thanks to the joint efforts of several research, archival, musicological organizations and, most importantly, the unique facilities of the Presidential Library, which raised the project to the modern technical level using IT-technologies.

According to the Deputy Minister of Culture of Russia Georgy Ivliev, recreating the tsar's anthem as a multimedia resource is a momentous event both ideologically and in the technical sense. Firstly, it is the return to the people of their beloved symbol, which in the course of history had gone through times of oblivion, but nevertheless, everyone knew the words and music and sang it without difficulty during some most significant events. And secondly, of course, joint efforts of creative organizations and the unique facilities of the Presidential Library have given an amazing result. The Ministry of Culture will continue to support such projects.

"The resource, multimedia concept of which was conceived two years ago, is made in a comprehensive form that combines different types of information transmission - the verbal text, graphics, audio and video, said in his speech Project Manager, Deputy Director for Science RIAH, Dmitry Shumilin. The concept of the research part of the project was developed on the basis of the materials held in the Office of manuscripts of the Russian Institute of Art History. Among them - the numerous music manuscripts and publications, documents relating to the history of the functioning of the national anthem in the army, autographs of Lvov and persons involved in the development of the plot of the stylistic specificity of the Russian anthem. Thanks to Presidential Library all these various rarities were brought together and displayed."

Cooperation between the Presidential Library and the Russian Institute of Arts began in November 2013 with the digitization of unique books and archival materials to create an electronic library of the institute and enrich the collections of the first national electronic library in the country. The current partnership promises to be interesting, because in the Institute has a lot of archival materials, music woks, rare books with marks and autographs of the domestic workers of culture and art. For many years, these riches had been inaccessible for the general public.

In July 2014, under the cooperation agreement between the Presidential Library and the Russian Institute of History of Art, the library began digitizing materials of the project "Anthem of Alexei Fyodorovich Lvov "God Save the Tsar!" in cultural and political life of the Imperial Russia."

"In our opinion, noted in her speech Head of Linguistic, Software and Technological support of the Presidential Library Julia Selivanova, the innovative project was a result of the joint efforts. It is innovative not just because the materials are available for viewing on the website of the Institute. It is innovative in terms of selection and digitization of various resources, such as texts, archival materials, music and video."