The Presidential Library will invite volunteers and digitize documents on a volunteer movement

By the decree of the President of Russian Federation the 2018 is announced the Year of Volunteer. On December 6, 2017, the head of state has signed a corresponding document.

The Presidential Library implements a specific scenario aimed to drawing volunteers to its campaigns. The General Director of the institution Alexander Vershinin was issued on an internship routine in the institution, which offers university students a chance to participate in practical work and the development of the national electronic library. Interns will be involved in the realization of new ideas and approaches to work on information processing, sightseeing, and organization of exhibitions. In the future is possible to involve profile universities in the remote description of resources. In such the activities — both on a volunteer basis, letting them to gain experience and professional adaptation, and basing on the contracts — it is planned to involve in this work disabled people.

The digitization, description and adding to the library stock of the books telling about the history of volunteer movement, charity and selfless contribution into those who are in need will continue. As far back as under Yaroslav the Wise, there were orphan schools for talented children from humble beginnings, which were operating basing on the handouts collected from neighboring villages. Both statesmen and ordinary people were volunteering. Owing to their efforts, numerous schools, hospitals, churches were built… Unknown facts from the history of state, public and private philanthropy in the second half of the XIX century can be found, for instance, in the two-volume edition of Charitable Russia of 1901, a digital copy of which is available on the Presidential Library website. The century changed, and the concept of volunteerism became more comprehensive. The book “A volunteer” of the 1929 year edition from the Presidential Library stock consists of a memoirs of an average participant of the World War, who work his way up from a volunteer of the tsarist army to a volunteer in the Red Army.

Essays, documentary evidences and graphic materials that create the image of a volunteer who fought during the Civil War, the Great Patriotic War, helped the native land in the rear, restored the destroyed economy, built Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, who went through Virgin Lands Campaign, as well as information on current trends and achievements of the volunteer movement — all this is described in the documents, digital copies of which are currently openly accessible in the Presidential Library stock.

The Presidential Library is a richest information cluster available to any person from anywhere in the world. The Presidential Library fund numbers today nearly 600,000 entries and by 2020 its volume will reach 1 million entries. Annually the institution organizes more than 120 events, 20 exhibitions, and 150 multimedia lessons for school and university students. The Olympiad named “Russia in the Electronic World” connects high school students of all 85 constituent entities of the Russian Federation.