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Information and Publishing
 
Together with its partners, the Russian IFAP Committee collects, systematizes and analyzes relevant publications and documents of Russia, UNESCO, the United Nations and other international organizations on the humanitarian issues of the formation of global information society and building the information society in Russia. A part of such materials, which are connected the closest with problems the Information for All Programme concerns, are translated and published in Russian in print and electronic form for free distribution between the largest Russian federal and regional libraries, educational establishments, and research and information centers.
 
Preference belongs to materials whose translation and publication can play the greatest role in the formation of scientific ideas of the humanitarian problems of building the global information society, and the formation on their basis of a scientifically sound policy of building the information society in Russia.
 
The publishing activities of the Russian IFAP Committee proceed in three fields:
  • translation into Russian, publication and circulation of a series of UNESCO publications on the various aspects of the information society;
  • translation into Russian, publication and circulation of basic documents and publications of the IFAP Secretariat;
  • support for publishing initiatives of partner organizations to publish and circulate Russian-language editions within the Programme competence.


 

 
 

 
 
Information literacy/Information culture
 
The UNESCO Information for All Programme gives pride of place to tackling the problems of special training for life in the information society. Information literacy is the key concept of the Information for All Programme, and a new field of training and education of the public for adaptation to the information society. The concept of “information culture” is widely used in Russia alongside “information literacy”.
 
The Research Institute of Information Technologies in the Social Sphere, affiliated to the Kemerovo State University of Culture and Arts, has become a universally recognized Russian center of theoretical studies of the formative problems of information culture and related applied research. Leading this work is Professor Natalia Gendina, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences and Institute Director. The Institute was established in 2000 to promote the implementation of the Information for All Programme in Russia by joint decision of the Kemerovo regional administration and the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, which has sponsored the Russian IFAP Committee since its inception.
 
The concept of forming personal information culture elaborated by the Institute of Information Technologies in the Social Sphere of the Kuzbas with support of the Russian IFAP Committee is winning publicity not only in Russia but also worldwide. This concept includes the substantiation of general methodological principles and conditions of organizing information education, the model curriculum “ABC of Personal Information Culture” for various categories of students, and the elaboration of terms on which information education should be organized.
 
 
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Development of the system of access to information of public domain
 
The work to establish the all-Russia network of public legal information centers on the basis of public libraries (PCPI) started in 1998 on the initiative of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the FAPSI (presently Spetssvyaz FSO of Russia) and the Russian Foundation for Legal Reform. Commercial organizations engaged in legal information services—Codex, ConsultantPlus and Garant—joined the effort later on. The Russian IFAP Committee joined the activity in 2002.
 
The PCPI is the basis of vast efforts for public legal information and education. Largely due to the establishment of information centers, the new role of libraries in local community life is reappraised and confirmed. Almost everywhere, library information activities become part and parcel of work by regional and municipal authorities to promote the basic spheres of social policy in the Russian regions.
 
The Committee initiates the opening of centers in many parts of Russia and in the other CIS countries. It introduces and popularizes this activity in Russia and at the international level—in particular, in UNESCO. It holds conferences and seminars, and monitors the state and problems of the development of the network of public access to legal information. It prepares and publishes analytical and statistical materials.
 
To improve the coordination of efforts, the Interregional Association of Public Legal Information Centers was established, as well as the specialized website of the PCPI network, http://www.pcpi.ru, supported by the Codex legal information consortium. Irina Mironova, its vice-president, is member of the Russian IFAP Committee.
 
Circulation of official Russian legal information in the other CIS countries by the Russian IFAP Committee and the Spetssvyaz FSO of Russia started in 2004 within the efforts to implement the UNESCO Information for All Programme and the Programme for the All-Russia Network of Public Legal Information Centers on the Basis of Public Libraries.
 
This work resulted in more than a hundred such public centers opened on the basis of the largest libraries, higher educational establishments, and government and local self-government bodies in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (2006), Uzbekistan (2004) and the Crimean Autonomous Republic, Ukraine (2007). Now is the turn of establishing public centers for access to legal information from those countries in Russia.
 
As the Russian IFAP Committee sees it, the basic problems and goals of developing public legal information centers in Russia are connected with the necessity of making the PCPI network a practically effective united mechanism with centralized organizational and technological management, an efficient system of positive experience exchange, planned activities, and accountability to higher agencies, in particular, the Ministry of Culture of Russia.