The First All-Russian Conference on the Preservation of Digital Information Convened in Moscow

 

2012-31-05

 

The All-Russian Conference Preservation of the Digital Content in Russia and Abroad took place in the Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of Russia Abroad on May 24–25 2012. It was organized by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications, the Russian Committee of the UNESCO Information for All Programme, and the Interregional Library Cooperation Centre.

 

The Conference was of a multidisciplinary and inter-branch nature and hosted the directors and staff of libraries, archives, museums, research institutes, universities, publishing houses, printed and electronic media, as well as federal and regional governing bodies of culture, science, education, information technologies and communications, printing press and mass communications.

 

The purpose of this Conference was to diagnose and discuss the issues and solutions that are related to long-term preservation of digital information and are topical for Russia:

 

• Shaping the governmental policy and strategy for long-term preservation of digital information of special scientific, cultural and historical value;
• Building a legal basis for the above field;
• Place and role of Russian libraries, museums and archives;
• Governmental support of the activities of libraries, museums and archives in the field of building and preserving their collections in the digital format;
• Training, retraining and advanced training of the personnel engaged in this activity.

 

The Round Table meeting was attended by S. Cherkalin, Director of Rybinsk State Historical, Architectural and Art Reserve Museum; A. Maslov, Editor-in-Chief of Luch Publishing House; V. Firsov, President of the Russian Library Association and Deputy Director of the National Library of Russia; A. Bozhchenko, Director of Anatoly Sobchak Museum of Democracy Development in New Russia, and others.

 

Problem-oriented papers were presented by:

 

 

• Е. Kozlova, Director of INFORMREGISTR Research Technological Center (Typology of Digital Documents as a Constituent of a Preservation Strategy).
• T. Murovana, Executive Secretary of the Russian IFAP Committee (Economics of Long-Term Access to Digital Information: Introduction to the Problem).
• A. Samarin, Director for Library Service of the Russian State Library (Main Trends in the Russian State Library Digital Library Development).
• G. Kislovskaya, former Director of the Russian State Library for Children (Preservation of Digital Information: Why Is Foreign Experience Valuable for Us),
• Leonid Kuibyshev, Director General of the Centre PIC (World Trends in Digital Heritage Preservation),
• S. Kleshchar, Department Head of the Research Reprographic Institute (Opportunities for Long-Term Preservation of Digital Information Using Modern Electronic Micrographic Technologies),
• S. Dobrusina, Director of the Federal Library Collections Conservation Center of the National Library of Russia (Preservation of Digital Information on Optical Carriers),
• A. Avdeev, Chair of the Board of Directors of AS Company (Storage and Access Standards for Digital Content: By Experience of Developing Information Systems),
• K. Kostyuk, Director General of Direct-Media Company (Book Heritage Digital Preservation - A Convergence of Commercial and Noncommercial Approaches. The experience of the University Library Online),
• O. Makhno, Executive Director of the National Library Resource (Building the National Library Resource: Prospects and Reality),
• A. Dzhigo, Head of the Library Science Research Department of the Russian State Library (Digital Publications in the Federal Law «On the Mandatory Copy of Documents»),
• E. Zakharova, Deputy Director of the Russian State Library for the Blind (Digital Publications for the Visually Impaired: Problems of Creation, Storage and Use),

 

and others.

 

The plenary meetings within the Conference were moderated by A. Likhomanov, Director General of the National Library of Russia; A. Samarin, Director for Library Service of the Russian State Library; K. Sukhorukov, Deputy Director General of the Russian Book Chamber; K. Knyaginin, Deputy Director General of Boris Eltsyn Presidential Library; E. Beylina, Editor-in-Chief of Universitetskaya Biblioteka (University Library) journal; L. Kazachenkova, Editor-in-Chief of Sovremennaya Bibliioteka (Modern Library) journal, and others.

 

As requested by the Security Council of the Russian Federation, the experts discussed the draft general directions of the governmental policy for developing information security culture of citizens.

 

The Conference showed unambiguously that by no means all traditional analogue information keepers, i.e. libraries, archives and museums, recognized the threats, risks, opportunities and prospects of the issues related to long-term preservation of digital information. At the political level, there is no clear understanding that a new infrastructure is vitally needed for the preservation of digital information and that this infrastructure, though modernized and enhanced, should be based on the infrastructure that is used for the preservation of information in the traditional formats.

 

Judging by the content of the papers presented at the Conference, a full-bodied study of the preservation of digital information should be continued, and the results of this study should be presented at both national and international levels in the political and professional contexts. The Conference demonstrated also that most of the countries in the world don't have a) a normative basis, which could make respective institutions and bodies liable for professional preservation of information in the digital format, and b) a coherent policy whose implementation could lead to the establishment of such basis. There is not such basis in Russia either. However, both economically developed and developing countries are looking for the answers to the questions What, Why and To what extent should be preserved, as well as Who, Where and When should do it and Who has to finance this activity.

 

The Conference diagnosed the problems and showed novel professional approaches to the preservation of rapidly growing digital information when the variety of information representation formats and the types and kinds of digital objects are increasing while their lifetime is reducing due to the constant changes in information technologies.

 

The Conference adopted the final document entitled Preservation of Digital Information in Russia: Call for Action (text avaliable in russian). It contains the vision of the problems as well as suggestions and addresses to the major stakeholders.

 

The collection of proceedings had been prepared prior to the Conference and distributed among the participants. The participants could also familiarize themselves with the publications on the development of information society and librarianship that had been produced by the Russian Committee of the Information for All UNESCO Programme and the Interregional Library Cooperation Center and were displayed on an exhibition stand.