“Art Libraries and Museum Libraries” Section as a part of Russian National Library Congress: 18th Annual Conference of Russian Association of Libraries.

May, 13th – opening of Russian National Library Congress: 18th Annual Conference of Russian Association of Libraries that gathered more than 800 participants of the major professional forum in Penza – the city acclaimed as a librarian capital of Russia in the year of 2013.

 “Libraries and Human Rights” was the leading subject of the Congress in 2013, covered in accordance with main targets of the librarian community.           

Vladimir Firsov, the President of the Russian Association of Libraries, gave a speech during the plenary session reporting on the activity of the Association in 2011-2012 and the development strategy.

The joint meeting involved all sections and its distinctive feature was the subject stated as “Book culture in the museum and exhibition activity of libraries”. The discussion covered the fields of work with book records as objects of museumification, aspects of content and organization of exhibitions, their classification and organizational specifics at various sites.

 43 specialists took part in the joint meeting. They represented federal libraries, such as Russian State Library, Russian State Art Library, All-Russian State Library for Foreign Literature, central libraries belonging to federated states, universities and museums from 15 regions, special purpose libraries.

16 speeches were given in the course of the meeting where the principal subject of the discussion was showing written and published records at permanent museum expositions and temporary exhibitions organized by libraries.

These speeches helped analyze the accepted forms of library exhibition activity, discuss the role of specialized departments and special purpose libraries in such type of work. The members took active part in the discussion of the speeches, mentioned the traditional and innovative methods of presenting library and archive recordings.

Aleksandr Samarin, Deputy Director of Russian State Library, spoke about long-term experience of running the Museum of Book at RSL and the change in the principles of its organization.

 Irina Tikunova, Head of Rare Publications Department (Museum of Book), RSL dedicated her report to innovations in holding book and illustration expositions in the Museum of Book. Maria Ermakova, Head of Specialized Departments Administration, spoke of the experience in organizing the territory of the library for the purposes of personal exhibitions of poster designers, book illustration designers and photographers. The experience of exhibiting book rarities in Saint-Petersburg State Theatre Library was analyzed in the report of Vera Harlamova, Head of Rare Books Department.

The participants actively supported the speech of Ada Kolganova, Director of Russian State Art Library. In her speech – “Reader’s Museum as a new form of library exposition” – she spoke about the creation of a new type of museum exposition that should serve to present a special purpose library as a creative laboratory. The exposition of the Reader’s Museum includes various kinds of documents, sorted by data storage, by type of publication, by way of storing.

 Much interest was given to the speech of Inna Vaganova, Deputy Director of RSAL,  who presented the history of creation and methodology of virtual excursions that serve to develop main principles of Reader’s Museum.

 In the course of the Congress the election of Vice President and members of the Council of Russian Association of Libraries for the period of 2013-2015 took place.

 Other events that took place during the Congress were the signing of cooperation agreement between Presidential Library named after Boris Yeltsin and Administration of Penza Region and also the opening of Regional Center of Access to the collections of Presidential Library. 

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