NETWORK OF RUSSIAN LIBRARY-INFORMATION CENTERS ABROAD: The First Stage
Yakov L. Shraiberg
Russian National Public Library for Science and Technology
Moscow, Russia
E-mail: shra@gpntb.msk.su.
Russian Information-Library Centers set up on the territory of foreign countries will be responsible for a full range of information, analytical, and library functions. They will promote fast and reliable delivery of information from Russia to foreign companies and facilitate a reverse flow of information to Russian companies. The Center set up in the USA will become the first in a new network of Russian library information centers abroad. This network will be supported by the resources of the major libraries, information centers, governmental bodies, and private companies of Russia. The developers of this Project have reached a preliminary agreement with the largest libraries and information centers of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Georgia, and some other FSU countries on their participation in the activities of Russian Centers abroad.
The setup of the network of library-information centers with Russian and national staff directed by Russian expert and supported by major state professional bodies of Russia guarantees a transition to a new level of cooperation between our countries in a wide field of activities related to information interaction. The network of Russian Centers abroad will bear the real fruit in the near future.
Effective provision of reliable scientific, technological, financial, political, juridical, and business information is playing a key role in the intensively developing international cooperation. While Canada, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, and Mexico were the top U.S. trading partners in the beginning of the 1990s, the rate of the East European and former Soviet Union (FSU) countries has noticeably increased to the beginning of 1996. Russia has become the main partner among the latter in the economic, political, and strategic sense. Having reached a new level of cooperation with Russia, which was in the former times firmly closed behind an "iron curtain" and is now making a transition to democracy and market economy, foreign businessmen, politicians, scholars, and students discovered that successful cooperation should be backed up by adequate information, recognition of traditions, and study of social and economic realities of a partner.
Though information, library, and educational contacts grow exponentially every year, access to, and provision of, required information and original publications still remain problematic and become an obstacle on the way to efficient and profitable cooperation in an open society.
The situation can be partly explained by the absence of an adequate overseas professional structure that could meet the demands of the users in the familiar form, provide them with reliable and complete information on Russia, and offer originals, consultations, and materials required. When opened abroad, representative offices of the Russian-American Information, Library, and Analytical Network will act as universal gateways and clearing houses for a broad circle of professionals, including governmental officers, employees of large companies, librarians, small business officers, and students.
Russian diplomatic, trade, business, and other structures that are functioning in foreign countries cannot fully cope with these tasks and cannot substitute a professional structure created specially for this purpose. Several foreign state and private companies that are now responsible for information from Russia do not guarantee a comprehensive approach to this task and cannot provide service to foreign customers on either permanent or long-term basis due to their contacts with a limited number of Russian organizations, instead of cooperation with the information system and printing industry of the country in general. In addition, the authenticity and reliability of information that is obtained through personal agreements with Russian organizations or individuals remain an entire responsibility of the latter and cannot guarantee the quality of information thus provided. Finally, Internet is viewed by many as a panacea for information access problems. Though fiber optic and other access channels are developing in Russia successfully enough, and many information and academic institutes, universities, and libraries have obtained access to this network, it should be made clear that, first, a truly reliable and effective telecommunication infrastructure in Russia as part of international information superhighway will be created in five or seven years only, and, second, Internet access to Russian databases will pose additional problems to foreign users as to the language, formats, and standards. Most often than not, they will not understand what is written on the screens of their computers and will be unable to make use of the retrieved files due to the still existing differences in formats and classification systems. A linguistic problem still remains acute and there is little hope it will be resolved soon.
Information products that are supposed to be provided through the network's centers will be translated into English, or into the language of the country which is chosen as the center's location. They will be accompanied by comments and customized from the standpoint of standards, formats, and classification systems. Databases, bibliographic information, problem-oriented and special information arrays, lists, and texts will be provided on a permanent basis in English or in other languages, if required. They will either preserve the original language or will be transliterated in strict accordance with bibliographic and information standards and formats and will show indexes (numbers) of the internationally accepted classification systems. The host servers of the centers will be based on the American telecommunication infrastructure and will allow the users to access information faster, cheaper, and in a more reliable way. Information will be updated on a daily basis by host servers in Russia both online and by e-mail that has been working in Russia reliably enough.
Though undoubtedly good, the guaranteed access and understanding of information are still insufficient. Raw information is similar to traveling abroad by watching TV. The thing required is the originals, i.e., books, journals, dissertations, projects, etc. Even a foreign language in which they are written matters less as soon as you obtain exactly what you need, as you are sure to find ways of translating the original and understanding it.
For this reason, the centers' task is to establish an ILL and document delivery node, subscribe foreign customers to Russian publications, organize automated delivery of scientific, technical, and other types of publications from Russia and the FSU, and control the completeness and time of the publications' delivery. Special databases will be generated and updated so as to fulfill individual requests of users. Analytical surveys will be made on request and by subscription. Conferences, workshops, exhibitions, and trainings will be held so as to cover library and information activity, business, and culture. Special InfoPack compilations will be made for researchers, economists, politicians, and businessmen planning to visit Russia or studying the fields for future cooperation.
The above may be implemented through a network of foreign centers that will be in a position to resolve the required information tasks, will be supported by Russian and foreign governmental offices, resources of libraries, information centers, academic and educational institutes, universities, and a private Russian capital.
The First Center in the USA
The idea of opening the first center in the USA can be explained easily by the more developed and reliable American communication and banking systems and by a high demand in Russian information. The center in the USA may become the first in a future overseas network of Russian library and information centers. On the one hand, this center will work in the interests of American users providing them with information from Russia and allowing American information producers, engineers, and businessmen enter the Russian market and find new partners and business clients. On the other hand, it will give Russian users an opportunity to access American information resources, original publications, and knowledge bases and will promote the development of professional relations between groups and individuals from both countries. The United States have already partly resolved this task by opening American information and cultural centers in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other towns, and by using special information departments in the American Embassy and Consulate in Russia. The opening of a center in the USA will finish the picture and, provided the American side expresses its interest, a structure of this type could be created in Russia to coordinate the work of the above information services in addition to the main tasks that will be similar to those of the center in the USA.
The Products and Services of the Centers
The products and services provided by the centers will meet all demands of foreign users. They will be extracted and delivered according to the principles named below:
• Convenience and flexibility (the products and services will correspond to the specifications of the users).
• Authenticity and completeness (guaranteed by the resources and information arrays of the major national libraries, institutes, and reliable private companies).
• Quality (guaranteed by the efforts of highly skilled groups of specialists from Russian libraries and institutes).
The designers of this Project have preliminarily agreed with the major libraries and information centers in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Georgia on their cooperative participation in the activity of the network.
Financial support and investments will be required
for the first year only as it will be the year of the centers' start-up.
In the years that follow, the centers, still remaining non-profit and functioning
as general information gateways to Russia, will work on an agreement and
contract basis and will remain fully self-financing.
2. OBJECTIVES OF THE CENTERS
2.1. Long-Term Objectives
• To create a clearing house, a gateway, and a focal point of the Russian information infrastructure that will be based on modern computer and telecommunication technologies and function in the interests of Russia and respective countries.
• To ensure effective and complete delivery of authentic information from Russia in order to reduce and, later on, to eliminate the delivery of incorrect, incomplete, or outdated information. To open new information resources for Russian users and show them new fields for mutually profitable scientific and educational cooperation and business.
• To ensure effective information and technological exchange and to outline paths for cooperation, effective consulting, and training.
• To create conditions for effective agreement- and contract-based activity that will provide a financial basis for the centers' operation through charged services and sold information products.
• To create, within a year, viable professional information structures that, in the beginning of the second year, will be in a position to reject a targeted financial support and investments offered by the state and private organizations in the respective countries and start an independent financial and economic activity.
• To create, within five years, a viable information, library, analytical, and consulting system that will have branch offices in several countries and will establish close contacts with information, library, academic, educational, and business infrastructure in Russia and in the respective countries.
The immediate objectives of the Russian Library-Information Centers Abroad Project is related to the opening of its first center, the U.S. Center. These objectives include:
• To register and launch a WWW-server of the Center that will use Internet and other U.S. networks and provide a regular access to Russian information products. To represent these products in English and in terms and standards accepted in the United States and update them regularly by means of the distributed Russian information resource.
• To create a marketing and consulting service for products and services that will be provided by the Center and to spread information about them to American companies, firms, universities, governmental structures, and individuals in order to obtain standing and once-only requests.
• To define a list of products and services and show them on the WWW-server, in promotion materials, and mass media. To draft and sign related agreements with the producers of the products represented by the Center. To define a technology for the updating of products.
• To purchase the required equipment, original publications, and office supplies in order to ensure the Center's operation within the existing programs in 1997.
The major tasks of the centers include the following
2. To serve companies, institutes, libraries, and individuals from foreign countries by scientific, technical, and other information published in Russia and other FSU countries. To deliver copies of the originals, either translated into English or in the original language, and information batches, i.e., lists of databases, reports, and surveys, either translated into English or into the language of the country in which the center is located.
To offer Russian users similar services provided in cooperation with foreign partners and based on foreign information resources.
3. To establish online hosts in the centers in order to provide foreign users with information via Internet and other Internet-linked networks. To eliminate, in this way, a necessity to address Russian resources directly, which is expensive, unreliable, and ineffective due to the malfunction of feedback. Due to their permanent connection to the major organizations in Russia and FSU countries, the centers will be in a position to guarantee completeness, authenticity, and efficiency of information taken from the online host, and daily updating of information arrays via e-mail channels and, if required, via once-only direct online sessions from the territory of Russia. The latter service is sure to meet 100 percent of user requests in the online access to Russian information.
4. To establish center-based ILL and Document Delivery nodes with the aim to carry out the Program of the Universal Availability of Publications with regard to Russian originals.
5. To subscribe foreign companies to sci-tech and other publications from Russia and other FSU countries and deliver these publications for the prices lower than those charged by international clearing houses. To offer automated order of publications, work with claims, and guarantee the completeness, repertoire, and accuracy of delivery.
6. To generate and update databases for foreign users:
• Legal, juridical, and governmental information.
• Reference information on products, services, export and import companies, banks, exchanges, investment funds and climate, etc..
• Bibliographic, reference, and abstract information based on hardly accessible sci-tech originals, i.e., industrial catalogs, patents, preprints, and grey literature, as well as newspapers, magazines, and statistical data. To process the delivered information in the centers in accordance with the bibliographic formats, standards, and classification systems adopted in the respective countries and familiar to foreign users. To offer translation into the language of the foreign country, abstracting and, if required, transliteration.
8 To study the market of databases and data banks, electronic publications, and information services provided by organizations in Russia and FSU countries. To offer attended access to the resources, either direct, if requested by the user, or via the online hosts in the centers.
9. To deliver information on modern information technologies in order to facilitate the signing of bilateral contracts.
10. To sponsor courses for foreign experts who are interested in information business and librarianship in Russia and FSU countries and/or are planning to visit these countries on business.
11. To sponsor conferences, workshops, and exhibitions on various aspects of information and library activity and business in the countries where the centers are opened and on the territory of the former USSR. To assume, in these cases, the functions of the Organizing Committees and provide a full range of services to foreign and Russian participants.
12. To study investment projects, offer information and business consultations, and deliver additional information on Russia and FSU countries.
13. To offer automated and manual Russian-English and English-Russian translation of information.
14. To make Russian versions of software products, deliver Cyrillic drives, fonts, and recognition programs, and organize training.
15. To generate and maintain hyper-text and full-text databases, knowledge bases, and expert systems on sci-tech information, business, and cultural activities in Russia and foreign countries.
4. ANNOTATED LIST OF THE CENTERS' KEY PROGRAMS
Establishment of an overseas Russian network of professional structures continues the development and implementation of six key programs of the Project.
4.1. Library Program
• Service of foreign users by Russian libraries and vice versa.
• Subscription to foreign periodicals and other publications that will be provided to Russian libraries on preferential terms.
• Regular delivery of Russian scientific, technical, and other publications to foreign libraries and organizations.
• Training of Russian librarians in foreign libraries, companies, and training centers.
• Organization of professional conferences and workshops.
• Organization of study tours to Russian libraries.
• Conversion of Russian information products in accordance with foreign user demands (standards, formats, classification systems, and translation of full records or their parts into English).
• Creation of new information products requested by foreign users.
• Regular delivery of foreign information to Russian users, including conversion to Russian standards and formats.
• Mutually profitable exchange of information on new technologies, know-how, innovations, and discoveries in order to promote Russian technologies and innovations to foreign markets and assist in introduction of foreign technologies in Russia.
• Assistance to Russian organizations and institutes in promotion of their technologies.
• Creation of a reference information system on Russian technologies and innovations that will be proposed for implementation abroad.
• Involvement of Russian scientists and lecturers in the work of international departments of foreign universities.
• Russian courses for foreign students, scientists, and specialists that will be organized on a regular basis with assistance of Russian universities and institutes.
• Reception of foreign students and specialists coming to attend certain scientific courses that are successfully developing in Russia with the help of Russian academic and educational institutes.
• Development and debugging of a remote training system for foreign and Russian institutes.
• Cooperative training courses that will be based
on foreign and Russian institutions and training centers.
• Delivery of lists of products, services, and prices, promotion materials, etc..
• Establishment of business contacts and promotion of Russian products and services to foreign markets.
• Regular exchange of business express information.
• Assistance in the search of partners for Russian and foreign specialists.
• Development, updating, and electronic delivery of reference information about Russia, including its administrative and territorial bodies, means of transportation and traffic schedules, telephone books, weather maps, etc..
• Engagement of consultants who will work in the centers and provide information on Russia.
• Assistance in booking hotels and tours and arranging professional visits of foreign specialists planning to visit Russia.
• Teleaccess to Russian information resources that will be provided to foreign users.
• Connection to the servers that will be installed in Russian libraries, information centers, and institutes.
• Creation of an effective and high-quality environment for information exchange.
• Organization of professional teleconferences.
The centers are supposed to pass three stages in their organization:
At Stage 1, the state departments of two countries sign an intergovernmental agreement on the center's status and operation. On the Russian side, the Project has been approved by the Ministry of Science and Technological Policy and registered in 1996 as an international project. The interest in cooperation was expressed by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, Russian Academy of Sciences and the Committee for International Affairs of the Council of the Federation. The decisions of other departments are also expected.
The state departments are to agree on the center's status, specific features of its registration, and operation. For the United States Center, for instance, the Project may be included into the Gore-Chernomyrdin intergovernmental program by the decision of the Russian Federation Ministry of Science and Technological Policy and the U.S. Department of State. Consultations on this subject are underway. As for other countries, the Project may become part of the existing intergovernmental agreements and commissions on scientific, technological, and cultural cooperation.
Stage 1 should result in a clear definition of the center's role in a bilateral agreement, of its objectives, tasks, and financial aspects of the first start-up year.
• Stage 2
At Stage 2, the basic organizations of the Project,
i.e., Russian National Public Library for Science and Technology, M. I.
Rudomino Russian State Library for Foreign Literature, Russian State Library
(participation of some other large libraries is expected), and other founders
sign an agreement with the basic organization in the country that will
be the center's location. This agreement should stipulate all organizational
and technological aspects of the center's operation (the agreement can
be signed by the basic organization on behalf of other organizations as
well).
• Stage 3
When the center is registered and opened, the parties to the agreement enter Stage 3 and sign agreements and contracts with foreign organizations that will become the users of the center and with Russian organizations that will provide their products and, in turn, will become the users of foreign products.
The scheme suggested is rather general and requires legislative support and specification in every particular case.
Over 50 American and Russian libraries and companies have supported the center and will cooperate with it on an agreement basis. These include the Library of Congress, American Council of Teachers of Russian, New-York Public Library, six university libraries, Interloc Systems Group, Inc., Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, and others (American side); Russian State Library, Vologda Regional Library, Russian Business Agency, Vladivostok Information Company "RINCOM", Udmurt University and others (Russian side).
Today, a required package of documents and a set
of information products and services are being made. A list of founders,
information providers, and users is available for everyone who is interested
in the Project. We continue to solicit further cooperation with interest
parties.