The Russian government is preparing a bill on compulsory electronic copies for all new print media

    State Secretary of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation Grigory Ivliev said that the government is currently considering amendments to the federal law “On the mandatory copy of documents”. According to the changes, all new print publications that fall into the libraries will have to be accompanied by mandatory electronic copies. The bill should be approved by the government by February 15, after which it will be sent for consideration to the State Duma. This year, 100 million rubles have been allocated for digitizing the library fund.

    Probably the famous fire became the main reason for the activation of officials.at the INION library last week, which damaged 15% of the book stock. They also fear that water could damage the servers that stored 3.5 million digital copies of documents that they had time to scan. Ivliev says:
    Digitization of funds needs to be accelerated. Ancient and ancient manuscripts are a priority. We also sympathize with colleagues from the INION library. When allocating funds, we will take into account the situation with this library.
    At the Ministry of Culture, amendments to the law were adopted in October 2013, and the government received a document for consideration in February 2014.

    The Director General of the Russian State Library (RSL) Alexander Visly cited the following figures on the financial costs of digitizing: scanning a sheet of a modern dissertation costs 2 rubles, while scanning an ancient manuscript with gold ink will cost 50 rubles, since gold is poorly scanned with a conventional scanner, and you need expensive special equipment. Alexander Visly says:
    How much it will be possible to digitize this year is not yet known, since the budget of the library has not yet been approved. There are 300 thousand rare books and 500 thousand manuscripts in the RSL, all of which 150 thousand are digitized. The fact is that rare editions are not in great demand among readers. Usually ask modern literature. And digitization is done first of all in order to ensure its safety. If the book is often ordered, then so that it does not fray, it must be scanned. The digitized versions of these rare books and manuscripts are available in the public domain on our website, since they are no longer protected by copyright. Usually, this service is used by scientists from regions or from abroad who find it difficult to come to Moscow.
    Printing houses are now required to send one paper copy of the book to 16 state libraries. The bill is planning to reduce this number by demanding that three electronic copies of the paper edition be sent within a month to the Russian State Library, the Russian National Library and the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library.

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