Series 07

SCIENTIFIC LIBRARY
OF THE ST. PETERSBURG STATE UNIVERSITY
[November 15, 2007]

The Scientific Library of the St. Petersburg State University is one of the largest and the oldest of Russia's libraries. The collection of rare and unusually rich titles ranks it among the most notable libraries of the world. Within the Saint Petersburg State University Charter, the Scientific Library is one of the main structural departments of the University.

The collections number 6.7 million copies. Individual titles number 1.5 million.  Each of the 19 faculty departments have independent libraries and there is also a general collection, the Central Scientific library. Currently there are approximately 65 thousand users of the library of which 43 thousand are student users. The library is staffed with 330 individuals who work in various capacities and at various levels.
 

 http://www.lib.pu.ru/exhibition/index_eng.html

http://www.lib.pu.ru/eng/building2.html

• Top three challenges for Russian academic libraries as identified by our international peers
• Top three challenges for Russian academic library directors/administrators as identified by our international peers.

We were met by Ekaterina (?), Electronic Resources Coordinator, who explained that St. Petersburg was the “cultural capital” of Russia.  The Scientific Library has a project with Stanford University on issues relating to the e-university.  Andres Kolm, IT Specialist, was introduced.  Ekaterina described the Russian electronic library consortium that negotiates licenses for all 400 library members.  Sometimes resources are provided free because of support by foundations.  University libraries make up 40% of the members.  They subscribe only to the biggest resources and work with special groups.  Many resources are in English and they tell their faculty, researchers, and students that they must learn English because they will have to read and write in English to be published in the major scientific journals.

Acting Director Marina Karpova welcomed us to the Scientific Library.  She told us that last year they had hosted a group of public librarians from Texas.  Ms. Karpova did a brief presentation on the history of the university and the Scientific Library of St. Petersburg State University, which is celebrating its 224^th anniversary in December.  It was founded in 1724 by Peter the Great.  The history of the university has always been connected to the history of higher education in Russia.  In 1783, Catherine the Great presented the first Teachers Seminary collection of 110 volumes to the university which served as the core of the library collection.  In 1819 the Library was formally established.  The staff are extremely proud that the library continued to serve users during the siege of St. Petersburg during World War II, despite the shortage of staff.  She provided a statistical summary of the collections, users, staff, and the department libraries housed in the subject departments.  Funding is insufficient so department libraries began to develop.  The staff are part of the Scientific Library but the libraries are supported by the disciplines and by fees.  The department libraries vary greatly but the Central Library sets common standards for all department libraries. 

In 2005 the Central Library issued an order that no department libraries could continue using a card catalog.  Now they are all electronic.  The development of technology has helped with the lack of space for collections and with reading rooms.  The most exciting development was the scanning of the Russian catalog, particularly relevant for Russian editions.  They are currently working on scanning foreign editions now.  Three million images have now been scanned, mainly cards from the catalog.

Future plans include renovating a building to house the Library.  It is a state-funded project and has been slow to develop.  One building is almost ready to house their rare books and manuscripts collections and the research and development department, where they do restoration of materials and create digital copies to make available to others.  An English language version of their catalog is under development.

Ekatarina explained the goal now is to access information, not just the books on the shelf.  They are first in usage statistics in the consortium.  They own/subscribe to 80% of the most important scientific information in the world. They have 30,000 e-journals including Ebsco, Springer, Wiley, JSTOR.  They are also beginning to work with Elsevier e-books and full-text databases such as Scopus, CSA Illumina, and Journal Citation Reports (Web of Science).  They are one of the 57 most innovative universities in Russia.  Most important is information and storage. The librarians have to go to the researchers to train them how to use these new resources but English is a big barrier for them.  Now there are some Russian databases being developed.  All licenses are university-wide and are coordinated by the Central Scientific Library, which promotes e-resources.  Because of lack of funding in the 1990’s, the Library was unable to subscribe to English language resources.  To receive adequate funding the Library argued that, in order for their researchers to create new science, they needed access to the newest science literature.  Ms. Karpova stressed the importance of library contacts.

They are currently working on a new digital project on 18^th Century Russian literature that was in the collection of the Censorship Committee.  These are copies of materials that were reviewed by the Committee and not released to the public, so the Committee retained the only copy of the item.  These were formerly in storage and are now being made available to the public electronically. 

Bede Mitchell did a presentation on “The Automated Retrieval System: Inexpensive and Efficient Library Storage.”  This system has been installed in his library at Georgia Southern University and provides 80 years of growth space for their collection.  They were very interested in this as a potential space solution for their new building.  The cost was 1/4 to 1/3 of that for a new building.  They also appreciated Bede’s effort to have the presentation translated into Russian.

Kate Gordon introduced the topic of challenges faced by library administrators by naming three challenges faced by directors in the U.S.: providing new services without new staff; new skills needed to maintain new services; and insufficient library budgets to do everything we need to do.   Ms. Karpova noted her biggest challenges are small salaries for staff; she has difficulties recruiting new librarians, although technology helps attract some younger people to the profession.  Her main goal is to provide the library with properly trained staff.  The only professional training department is at the University for Culture and Arts.  They now promote librarianship as information management to attract new people.  Funding is still a problem.  The University is active in supporting librarians.  The attitude towards universities and higher education is changing as is the attitude towards librarians within the university.  The University supports the Central Library but sometimes department libraries have more support.