ST. PETERSBURG — November 13, 2007. It is 10:33 pm on November 13, and we have arrived at our hotel in St. Petersburg. We were 3 hours late arriving because a snowstorm slowed traffic in and out of the Moscow airport. The runway had to be cleared, the wings had to be de-iced, and we sat in the plane all that time after boarding on time. However, the airline, Rossiya, brought us food and coffee, tea, juice, soft drinks, etc. We had a sandwich, candy bar, and peach yogurt. I don't know whether that snack was intended for our one hour flight, but it helped tremendously to have it served while we waited.

Earlier we spent a marvelous morning at the Russian State University for Humanities Library. The university is the result of a 1991 merger and reorganization of the Moscow Public University, founded in 1908, and the Moscow State Institute for History and Archives, which was established in 1930 as a center for preparing archivists and gradually expanded into archaeology and paleontology. Upon merging with the MPU, which had the mission of offering higher education to those not well off economically, the Institute for History and Archives achieved university status focusing on the humanities. The library has a rich collection of rare books and primary sources, manuscripts, etc. relating to Russia's history and cultural life. The library employs about 100 people, who provide the expected range of services to students and faculty as well as perform extensive book preservation, repair, and restoration for libraries all over the country.

The university is housed in a grand 6 story building featuring columns and porticos befitting a lofty institution of higher learning. There was a marked contrast with the spartan facility University of Culture and Arts that we visited yesterday. The latter building was functional, but felt rather like a 1950s American public school. The University for the Humanities Library features a grand reading room with a high ceiling and walls decorated with scenes from antiquity. We entered through a security gate similar to those found in most American libraries but which is unusual in Russia since most collections are kept in closed stacks. While this is also true of the Humanities Library, we found substantially more books on open shelves than is typical in Russia. The library is also notable for featuring a large number of sculptural replicas on loan from the Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, which owns the original sculptures. The replicas are spread over four floors of the building and feature art from ancient civilizations in Greece, Rome, Egypt, and other regions. The replicas are said to be almost identical to the originals, which I found easy to believe.

We met with 9 of their librarians and discussed intellectual property and copyright, digitizing historical collections, and assessment techniques for library collections and services. Russian copyright law is in greater flux than American, although since Russia adopted the World Intellectual Property Organization's principles in the mid-1990s their practices have been more in accordance with the rest of the world. However, works published prior to Russia's signing of the WIPO principles are often still treated as part of the public domain. Much energy is going into digitization projects, but progress is slow because a lot of the work is outsourced and project funding is scarce. Russian library assessment focuses almost exclusively on collection size, depth, and quality, to the exclusion of service quality. Our counterparts were intrigued with our description of the LibQUAL assessment commonly used in Anglo-American academic libraries.

We were interested to learn that there are no reciprocal lending agreements between the many Moscow colleges and universities, even though the practice is common in other cities. Also, interlibrary loan is declining, partly because electronic information transfer is easier, but also because Russian libraries have not reached full agreement about which library, the lender or borrower, is responsible for a book at various stages of the transaction.

Once again the visit was warm and cordial. Our hosts clearly enjoyed showing us their facilities and collections, and we could have spent many more hours asking questions and sharing ideas. Tomorrow is for resting and sightseeing, with our next library visit scheduled for Thursday morning at St. Petersburg State University.

Bede Mitchell, LAMA President
Dean of the Library, Georgia Southern University

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