Meeting Scholars' Needs

1. Meeting Scholars' Needs the NLR's Experience and New Services

2. 1. Evolution of Readership in the last 20 years and its Relation to IT Development

3. selection of new acquisitions • subscription for electronic databases • choosing what to digitize for e-library • reference services, including newly created service types

4. changes to readership structure • emergence and growth of the group of remote users • growing demand for service component • demand for information services provided withinelectronic environment

5. The NLR Users' Profile • Education: higher - 30.8 % high — 66.8 % (of them 75.4 % are students)

6. Educational structure

7. Fields of activity

8. 2. Origin and Development of E-services at the NLR

9. Milestones • 1993 — start of using computers and communication technologies in reference services (databases on CD-ROMs) • 1994 — Introduction of machine-readable cataloging at the NLR • 1997 — NLR starts to provide access to the Internet for its readers • 1999 — Legislative Center launched • 2000 - Electronic Delivery Service launched • 2001 — Information and Service Center launched • 2003 — start of using subscription databases in reference services; birth of the NLR digital library • 2004 — “Ask a Librarian” online reference service launched. • 2009 – introduction of the “user customized web page” option

10. Information and Service CenterReadership Description Purposes of visit (2008/2012): • Research — 60.3 % (74 %) • Education — 23.5 % (15 %) • Production — 7.4 % (2 %) • Other — 8.8 % (9 %) Fields of activity (2008/2012): • Socio-economic sciences — 48.9 % (37.3 %) • Philology, pedagogy and art — 28.9 % (33.6 %) • Biomedical sciences — 13.1 % (12 %) • Technical and natural science — 9.1 % (17.1 %)

11. 3. Electronic library services of the NLR: Advantages, Difficulties and Perspectives

12. Online catalogs of the NLR 1994 – e-catalog of foreign books started 1997 - catalog of books in Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian started

13. Catalogs of books in Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian • OPAC (1708-1926, 1976 - ) • Scanned General Author/Title Catalog of Books in Russian (1725 to 1998)

14. Catalogs of books in foreign (European) languages • Foreign language books (2004 -) • Foreign language books (1994 to 2004) • Books of the 16th century • Western European books of the 15th century (Incunabula) • Books in Finnish (up to 2002) • Catalog of the “Rossica” collection • The 1st Cadet Corps Library • Books in Western European languages, published in Russia between 1701 and 1800 • Publications in Yiddish

15. Catalogs of periodicals • Periodicals and serials in Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian (except newspapers) • Russian journals, 1800 to1825 (with contents’ description). • Periodicals and serials in foreign (European) languages (except newspapers) • Russian Newspapers (1703to 1917) • Newspapers in Yiddish (in latin transliteration)

16. The NLR Digital Library • over 350.000 items • about 290.000 of them are theses

17. Most acute problems • balance between traditional and digital collections • extreme attention to free external collections

18. The NLR E-Services • Virtual Service “Ask-a-Librarian” • Electronic Delivery Service • Virtual Office (“user customized web page” option) • Series of e-guides to reference and bibliographic resources • Systimatic guide “Information Resources on the Internet”

19. Information training of remote users • Development of the website • Building of a system of online subject guides both to traditional and online resources • Information consulting while executing the queries of remote users

20. Challenges • Lack of funding • cuts of purchase and subscription expenses • cuts of costs of personnel training • low wages