GLAM/Newsletter/June 2018/Contents/Russia report

This Month in GLAM – Volume VIII, Issue VI, June 2018

Russia report

All Russia under a free license

All Russia under a free license

The Institute of economics and management in industry located in Moscow, Russia, after some negotiations with representatives of Wikimedia RU sent an official confirmation, allowing to release the 'All Russia' encyclopedia published by the Institute under the free licence Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International. Thus, 'All Russia' became the first paper encyclopedia in Russia to be released under a free licence.

The encyclopedia has an alphabetic index of cities and localities in Russia. Specifically according to the introduction at the beginning of the encyclopedia, 1448 localities are included of the Russian Federation, including 1051 cities, 366 settlements, 25 villages, 5 stations, and one sloboda -- a large village or settlement, usually populated by non-serf (free) peasants -- Bolshaya Martynivka. The encyclopedia was first published in 2001.

According to the chairman of the editorial board of the encyclopedia Alexei Valeryevich Ryabinin, 'The encyclopedia 'All Russia', being a comprehensive scientific and encyclopedic publication of enduring value, also contains unique information that was collected and summarized at the end of the 1990s, into one of the complex and contradictory periods of the history of our country. I am sure that the encyclopedia will be interesting to specialists of various professions. We are very pleased to transfer this work to free use under the open license, and are ready to support in every possible way any initiatives aimed at improving people's access to knowledge. Competence, professionalism and creative approach to business are today the basis and the driving force of progress.'

The executive director of Wikimedia RU Stanislav Kozlovsky noted: 'The transfer of such a monumental and beautifully illustrated work to the terms of a free license is really a breakthrough. Now in Russia there are about 800 regional encyclopedias and encyclopedic reference books, but all of them are protected by copyright and even laying them out network and making it accessible to citizens is a crime. I hope very much that the transition of the encyclopedia 'All Russia' to the free license will show a positive example to publishers and other encyclopedias. Knowledge must be accessible to everyone!'

Over the years, the electronic layout of the encyclopaedia 'All Russia' was lost. We express our gratitude to the Central Universal Scientific Library for prompt scanning of the encyclopedia in high quality.

Example pages of the encyclopedia 'All Russia' (the inscription reads Вся Россия)

Contests and events

Open Library events were held in Astrakhan (ru) and Moscow (in Russian State Children's Library and Central Scientific Medical Library). As a part of the activities, there was continued to be popularized the Open Library (ru) competition (25.10.2017-30.06.2018) and were distributed legal and methodological materials for librarians about the publication of content under free licenses.

In the beginning of June Yakutsk has become a platform for Republican Forum of Young Librarians. This forum was visited by Vladimir Medeyko, Dmitri Zhukov and Nikolay Pavlov; among other things, Wikimedia RU organized in Yakutsk a public announcement about the transfer of the collection of translations of the national writer of Yakutia, Semen Rufov, to the public domain.

Ongoing events that have started earlier are: