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

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

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

changes to readership structure emergence and growth of the group of remote users growing demand for service component demand for information services provided within electronic environment

The NLR Users' Profile Education: higher % high — 66.8 % (of them 75.4 % are students)

Educational structure Engineers 1,890 (22 %)1,511 (21.5 %) Cultural workers981 (11.5 %)832 (11.8 %) Economists784 (9.2 % )692 (9.8 %) Philologists756 (8.8 %)643 (9.15 %) Medical specialists800 (9.4 %)635 (9 % ) Historians643 (7.5 %)568 (8 %) Lawyers479 (5.6 %)399 (5.7 %) Philosophers, psychologists272 (3.2 %)233 (3.3 %) Chemists, mathematicians, technologists178 (2 %)159 (2.2 %)

Fields of activity Teaching and culture1,414 (16.5 %)1,188 (16.9 %) 2. Engineering1,349 (15.8 %)1,415 (20 %) 3. Medicine805 (9.4 %)652 (9.3 %) 4. Economics786 (9.2 %)745 (10.6 %) 5. Historical sciences778 (9 %)515 (7.3 %) 6. Philological science618 (7.2 %)556 (8 %) 7. Law science457 (5.3 %)378 (5.4 %) 8. Commercial structures254 (3 %)197 (2.8 %) 9. Physico-mathematical sciences183 (2 %)149 (2 %) 10. Psychological sciences129 (1.5 %)129 (1.8 %)

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

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 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 – introduction of the “user customized web page” option

Information and Service Center Readership 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 %)

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

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

Catalogs of books in Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian OPAC ( , ) Scanned General Author/Title Catalog of Books in Russian (1725 to 1998)

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

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 (1703 to 1917) Newspapers in Yiddish (in latin transliteration)

The NLR Digital Library over items about of them are theses

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

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”

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

Challenges Lack of funding  cuts of purchase and subscription expenses  cuts of costs of personnel training  low wages