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 - 30.8 %

high — 66.8 % (of them 75.4 % are students)

Educational structure

2010 2011

Engineers 1,890 (22 %) 1,511 (21.5 %)

Cultural workers 981 (11.5 %) 832 (11.8 %)

Economists 784 (9.2 % ) 692 (9.8 %)

Philologists 756 (8.8 %) 643 (9.15 %)

Medical specialists 800 (9.4 %) 635 (9 % )

Historians 643 (7.5 %) 568 (8 %)

Lawyers 479 (5.6 %) 399 (5.7 %)

Philosophers, psychologists 272 (3.2 %) 233 (3.3 %)

Chemists, mathematicians, technologists 178 (2 %) 159 (2.2 %)

Fields of activity

2010 2011

1. Teaching and culture 1,414 (16.5 %) 1,188 (16.9 %)

2. Engineering 1,349 (15.8 %) 1,415 (20 %)

3. Medicine 805 (9.4 %) 652 (9.3 %)

4. Economics 786 (9.2 %) 745 (10.6 %)

5. Historical sciences 778 (9 %) 515 (7.3 %)

6. Philological science 618 (7.2 %) 556 (8 %)

7. Law science 457 (5.3 %) 378 (5.4 %)

8. Commercial structures 254 (3 %) 197 (2.8 %)

9. Physico-mathematical sciences 183 (2 %) 149 (2 %)

10. Psychological sciences 129 (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

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

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

1997 - catalog of books in Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian started

Catalogs of books in Russian,

Ukrainian and Byelorussian

OPAC (1708-1926, 1976 - )

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 350.000 items

about 290.000 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