On 26 January 2005 Moscow Center of the Federation of Internet Education held a round table "Future and Problems of Digital Libraries". The round table discussed different aspects of creating and using digital libraries in Russia. The event was attended by representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science of RF, creators of digital libraries, representatives from governmental educational, cultural and research institutions, lawyers and journalists. The round table outlined problems facing creators of Russian digital libraries. These are technological, organizational, financial difficulties, as well as social and legal ones. The society has not yet developed a single attitude towards using resources of digital libraries; as for the legal level, their status is not defined, there are many issues concerning copyright and possibility of commercial use of information.

The participants stressed importance to resolve these issues by joining efforts of government, civil society, research and education community, and business community. Owners of digital libraries that were present at the round table stressed that actions of different Internet resources should be coordinated, including specifying content of the libraries and disseminating information on the results of investigations. According to Yuri Hohlov, Chairman of the Board, Institute of the Information Society, at present Internet does not represent the whole picture of Russian research, educational and cultural heritage. According to him, it is necessary to work seriously on defining the "digital library", especially from legal point of view. DL is a comprehensive concept, which has an interdisciplinary nature, that is why it is difficult to implement large complex projects in this area. We have to work towards wide use of metadata for search and navigation in the digital libraries. One more important task is developing a prfessional DL community.

The discussion of digital libraries development was accompanied by presentation of such Internet projects as Central Library of Educational Resources, Fundamental Digital Library, Library of the Centre of Lifelong Mathematical Education and others.

The main problem facing development of digital libraries, the problem of intellectual property, was raised by Maxim Moshkov. Author of the most visited library in Runet (www.lib.ru) believes that the present copyright law endangers the very existence of news sites and Internet editions, to say nothing of free digital libraries. Without resolving this legal issue it is possible to accumulate large volumes of works that authors agreed to share, but this raises another problem - screening low-grade texts bearing no artistic value. This problem could be solved by establishing a community of professional authors that have the right to publish their materials in some Internet resources.

The majority of specialists agreed that it is the question of how promptly and efficiently these problems would be resolved that influences when and in what form digital libraries would extend their audience and enter everyday practice of institutions of secondary, professional and additional education. Sergey Smirnov, Head of Department of Pedagogical Education and Educational Technologies of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science called all participants to join efforts for promoting digital libraries in the sphere of education in Russia.

Source: Federation of Internet Education site (in Russian).