The workshop has hosted over 200 representatives of 50 organizations and state agencies of Russia as well as of 7 university centers of the United States. There have been made 20 presentations, some of them as videoconferences. The workshop has been broadcasted to major Russian cities including Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Tchelyabinsk, Irkutsk, Voronezh, Yaroslavl etc.

The participants state a great interest displayed for the creation and use of digital libraries (DL) and urge the development of the interagency Russian Digital Libraries Program. They make an emphasis on the envolvement of a wide range of relevant state agencies, organizations and professional groups interested in the promotion and realization of the Program.

The participants regard as one of the priority issues broadening collaboration between Russian and American DL specialists in research on, creation and use of digital libraries. The outcomes of joint Russian-American projects referred to in several reports have convincingly demonstrated a high efficiency of such collaboration.

The participants appreciate and recognize as timely and perspective the initiative of the Russian Foundation for Technological Development and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research having implemented the first effective activities in the development of the Russian Digital Libraries Program.

The participants have notified a high research level of the presentations as well as good organization and a more than satisfactory technical support provided to the workshop.

The participants express sincere gratitude for the organization and support of the workshop to the Institute of High Performance Computing and Data Bases (Ministry of Science and Technologies of the Russian Federation), the Russian Information Society Institute, the Institute of Organic Chemistry (Russian Academy of Sciences), the corporations Oracle and Sun Microsystems, the Russian Foundation for Technological Development and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, the Ministry of Science and Technologies of the Russian Federation, the National Science Foundation of the United States (NSF).

Recommendations

The participants consider to be necessary:

1. To entrust the Organizing Committee to make the materials of the workshop widely available for the public.
2. To conduct such workshops on a regular basis (at least ones a year).
3. To organize an international conference on Digital Libraries to be conducted by the end of 1998 in Moscow.
4. To recommend to appropriate state agencies of the Russian Federation and the United States to support joint DL projects as well as organizational and technical measures ensuring a highly efficient joint exploitation of information resources of both countries.
5. To support suggestions formulated in the NSF report concerning an international DL working group to be established in the nearest future.
6. To submit the recommendation of the Workshop to the Telecommunications Working Group of the Committee for Scientific and Technical Co-operation of the Russian-American Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission.