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To Russia with love. Copeter, a European Union project in St.
Petersburg for library co-operation in general, interlending and document
supply in particular
Julien Van Borm
Abstract | Paper in
Portable Document Format (PDF) Presentation in Microsoft® PowerPoint®
format
Library co-operation in the former
Russia was implicit and everything including ILL was free. Since the early
nineties of the past century there have been dramatic changes in the Russian
society, perfectly reflected in the Russian libraries. However, there have been
some improvements in the past two to three years. The overall economic
situation is gradually changing for the better, the Soros Foundation, the World
Bank and some other foundations are striving to improve the situation in
Russian libraries, especially towards the digital library. So is the European
Union doing through its Tempus project line. Tempus is essentially a transfer
programme whereby staff and students of Central and Eastern European countries
come to the European Union to find out about the developments there in order to
change the situation in their home country.
Copeter (COoperation between
university libraries in St.-PETERsburg) is such a project. It is to establish a
consortium for the creation of union catalogues and a system of electronic
document ordering and supply in St.-Petersburg. European Union partners are the
Antwerp University in Belgium and the Maastricht University in the Netherlands.
The Copeter project aims at:
- lifting old barriers, hindering
the co-operation between university libraries;
- strengthening the management of
library co-operation;
- introducing new ICT in union
catalogues and ILL;
- linking ILL with digital
repositories world wide.
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