Creating Multilingual Electronic Resources as one of the Trends of Library Activities in Multicultural Environment

Abstract

The article discusses the activities of modern libraries as memory institutions aimed to support multilingualism in cyberspace. The author characterizes electronic libraries and collections in national languages created by central libraries of subjects of the Russian Federation. Over the past few years libraries have stepped up work on the development of multilingualism on the Internet, creating electronic libraries in the languages of the peoples of Russia (besides Russian) and providing free access to them on their websites. National libraries of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation play a leading role in this process, striving to create more and more electronic resources in their national languages (including Russian), with the support of state authorities at the regional and local levels, as well as international organizations. They have created such electronic libraries and collections as “Electronic library of the authors of Karelia”; “Finno-Ugric libraries of Russia”; “Bashkirika”; “National electronic libraries” of the Udmurt Republic, the Republic of Adygea and Komi Republic; “Electronic collection of books in languages of Erzya and Moksha” created by the Pushkin National Library of the Republic of Mordovia; Tatar electronic library; Electronic collection “Literary palette of the Chuvash Republic — 100 books for reading”; and Electronic library of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Mainly the collections include electronic copies of publications that are not subject to copyright; however, there are works of modern authors as well. Electronic collections in national languages of regional libraries are few, among them there are such collections as “Indigenous ethnic groups of Sakhalin” of the Sakhalin regional universal scientific library and Electronic library “Kola North” of the Murmansk state regional universal scientific library. Thanks to the activities of the Central regional libraries, the presence of languages of the titular ethnic groups, as well as indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East in the Russian segment of the Internet has increased.