The mandatory copies of Russian publications in bibliographies and statistics: Control and registration

Abstract

The problems of national bibliography and publishing statistics are inextricably linked to the legislative support of acquiring and processing mandatory copies (MC) of Russian publications by the coordinating national center. Over a century, the Russian Book Chamber has been such center (in USSR, later in the Russian Federation). It acted as an independent organization until 2014. From 2014 till September 2022, it was affiliated with ITAR-TASS news agency. Today, the Russian Book Chamber is part of the Russian State Library while keeping its traditional functions in bibliographic and statistical control of national publishing products. The authors examine the key problems of these activities caused by retarding federal legislation on mandatory copies against the real-life publishing situation and information needs of our society and government. The number of publishers, though not professional, but some sort of “amateur” ones, is trending upwards, while the circulation of Russian book publications is decreasing year on year. The authors propose to optimize legislation support of publishing through control of publications by academic book publications and periodicals, as well as by those “printed on demand”; through decrease and differentiation of the federal MC sets, re-distribution of these sets for the sake of out-of-the capital library depositories, and timely editing of terminology and obsolescent articles in the law on mandatory copies.