Evsei Weiner. NB

NB - our libraries

Evsei Weiner
evsey.weiner@usa.net

Three years ago, while still a student, in the Library of Foreign Literature, I sat down at a computer connected to the Internet for the first time. I had absolutely no idea what it was. I didn’t even suspect that, besides the non-Russian Internet, there was a Russian Internet. I didn’t know that May Ivanovich Mukhin is a great man , Katya Detkina is a fiction , and Sergei Datsyuk is generally a robot . I haven’t even heard such a surname - Gorny . Although I heard the word. As a rule, in combination with others. I didn’t know that my friend’s pale classmate from the Faculty of Philology, the son of Tatyana Tolstoy , a man about whom this same friend always talked not without delight - “and by the way, he does something like that on this very Internet” - well, yes, Well, it’s scary to say, I didn’t know... Now I know that he is the one who knows . Dot . RU . But even then I knew that there were libraries on the Internet . And you can find anything you want in them. Moreover, I already despaired of finding several books in normal libraries, without which the diploma could not be written. Mysterious spells appeared in the notebook - "altavista.digital.com", for example. And the funny thing is that, using the free poking method, although proven, but not very convenient, I discovered the article I was looking for by Hao Wang. I used a ballpoint pen to copy the parts that interested me into a notebook - copying onto floppy disks was prohibited... And I could not quote them in the work due to the lack of output data. I had to unquote it and pass it off as my own, may the classic forgive me.

Everything has changed now. True, I still have no idea what the Internet is, but I know something about it. I saw Mukhin once - only briefly, though. I received several letters from Gagin . And with Gorny we even had to drink. And what’s probably the most pleasant thing is that there really are a lot of libraries on the Internet. And not only American ones .

The Universe, some also call it a library ...

Libraries are divided into theirs and ours . Their libraries (IL) are created by special people at universities. Information security budgets amount to millions of their money (MU). Information security compilers care about copyright, and sometimes even about convenience for users. In general, as is known from the classics, they have a different life there.

Our libraries (LB) are created by enthusiasts. As a rule, the National Library does not have a budget. Much more is missing too. However, despite all the shortcomings, the main feeling that NB and their creators awaken in me is a persistent feeling of gratitude. And, partly, surprises - people are not too lazy to do all this...

Oddly enough, there are a lot of NBs. There are thematic NBs and NBs, which store everything that catches the eye of their creators in digitized form. The greatest authority in the field of national security is Moshkov . And his national bank is the largest. Not to mention the most popular. And with good reason. And not only because it is the biggest.

The collection of Moshkov's texts is divided into sections, which is a very big plus considering its size. Although the rubric sometimes causes some complaints. Fortunately, the first, and, unfortunately, the second are not uncommon in the National Library. Reviews are attached to some texts in the form of accompanying material. It seems that this is no longer available in any of the national libraries. He is the only one who published not only lists of authors whose personal permissions to publish texts he has, but also a large number of very different materials on copyright - from selected passages from the legislation of the Russian Federation to selected passages from “The Will to Truth” by Michel Foucault.

Any conversation about electronic libraries begins with a mention of Maxim Moshkov’s library. As you know, it has one hundred forty-one thousand four hundred and fourteen mirrors , but it itself performs in relation to other NB the same functions that Leo Tolstoy once performed in relation to the Russian revolution. According to Lenin.

The Moshkov Library contains a variety of texts, including quite extensive ones. But they are all published as one file, regardless of the size. Which makes them not particularly convenient to use. And this is the main way of publishing texts in the National Library. However, some particularly cynical types put zip archives or simply links to texts in other people’s libraries in their so-called libraries. Thanks for that too, of course.

As for copyright, which was already mentioned above, which is generally talked about more and more often... Hand on heart, what is it to us, ordinary readers? However, Moshkov, at least, declares his readiness to remove any text at the request of the author. The compilers of the National Library, who focus on classical literature, are not at all concerned with such problems. And the owners of national libraries smaller than Moshkov’s also don’t care about copyright, although for other reasons - they simply don’t notice them. And foreign authors, whose shameful lack of education does not allow them to conduct searches on the Russian Internet, are completely defenseless against our sharks. Although I don’t really feel sorry for them. In general, the problem is far-fetched and alien to our happy society. The concentration of public attention on copyright problems is to the detriment of digital libraries, that is, their visitors, and cultivates vicious greed in authors. But, unfortunately, this mysterious little thing - copyright - has to be taken into account. If forecasts about the growth in the number of Internet users in Russia (and, accordingly, about the growth in the importance of the Network) come true, a whole series of scandals related to it are coming. And then many national banks will become very poor or simply close down.

But those few books that will remain after all the shocks, what will they be like? More precisely, what are they like now? Where are they from? As a rule, the National Library does not contain any data on this matter, except for the laconic: “Last-modified: Mon, 20-Jul-98 08:31:56 GMT” . It is easy to verify that they do not pass any checks simply by reading, or rather, by going through all sorts of typos. There are, of course, exceptions, but, firstly, they are rare. Secondly, the theory of probability does not exclude the possibility of the appearance of error-free text. Actually, this problem is partly far-fetched. From the point of view of a simple reader, what difference does it make where the text is taken from: from a full academic edition or from a publication of the first years of perestroika, when they were not very interested in such trifles as reconciliation or editing. In general, this is an interesting topic: are modern online librarians repeating the path that book publishers took in the glorious years mentioned above. Returning to the texts in libraries: well, if I want to read Fowles or Pavich, which for some reason I didn’t have time to buy, what can I do, I’ll wait until the 300 kilobyte file is downloaded. And typos won’t bother me, and even annotations like the following: "Russian Library: Pushkin and Gogol, Chekhov and Turgenev, Pasternak and Mandelstam, Akhmatova and Brodsky, Barkov and Erofeev, Orwell and Salinger, Castaneda and Tolkien, etc., etc." . (Borrowed from the catalog "Ay!" ) As a simple reader looking for a book for pleasure, I, again, feel nothing but gratitude to the creators of NB.

But, unfortunately, reading books is not only a way of spending leisure time. The problem I encountered when trying to cite Hao Wang's article in my thesis will be faced by any digital library visitor who tries to use the text placed there for educational or scientific work. Of course, the very assumption of the existence of such a scientist, for whom paper books are not enough, looks utopian. But if you think about it, aren’t there already enough books even in domestic electronic libraries that there is nowhere else to get? And this is if you look from prosperous Moscow. What if from the regions? And one more thing: who has ever seen a text in the National Library with a decent preface? Moreover, with comments... Although I must make a reservation: the remark applies to libraries of universal content. On sites dedicated to the work of specific writers, as well as on some thematic sites, things are different. And, strangely, the more marginal the collection, the better quality it is designed. Perhaps I would call the collection the best in this regard "Blatnoy folklore" . And the texts here are from state archives, and sometimes several dozen versions are attached to each...

So, we can draw a conclusion that is offensive to librarians, but quite reasonable: there is not a single library among the library that meets the requirements for an ordinary library. They are good as places where you can just read a book, or even as a kind of interest clubs - such, for example, is my favorite of the NB - "Language Shop" . But none of them can become a working tool for a student, not to mention a humanities scientist. Of course, the enthusiasts who created the National Library, worthy of all praise, did not set such goals for themselves. But don’t you think about this first when you enter a library, even an electronic one? Just out of habit.

And since there is no such library, maybe it’s worth creating it?