Assembly for libraries

On Friday, August 22, it became known about the impending association of three libraries: Ben RAS, GPNTB and scientific and pedagogical named after Ushinsky in a single "library-cultural" center. The director of the library of natural sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikolai Kalenov received an invitation to a meeting in Fano, which came from the head of the Federal Property Department of this agency. The meeting should take place on the day of the release of this number of a three-hobby, on Tuesday August 26, and will be held behind closed doors. There is a facsimile of an invitation to the editorial office.

In addition to the fact that this is complete idiocy aimed at eating buildings in the center of Moscow, there is nothing special to comment here. We restrict ourselves to the comments of the director of Ben RAS N.E. Kalenova and I.O. Director of the Library named after Ushinsky T.S. Markarova, which we publish with their kind permission.

Fano employees denied their involvement in this venture, saying that the initiative comes from the Ministry of Education and Science. Their words turned out to be true - a copy of the letter to the ministry from the deputy chief Fano A.M. Medvedev, where the initiative is sharply criticized and the opinion is expressed about the inappropriateness of the merger of libraries.

From the same letter there is a clear tactics of “sunset” - a letter of workers with amazing logic: GPNTB was removed from the Kuznetsk bridge to the line to the scenes, so it became inconvenient to go there and therefore please combine three libraries into a single center. It is unlikely that the real workers could have thought of this, therefore, most likely, the letter was prepared by an unknown, but quite high, interested party and missed through the Ministry of Education and Science.

When the material was almost ready, good news came, though not yet confirmed by document: the question of the unification of libraries was removed from the next day of the meeting to Fano. But this does not mean that the libraries have already been saved. The interested parties are usually stubborn and often very influential.

Boris Stern

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Dear Sirs!

I just received this letter, which was a complete surprise for both me and the leadership of two other libraries mentioned in the text.

Ben RAS provides information support of studies conducted by more than 100 organizations of the Russian Academy of Sciences (now Fano), its structure includes 60 departments based in academic institutions, the total distributed fund is about 6 million copies of natural science literature, it is a departmental information and bibliotic center.

The GPNTB of Russia is a public library, the pedagogical library is focused purely on pedagogy and scientific disciplines close to it. To create on the basis of these three libraries “Sociocultural Center” seems to be a meaningless and harmful idea.

The "merger" will completely destroy the current and fairly effective system of information support of scientific research, which is implemented in Ben RAS.

It should be noted that Ben Ran and the library named after Ushinsky are located in the center of Moscow in buildings representing historical and commercial value, and on the Internet there has long been a discussion at what price elite apartments will be sold in them.

Director BEN RAS ,
doct . tech . sciences ,
professor N.​ E.​ Kalenov

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Dear Nikolai Evgenievich!

Having received a letter from you about the merger of our libraries, at first I decided that it was a bad and tasteless draw.

I do not really understand at what professional level the question arose about the merger of completely different institutions with a different area of ​​activity, with various departmental subordination? Each of the “united” libraries has its own specific technology, its own reader-user. NPB named after K.D. Ushinsky, being for a long time as part of the Russian Academy of Education, and now in the subordination of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, is the only federal pedagogical library in Russia with a unique fund and a scientific and pedagogical archive in the structure of the library.

We provide scientific and information services not only of pedagogical science, but also of schools, secondary educational institutions, universities. NPB is a scientific and methodological center for libraries of educational institutions of the pedagogical profile of all levels and steps, we often conduct advanced training courses, scientific conferences. Of course, with the above colleagues we are actively cooperating and partnership. But this harmful, meaningless “merger” will ruin not only the activities of three separate libraries, but also absolutely ground joint projects.

I am deeply outraged by the “idea” and by the fact that, in any case, I was not informed. Thanks to the colleague N.E. Kalenov, who sent me his invitation to a meeting on this subject to Fano.

I consider myself entitled to turn to my founder in the Ministry of Education and Science and in every possible way to prevent such a “reform” of science and education.

WITH respect ,

T . WITH . Markarova ,
And . O . Director FNU NPB
them . TO . D.​ Ushinsky