Search Options | Help | Site Map | Cultivate Web Site
		Search Disabled

A Russian Province: ICT and culture in the Smolensk region

By Natalia N.Fedianina - November 2002

Natalia Fedianina provides us with an overview of the state of ICT development in her home region. She provides encouraging news of progress made, but also examines the challenges facing digital cultural heritage professionals in and around Smolensk. She helps us to see the progress her region has made in informatisation; a term, she assures me, commonly used in Russian official circles to denote the process of development and introduction of information and communication technologies to any sphere of activity.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Introduction

At present less than half of all cultural organisations have an email address. Many do not understand the uses of the Internet nor what the e-culture is.

But the situation is changing rapidly. Technologies are being developed, communication facilities are being improved, attitudes at official level are also changing and that is reflected in the money available for informatisation. The activities of the professional digital heritage community are having a big influence on the introduction of IT to the whole cultural sector. The most influential events for this community are the annual EVA and ADIT conferences.

What is really going on now in Russia in the sphere of ICT and culture? What information projects and programs are happening in the provinces? This article provides a snapshot of the situation in the Smolensk region.

Figure 1: A view of Smolensk

Some facts about the region

A major characteristic of the Smolensk region is its frontier location on the western borders of Russia, at an important transit point on the main Western Europe-Moscow highway. The region borders with the Moscow region in the east and with Byelorussia in the west. As such the region is notable for its very close mixture of western and Russian culture.

The Smolensk region is a part of the Central Federal District. It occupies 49,786 sq. km (0,29% of all Russian territory). In July 2002 the population of the region stood at 1.098 million people, of whom more than 30% (350,000) live in Smolensk [1]. The average monthly wage of the working population has increased by 38% during the last year to US$105. The average income for all inhabitants in the region is $82.

Smolensk, the regional centre, is one of the most ancient Russian towns. It is believeed that the town was probably founded in 863 A.D. when it was first mentioned in records. Smolensk is noted for its historical and cultural heritage. In this respect only Novgorod, Pskov and Vladimir come close.

Officially the region has 3,963 historic and cultural monuments of which 222 have the status "of federal value" [2]. Among the most famous monuments are the Gnezdovo barrows and monuments of pre-Mongolian period architecture - the 12th Century churches - of Michael Archangel, of Peter and Paul, and of Ioann Bogoslov. Smolensk also has a unique architectural monument and one of the biggest fortresses in the world in the Smolensk fortress (1596-1602) and an art symbol of the town - the Uspensky Cathedral (17-18th century). Among the famous sons of Smolensk are Michael Glinka, Sergey Konenkov, Izek Azimov, Yuri Gagarin, Nicolai Przheval'sky, Alexander Tvardovsky, Yuri Nikulin.

The region has an advanced museum network which includes one of the largest museum associations in Russia - Smolensk State Museum-Reserve, two other regional museums and 24 municipal museums. The library network totals over 600 libraries, with book stocks of about 8.7 million [2]. The main library is the Smolensk Regional Universal Library which actively uses new methods and is among the most advanced in Russia. The Smolensk Universal Library set up the first library legal centre in Russia and has a German-French reading room and a Multimedia Centre.

More than 30 state archival establishments comprise the archival system of the region. They have about two million storage units of documents on the history of Smolensk province from the 18th Century to the present. The main archives are the State Archive of Smolensk region, the Centre for the Documentation of the Recent History of the Smolensk Region and the State Archive of Staff Documents.

General informatisation

The chief problem in the regional telecommunications field is that of a market monopoly. Today in Smolensk only one organisation, the Smolensksvjazinform Company, provides local and long-distance connections. This situation is not competitive. As a result, service costs for consumers are high. By some estimates the monopoly's share in the regional telecommunications market is anything between 60 and 94.3% [3].

Local telephone connections

14 operators provide such services, one of them, the Smolensksvjazinform Company, is long-standing, the others are new. The new entrants' share in the local telecommunications market is insignificant - about 4 %. The annual increase in telephony is of the order of 15-20,000 new phone numbers. Today there are 68.67 phones per 100 households in the Smolensk region, in the city of Smolensk - 71.16 phones per 100, whilst in the countryside - 27.51 [4].

Mobile communications

The number of mobile telephone users now exceeds 60,000, about 5.5 % of the population. This figure is higher than the Russian average. In 2000-2001 the number of subscribers more than doubled. In the mobile phone market 5 operators are currently active and provide services to the following standards -GSM 900/1800, NMT-450 and AMPS [4]. The leading companies are the Smolensk branch of MTS (Mobile Telesystems) and Beeline-GSM Smolensk.

The Internet

The Internet is one of most rapidly developing services of the telecommunications market in the region. Annually the number of Internet users increases several times over and had reached 7000 by March 2002 [4]. There are two ISPs: Smolensksvjazinform and Smolensk Teleport. There are two Internet-cafés in Smolensk. Public Internet access centres have been created in libraries, high schools, colleges and universities. Regional and municipal post offices have begun installing Internet access points since the first quarter of 2002.

The regional authorities' policy supports informatisation development. There is a special Committee on Information Resources and Telecommunications for the Smolensk region that works in this area. The basic programs regulating activity in this sphere are "The Program for the Informatisation of the Smolensk Region up to 2005" and "The Legal informatisation of the Smolensk Region up to 2005". The scope of the programs in the region is wide, involving libraries, museums, and local governmental and educational institutions in the process of uniform information space creation.

A good example of what the program has achieved is the integrated regional system based on Internet/Intranet technologies that supplies information to and allows interaction between the government, municipal authorities, enterprises and organisations. Centres for on-line access to the regional Intranet network have been created in libraries, schools and colleges (915 centres connected to date). Also legal information centres have been established in rural libraries and work has begun on the electronic union catalogue of Smolensk libraries [1].

Within the framework of these programs the Committee on Information Resources and Telecommunications organises and supports numerous annual events to promote ICT in various fields of regional activity including:

• A specialised exhibition-seminar on computer and telecommunication technologies
• A Web design competition for young people from educational institutions
• The scientific and practical conference "Creation of Uniform Information Space of the Smolensk Region"
• The regional competition "The Library is the Legal Information Centre"
• The international scientific and practical conference "Society Informatisation and the Problem of Education"

ICT in culture

ICT issues in culture and informational cultural centres are two of the priority areas of "The Program for the Development of Culture in the Smolensk Region for 2001-2005". Key events connected with IT and promoting the creation of e-cultural resources are reflected in the following sections.

Resource Centre "Culture" Program

The Smolensk Museum-Reserve is the largest regional cultural establishment that has a significant technical base, staff experienced in IT and good connections with culture organisations in the Smolensk region and throughout Russia. Since May 2001 the Museum-Reserve has been implementing the Corporate Resource Centre "Culture" Program which supports culture organisations and aims to establish a uniform informational and cultural space in the region on the basis of the application of ICT.

The centre concentrates on the active use of IT. Its primary goals are to develop corporate informational resources - corporate in the sense of creation and use, to promote information exchange between cultural organisations, both at the regional and national levels, and to contribute to interaction between them.

There are two departments in the Resource Centre structure, the Information Service and the Web Studio. The Information Service promotes Smolensk cultural heritage through provision of content, archiving Internet-resources and publication and distribution of the weekly e-newsletter. The Web Studio works on cultural internet-projects and makes CD-Roms and web pages. Besides the Resources Centre "Culture" Program, the Smolensk Museum-Reserve is, for example, a participant in the Russian national node of the Cultivate Network. It also provided the regional centre for organising "Automation of museums and information technologies" (ADIT). In 2001 the Smolensk region took third place in Russia in an inter-museum information exchange (the server "Museums of Russia" www.museum.ru) due to the high quality of ICT services of the museum.

Computerisation of libraries and legal centres

On 9 June 1998 the first public centre for legal information in Russia was opened in Smolensk by the Regional Universal Library [5]. So far, during the first 4 years of the Program "Legal Informatisation of the Smolensk Region up to 2005", an Intranet network of 136 centres of legal information has been created, including 22 centres in libraries. The creation of such centres not only allowed the widening of the spectrum of services offered by libraries, but also became the basic source of computer equipment maintenance for libraries. The legal centres in libraries have free access to the Internet with regulated volume of the traffic through the Internet server of the regional administration. Thus libraries also gain the opportunity for external information exchange in the Internet network and the internal regional Intranet network.

Financial support for setting up legal information centres in libraries comes from two sources, the regional budget and non-budget sources. Budgetary funds are distributed by means of the annual regional competition "The Library is the Centre for Legal Information" organised by regional authorities. Annually three libraries receive computer equipment as a result of the competition.

The second life of library audio funds

On 6 April 2001 the first multimedia centre in Russia was opened in the Smolensk Regional Universal Library, in the art literature department. Staff of the centre digitise audio archives and so preserve them and provide access to archival materials. Until recently access to the rich audio stock of the library (more than 14,000 gramophone records) was restricted. The record archive was formed in the mid-1960's and has been in active use ever since. However a gramophone record tends to wear out if it is played more than fifty times. Now the problem of access to the audio stock has been solved. 4,000 soundtracks of Russian and foreign classics have been digitised so far.

The program for digitising the music, photo and video stocks was provided by the company Amkor-Electronix (Smolensk). The system developed by the company permits publication through the Internet and can easily be adapted for commercial use. In the near future the library plans to make available the electronic audio catalogue and a bibliographic database on the Intranet network of regional administration [6].

The Smolensk libraries project

The Internet site Smolensk Libraries On-Line [7] was created within the framework of the educational and informational centre "Smolensk Libraries". This project is the responsibility of the Smolensk Humanitarian University together with the Committee on information resources and telecommunications of the Smolensk region with financial support from the "Project Harmony Inc." organisation. The main objectives of the project are to create an information portal for Smolensk libraries, give them an access to the wide-area internet network, link their electronic resources and catalogues and create a basis for the creation of methodological seminars and courses on Internet use in library work. Currently the project internet site enables users to search the catalogue for books in the library of the Smolensk Humanitarian University. Through the project, librarians of high schools and university libraries are trained to create library Web sites, library databases and also in Web design.

Web design competition

"Smolensk in the memory of centuries" is the theme of the annual regional Web design competition. Its objective is to raise young people's awareness of the history and culture of Russia and of Smolensk in particular. It also introduces information technologies and the use of the Internet into the sphere of education. The competition is organised by the Committee on Information Resources and Telecommunications of the Smolensk Region together with the Committee on Youth and the Committee on Education [1].

The competition subject varies each year, but is always connected to regional culture and history. For example in 2002 it was devoted to the 200th anniversary of the birth of the eminent Russian admiral P.Nahimov and to the 400th anniversary of the Smolensk fortress. Regional high schools, colleges, organisations, universities and individual students are eligible to participate. The quality of projects and the professionalism of participants increases every year. Some Web sites created within the competition framework were even included in the basic regional Internet portals and thus increasing the exposure of Smolensk culture to the Internet audience.

A brief review of Smolensk culture Internet resources

NB:All Internet resources listed are in Russian. The review does not include the sites devoted to individual creativity.

Key regional problems in the e-culture area

Low state financing for computerisation and digitisation

This dramatically affects the availability of computer equipment in cultural organisations and causes lack of IT expertise to be a problem for staff. For the moment, the only solution is to attract additional non-budget sources to support special programs and projects.

Quantity and quality of culture Internet resources

There are not many relevant Web sites, and only a few of them are professionally produced. For financial reasons, cultural organisations prefer to avoid professional designers and usually turn to individual students or educational institutions instead.

The lack of both state and regional programs of funding for digitisation

This leads to a lack of both stable funding and coordination. In most cases "memory organisations" use their own software for digitising which can cause many problems, such as compatibility of the data, description standards etc. Nonetheless there are effective, but expensive digitising systems on the Russian software market (for example, the museum program "CAMIS 2000", developed by the Alt-Soft Company).

No Internet access to the databases of memory organisations

Basically access is provided through a local server or the internal Intranet network of the region.

Language of Internet resources

It is difficult to find resources about the culture of the Russian regions in English or any other foreign language. The Karelia region is a happy exception to this rule.

Unsatisfactory quality of communication services

These are being provided by regional companies at very high cost. As mentioned above, the telecommunications monopoly in the regional market is the main cause for dissatisfaction.

Absence of a complex Internet portal on regional culture

This absence means that cultural resources are very fragmented and it is difficult to form an overview of what is happening in the region and to find specific information.

Difficult Web addressing system

Most sites are on Internet portals of the regional administration or an Internet service provider and have a third or fourth level address.

References

1. 1. Internet portal of the Smolensk regional administration
   URL: <http://admin.smolensk.ru/>
2. The Program for culture development of the Smolensk region for 2001-2005
   Committee on culture of the Smolensk region, 2001.
3. Rabochiy put
   Smolensk regional newspaper, 22 August,2002.
4. The World of connection. Connect, Russian magazine,
   No. 3 (72), 2002
5. Mnev, V.I. :The experience of the legal informatisation in the Smolensk region
   
6. Creation of uniform information space of the Smolensk region,
   Materials of the IV annual scientific and practical conference, 25 April, 2002.
7. Web site of Smolensk Libraries
   URL: <http://library.smolensk-online.ru/>

Author Details

Natalia N.Fedianina
Head of the Information Department
Smolensk State Museum-Reserve
Regional Coordinator of Cultivate-Russia
B.Sovetskaya, 11,
Smolensk, 214000,
Russia


Email: natalia.fedianina@msses.ru
Phone: + 7 8122 37346
Fax: + 7 8122 37346

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

For citation purposes:
Fedianina, N.N., "A Russian Province: ICT and culture in the Smolensk region", Cultivate Interactive, issue 8, 15 November 2002
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue8/smolensk/>

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Related articles:
If you would like to view similar articles to this one click on a key word below:

< - museums - libraries - archives - Russia - EVA - Smolensk - computerisation - Internet connections - e-culture - telecommunications - audio archives - resource centres - >

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Copyright ©2000 - 2001 Cultivate. | Published by UKOLN | Design by ILRT | Contact Us