On November 28–29, 2024, the Palace of Books – the Ulyanovsk Regional Scientific Library named after Lenin hosted an interregional scientific and practical seminar “Promoting Reading and Media and Information Literacy in Russia: Goals, Objectives, Achievements, Problems and Prospects”. The UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education acted as one of the co-organizers of the seminar together with the Russian Committee of the UNESCO Information for All Programme, the Ministry of Arts and Cultural Policy of the Ulyanovsk Region, the Interregional Center for Library Cooperation, and the Palace of Books – the Ulyanovsk Regional Scientific Library named after Lenin under the support of the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation.
The seminar was attended by representatives of state and municipal libraries, educational institutions, publishing houses, bookselling enterprises, the media, other organizations and governing bodies in the field of science, culture, education, communication and information. The experts focused on current issues of national and regional policy in the field of supporting reading and the Russian language, problems of developing book and reading culture in Russia, as well as developing media and information literacy skills in the context of the formation of a new digital environment.
At the opening ceremony, the participants of the seminar were greeted by the Minister of Arts and Cultural Policy of the Ulyanovsk Region Evgenia Sidorova, Director General of the Interregional Library Cooperation Center, Chairman of the Russian Committee of the UNESCO Information for All Program, Member of the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO Sergey Bakeikin and Director of the Book Palace – Ulyanovsk Regional Scientific Library named after V. I. Lenin Svetlana Nagatkina.
The plenary session included presentations and discussions on the trends in book publishing in Russia in 2023-2024, the experience of forming public library collections in the digital age, approaches to introducing a participatory approach and project activities into library practice, and strategies for developing publishing activities in a library setting. Tatyana Murovana, UNESCO IITE Programme Specialist, reviewed new challenges in the field of media and information literacy and the place and role of libraries in addressing these challenges.
The seminar program also included a master class “Effective practices for promoting reading, books, libraries”, a creative meeting with writer Yulia Kuznetsova and a web conference “Reading: a project approach” and an award ceremony for the winners of the Regional Professional Competition “Successful Model Library of the Ulyanovsk Region”.