Government Information and Centers of Business and Legal Information in Russia

Russia is among the information-richest states with information resources vast both in traditional and in new technologies. The Russian state, acknowledging the provisions of international documents on these problems, seeks all the possibilities to make access to the most important information easier for everybody. Among the institutions responsible for collecting, organizing and disseminating the information, libraries play a significant role. At the beginning of the 1990s Russian legal reform specialists came to the conclusion that the major problem is where to locate authoritative sources of official information and legal knowledge to ensure they could be open to general use. Russian experts considered that such a source could be Russia’s public libraries. The library system built during the years of Soviet power proved to be both steady and flexible and the library community was the most receptive of all to change. The paper describes how, building on the solid base of libraries, the government reformers in 1993 created specialized models of information access throughout the country, such as centers of business information, centers of legal information and their modifications. The system is functioning very effectively.