CEE/Newsletter/June 2018/Contents/Russia report

Russia report: Yakutsk, Moscow, All Russia bhai bhai

By Lvova Anastasiya

Our events

On 8th of June it was held a meeting (ru) of the non-profit partnership with the live broadcast. It's an important event for us, as far as we live in a big country and when we celebrated our 10th anniversary we received the wish for greater transparency in decisions. Live broadcasts also may help hold meetings and report about them, since the role of secretary can be partly taken by a person who has visited the meeting remotely.
At the meeting it was taken a decision to hold the next Russian Wikiconference in Saint-Petersburg, 22-23.09, in the ITMO University.
In the beginning of June, Yakutsk became the venue for the Republican Forum of Young Librarians. This forum was visited by Vladimir Medeyko, Dmitri Zhukov and Nikolay Pavlov; they met with the staff of the library for children and youth and talked about wiki-clubs, held a working meeting on the use of open licenses in the secretariat of the republican portal of state and municipal authorities, took part in the wiki-meeting dedicated to the 10th anniversary of Sakha Wikipedia with the presentation of letters of appreciation from Wikimedia RU.
Among other things, Wikimedia RU organized in Yakutsk a public announcement about the transfer of the collection of translations of the national writer of Yakutia, Semen Rufov (sah), to the public domain.
In June, in the year of the celebration of the decade of Wikipedia in the Yakut language, Sakha Wikiquote was also opened; congratulations!
Open Library events were held in Astrakhan (ru) and Moscow (in Russian State Children's Library and Central Scientific Medical Library).
Within the framework of the fifth interregional Tatar-speaking forum 'Mother tongue' in Bolgar a young Russian wikimedian Timerkhan Shaykhutdinov (Zelenodolsk, Tatarstan) held the regular master-class about Wikipedia and handed over the bilingual certificates of the WMRU to the finalists of the Selet Wikischool's spring session.
In the middle of June we had a very productive meetup (ru) with Wikimedia India's member Rajeeb Dutta; come again everybody, we are glad to see you!

All Russia under a free license

After negotiations with representatives of Wikimedia RU, the Moscow-based Institute of Economics and Management in Industry, issued an official confirmation for the release of the 'All Russia' encyclopedia published by the Institute under the free licence Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International. Thus, 'All Russia' became the first paper encyclopedia in Russia to be released under a free licence.

The encyclopedia has an alphabetic index of cities and localities in Russia. Specifically according to the introduction at the beginning of the encyclopedia, 1448 localities of the Russian Federation are covered, including 1051 cities, 366 settlements, 25 villages, 5 stations, and one sloboda -- a large village or settlement, usually populated by non-serf (free) peasants -- Bolshaya Martynivka. The encyclopedia was first published in 2001.

According to the chairman of the editorial board of the encyclopedia Alexei Valeryevich Ryabinin,

The encyclopedia 'All Russia', being a comprehensive scientific and encyclopedic publication of enduring value, also contains unique information that was collected and summarized at the end of the 1990s, into one of the complex and contradictory periods of the history of our country. I am sure that the encyclopedia will be interesting to specialists of various professions. We are very pleased to transfer this work to free use under the open license, and are ready to support in every possible way any initiatives aimed at improving people's access to knowledge. Competence, professionalism and creative approach to business are today the basis and the driving force of progress.

The executive director of Wikimedia RU Stanislav Kozlovsky noted:

The transfer of such a monumental and beautifully illustrated work to the terms of a free license is really a breakthrough. Now in Russia there are about 800 regional encyclopedias and encyclopedic reference books, but all of them are protected by copyright and even putting them into the Web and making them accessible to citizens is a crime. I hope very much that the transition of the encyclopedia 'All Russia' to the free license will show a positive example to publishers and other encyclopedias. Knowledge must be accessible to everyone!

Over the years, the electronic layout of the encyclopaedia 'All Russia' was lost. We express our gratitude to the Central Universal Scientific Library for prompt scanning of the encyclopedia in high quality.

Example pages of the encyclopedia 'All Russia' (the inscription reads Вся Россия)

Contests

In June we started the following contest: Football marathon 2018 (ru) (14.06-15.07)

Ongoing events that have started earlier are:

Numismatics and Bonistics 2018 (ru), the fourth competition in this series.
Discover Russia and Germany: meet the province (en) (20.05—20.10). It is dedicated to sights of small and medium-sized territories of the Russian Federation and the Federal Republic of Germany. Small and medium-sized territories, according to the terms of this competition, are settlements with a population not exceeding 100,000 people. The competition is timed to coincide with the Russian-German year of the regional-municipal partnership, held from July 2017 to July 2018.
Contest for wikinumismatists Coins from the collection of the Museum of the International Numismatic Club (ru) (01.04—30.09).
Multiplatform contest Public Domain — 2018 (ru) (25.12.2017-30.06.2018)
Wikimarathon Discover Russia. Cities and regions of the World Cup 2018 (en) (14.03-15.07)

Events that completed in June: