About the project

The Karaganda regional universal scientific library is the largest information centre in the region possessing the most significant assembly of printed editions and information on other carriers on the Central Kazakhstan area. Understanding the responsibility assigned to the states for safety of this cultural property of the Karaganda area, the library accounts for the safety and preservation of collections - one of the main professional priorities.

Since 2002 the library has started the development of the project of the Center of Safety and the numbering of documents and the creation of the electronic library "Saryarka". As of 2004, this project was included in the regional program "Cultural Heritage" for 2005-2007.

Objects of selection of documents: The realization of the program includes monumental books of the globe and of national and regional value. In the collection of regional heritage it is planned to include: descriptions of Saryarka (Central Kazakhstan) scientists, travellers, local residents, regional specialists, books and the newspapers issued from 1945, mini-editions, unique in the polygraphic attitude, audio records, videorecordings, and documents on non-conventional data carriers.

The purpose of this project is to promote the preservation of a documentary heritage of Central Kazakhstan as a part of the cultural heritage of Kazakhstan and the maintenance of a rare study of local lore collection, while simultaneously granting wide access to them through an Internet network.

Issues of the project:

• Defining the selection criteria of documents representing significant aspects of Central Kazakhstan.
• Transferrance of especially valuable hand-written, printed and audiovisual documents onto СD-ROM;
• Creation ЭБД about a documentary heritage of the Karaganda area;
• Coordination and cooperation of libraries, archives and museums of the Karaganda area and providing them access to its documentary heritage;
• Definition of the list of the significant aspects of the culture of Central Kazakhstan for reprinting.

Novelty of the project: The documentation and organization of unique materials into an Internet network will provide access to a broad audience of interested users, enabling them to search under the text and will contribute to the safety and maintenance of valuable texts associated with the rare study of the local lore collection.

Creation the electronic library “Saryarka” will give the audience of users easy access to unique editions, will contribute to the safety of the editions and will provide additional opportunities to work with rare editions: contextual search, search by description, importing texts in various formats, etc).
The initial stage of the creation of the electronic library “Saryarka” consists of the documentation of local lore materials from periodicals and the organization of a read-through database, “Karaganda: People, Events, The Facts”. All read-through text is reflected in the database “Regional Specialist”. From a computer, any reader or patron may view listings or records on a diskette. Today it includes 2512 documents in “Word”, “JPEG”, “TIFF”, “html”, and “PDF” format.