How to find a place for libraries in the modern world and turn them into an effective information infrastructure?

In the capital city for this purpose quite serious work on modernization of city libraries was carried out: material and technical funds were renewed, internal spaces were improved, for example, many libraries integrated the practice of co-working into the organization of space: everyone could use a part of the library space for work and any other leisure time free of charge. However, the issue of popularization of libraries was still quite relevant.

According to the new concept of Moscow's Cultural Policy, libraries should become new centers of attraction for citizens, transforming from book depositories into cultural centers - comfortable and attractive places of recreation and cultural leisure. And Moscow went for a unique experiment: in order to involve people in the cultural life of the city, to return the interest of citizens to the vast cultural infrastructure, to make cultural institutions more popular, an action from the series of "Nights of Cultural Institutions" was held - "Biblionight"..

The "Biblionight" campaign was initiated in 2011 Ilya Nikolayev (Association of Cultural Managers) и Alexandra Vakhrusheva (Library-reading room named after I.S. Turgenev) after the participation of the Turgenev Reading Library in May 2011 in the museum event "Night at the Museum". In May 2011, the Turgenev Reading Library took part in the museum event "Night at the Museum", and since 2012 Biblionight has been held annually not only in the capital, but also in other regions of Russia as an All-Russian event - a large-scale network event at the national level in support of Russia's historically national project - the social authority of literature. The initiators of the action wanted to breathe new life into libraries: to show how it is interesting to spend time, work and meet, read and learn in a space filled with books. The choice of the date of the action - April 23 - is not accidental. It is timed to coincide with World Book and Copyright Day.

"Biblionight 2012" - Russia's first Biblionight took place on the night of April 20-21, 2012. Over 750 organizations across the country took part in Biblionoch 2012. Among them were both library sites, bookstores, museums, and festivals. The geography of the project included more than 100 settlements from Anapa to Arkhangelsk, Komsomolsk on Amur, Nakhodka, Rostov-on-Don and Kemerovo. The most active were the Volgograd Region, the Republic of Karelia, Nizhny Novgorod, Togliatti, Samara, Yaroslavl, Norilsk, Novosibirsk and St. Petersburg.

The official sites of Biblionight 2012 in Moscow were 28 libraries, including the Turgenev Reading Library. I.S. Turgenev Library-Reading Room, M.A. Svetlov Central Youth Library, Library of History of Russian Philosophy and Culture "A.F. Losev House", Russian Children's Library and some others. The Association of Cultural Managers (AMK), the State Literary Museum, the Yasnaya Polyana Estate Museum, the Pushkin Library Foundation, and the Flacon Design Factory united to organize the first Biblionight, Creative Group "Massolit" (Nizhny Novgorod), "ABBYY" company (general sponsor of the project), "Biblio-Globus", "Falanster", "Amitel" stores, "MUSEYPROM" company, "WINZAVOD" Center for Contemporary Art, "EXMO" and "Rosman" publishing houses, "Bumper" book bus.

"Biblionight 2013" was held on the night of April 19-20, 2013. In 2013, the event took place in 450 settlements in 78 regions of Russia, as well as in Ukraine and Belarus, bridged the "gap" between cities and villages, capital and regions, created a basis for interaction and communication "beyond territorial boundaries". This night more than eight hundred library sites, museums, galleries, bookstores, art cafes, exhibition halls, institutes and schools held events for their visitors. All events of the action, aimed at supporting reading as a way of life and allowing the library and book community to find new forms of professional cooperation and interaction with society, were united by a common theme - "The Great Literary Journey".

Libraries offered special programs for people of different ages, with a large number of programs aimed at youth and children's audiences. A special place this year was given to programs for the visually impaired organized by specialized libraries, as well as events for children from orphanages. The most active regions that offered the most diverse cultural program were Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Yaroslavl, the Republic of Karelia, Volgograd, Voronezh and Orenburg regions.

Within the framework of the campaign, partnership programs - platforms for creating a new form of network communication - were implemented. On the scale of the campaign, an example of such cooperation were the partnership programs of libraries and a number of large network publishers and book holdings across the country, such as: "New Bookstore" and "Chitai-Gorod" chain stores, "Moscow House of Book", "Moscow" on Vozdvizhenka, Trade House "Biblio-Globus", "Falanster", "Hyperion", Book House "Medvedkovo", publishing house "Rosman", "Polyandria" (St. Petersburg), Dirizhabl bookstore chain (Nizhny Novgorod), Novosti Yugra Publishing House (Nizhnevartovsk), Amital bookstore chain, as well as the Institute of Business and Design, the American Cultural Center, and many others.

A special project was launched during Bibilionocha 2013 "Library Night." - special events for children held in the evening. Libraries invited poets, animators and writers to meet with young readers. 

К "Biblionights 2014"More than 3,000 venues in all regions of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus joined the event; 1,300 Russian libraries organized more than 5,600 events.

The cross-cutting theme was "Time Translation: Rivers of Time", and since the event was dedicated to the Year of Culture of Great Britain and Russia, on the night of April 25-26, cultural centers, publishing houses, bookstores and shopping malls, museums and theaters, exhibition halls and galleries, cafes and restaurants, educational institutions and public organizations joined Biblionight 2014.

In Moscow, for example, the Medvedkovo Book House, the Moscow bookstore on Vozdvizhenka, the Biblio-Globus bookstore, the State Literary Museum, the Vinzavod Center for Contemporary Art, the ZIL Cultural Center, the Hyperion book club, the Falanster bookstore, and others took part in the campaign. For the first time this year Bookmate and Litres e-libraries joined the campaign, providing free access to their books, as well as about 200 libraries in all administrative districts of the city, including the largest federal libraries: the Russian State Library (RSL), the Russian State Children's Library (RSL), the Russian State Library for Youth (RSLY). In St. Petersburg, the Russian National Library (RNL) joined the campaign.

A special project was launched as part of Biblionight 2014 "Bibiliophary." - a special project of Biblionight, which aims to involve in the campaign such regions where there are no museums, libraries or bookstores within walking distance. "Bibliofars", a kind of "libraries on wheels", can become not only a means of transportation of books, but also an important link in the library system of Russia, performing special social functions.

"Biblionight-2015" was held at more than 1200 venues in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Only in the capital the number of people who came to libraries and other cultural institutions on the night of April 24-25, 2015 was about 150 thousand people (this is 30 thousand more than in 2014). There were registered 627 events organized at these venues, and "Biblionoch 2015" became the main event of the Year of Literature. The cross-cutting theme of Biblionight 2015 was "Open the Diary - Catch the Time". Since Biblionight-2015 became the central event of the Year of Literature in Russia, it united not only libraries, but also literary museums, bookstores and Internet platforms of the capital.

The increase in the number of citizens involved in the campaign required from cultural institutions new approaches and topics that they could offer within the framework of the campaign. In 2015, the Turgenev Library and Reading Room offered an even more diverse program. In 2015, the Turgenev Reading Library offered an even more diverse program: its staff organized a linguistic quest game for literacy, erudition and knowledge of Russian literature at the "Word Game" and open lectures: the legendary animation director Yuri Norshtein spoke about poetry and animation, and poet Dmitry Vodennikov about how to write poetry. The audience's attention was drawn to the poetic constructor "Cloud in Pants" from the Mayakovsky Museum and a literary performance on the works of Joseph Brodsky "Oh, Live the Speech/Live the Verse" by students of the Moscow City University of Management of the Moscow City Government.

Also in 2015, book lovers were expected to see new cultural special projects - "City in Words" - a project that resulted in illustrations of texts by contemporary Russian writers appearing on the walls of houses; "Artist and Book" - a series of exhibitions, each of which had its own unique view on how to visualize a literary image; "Diary of a Citizen" - a collective crowd-art project that resulted in an installation presented in the Turgenev Reading Library on the night of April 24-25. "Diary of a Citizen" is an attempt to find an answer to the question of how and in what form the diary lives in the big city today, how the modern citizen sees and feels the world around him and himself in it.

The new special projects created a new form of library work: they took the book festival beyond libraries and museums to the streets of the capital: to parks and boulevards.

2000 events. "Biblionight 2016" on the night from April 22 to 23 were held at 1500 venues: libraries, museums, galleries, bookstores and cultural centers in 82 regions of Russia. The geography of Biblionight is traditionally wide: from Sakhalin to Kalinigrad, from St. Petersburg to Sochi. The cross-cutting theme of Biblionight 2016 is "Read the movie!".

Since April 23, Moscow libraries have switched to a new working schedule. According to the new schedule, from 10:00 to 22:00, libraries in the center of the capital began to work, and those located outside the Third Ring Road - from 12:00 to 22:00. Libraries also have a single day off - Monday.

State public libraries of Moscow, cultural and leisure institutions and museums of Moscow organized more than 350 events. The total coverage, including the involvement of the Yandex search engine as a partner, was more than 11.5 million people, and the number of active participants amounted to about 60,000 people.

Biblionight on Triumfalnaya was the central event of the campaign. Special screenings of screen adaptations of literary works were held in the Moscow Cinema chain of cinemas.

One of the numbers of the program was the block "Poetic Map of Russia", during which the invited authors from all corners of the country read their works: poets from St. Petersburg, Cherepovets, Yaroslavl, Bryansk, Rostov-on-Don, Izhevsk and other cities.

On the night of April 22-23, 2017, the All-Russian action was held for the sixth time in 84 regions "Biblionight-2017". Libraries, museums, galleries, bookstores, and art spaces across the country expanded their hours and formats to include lectures and open readings, theater performances, concerts, exhibitions, and meetings with contemporary authors.

In 2017, the main theme of the campaign was "New Reading". This concept was chosen for a reason: in our century all spheres of life are actively developing, people have a different view of the world with the help of modern technologies. These changes are reflected in new approaches to the development of cultural institutions, including libraries.

In Moscow, the events within the framework of the action began in the afternoon, on April 22 at 15.00, at the Central City Square Triumfalnaya Square. A literary art space unfolded for the whole day, and the program on Triumfalnaya Square turned into a journey through time. The guests saw the change of three epochs: classic, thaw and modern.

In 2017, reading lovers were waiting for night adventures, from 22:00 to 6:00, organized in seven libraries located in the center: the F.M. Dostoevsky Library, the A.P. Bogolyubov Art Library, the I.S. Turgenev Library-Reading Room, the N.V. Gogolubov House. N.A. Nekrasov, Library No. 47 on Argunovskaya Street and Library No. 76 named after M.Y. Lermontov.

Traditionally, not only Moscow libraries, but also cultural centers, museums, federal libraries and Biblio-Globus bookstore took part in the campaign. A rich literary program was prepared in the shopping centers of the city, including "Kuntsevo Plaza", "Semenovsky", "Novomoskovsky", "Capitol Leningradsky", "Capitol on Prospekt Vernadskogo", "Golden Babylon. Otradnoe".

"Biblionight-2017" continued the line of major city festivals held by the Department of Culture of the regions, gave impetus to the formation of a new fashionable trend of reading among young people, revived the tradition of family reading and allowed the reader to look at libraries in a new way.

Russian "Biblionoch" is a demanded, timely and incredibly successful event realized in the library space. In a few years "Biblionight" from a small event held by enthusiasts in a number of libraries in the capital, and then went beyond not only the capital region, but also Russia, has become an international cultural phenomenon, an event that is expected. "Biblionight" is a new intellectual leisure, not boring and diverse, it is a time for creativity, acquaintance with books and people's communication.

Now libraries across the country have begun preparing for the "Biblionights-2018". For the seventh time on this magical night, libraries will come alive: they will invite you in and open their secrets. And everyone will be able to feel freedom, feel the power of books and literary word, to visit the closed funds or try their luck in literary contests. "How to get to the library?" - Once a year this question does not seem ridiculous even at night.

Alina Sheshnyova

What's next?

P.S. Читайте в следующей статье: почему вопрос тихие библиотеки превратились в центры активной культурной жизни в международном масштабе.