Dremaylov Dear Colleagues,
I am glad to inform you that the ADIT’99 Third Annual Conference will be held in Yaroslavl on May 17-21, 1999.

We have specially chosen the most beautiful city on the Volga river to hold a representative forum on the digital presentation of the cultural heritage.

Yaroslavl is a major culture centre of Russia. It is one of Russia’s oldest cities, its exciting history starts as early as 1010. Yaroslavl has made an invaluable contribution to the Russian historical and cultural heritage.
The Yaroslavl has a large number of museums, the most significant amongst them are the Yaroslavl Museum-Preserve of History and Architecture, the Yaroslavl State Museum of Art, the Karabikha Literary Memorial Museum-Preserve of N.A. Nekrasov, the Rybinsk Museum-Preserve of History, Architecture and Art, the Rostov Kremlin State Museum-Preserve, the Uglich Museum of History and Art, the Pereslavl-Zalessky Museum-Preserve of History, Architecture and Art.
There are three theatres and a philharmonic society in Yaroslavl. It was in Yaroslavl that Fyodor Volkov founded the first professional theatre in Russia in 1750.
Yaroslavl is a student city. There are six universities and high schools here.

The communication, information and intellectual resources of Yaroslavl are immense. In 1996-1998, a major regional Internet infrastructure was created at the Yaroslavl State University with the support of the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation). The structure includes an Internet Centre, headed by Alexander Russakov (alex@free.net), that supports the servers www.yars.free.net and www.univ.uniyar.ac.ru , and the Yaroslavl Regional Center for New Information Technologies, headed by Alexei Malkov (mal@cnit.umyar.ac.ru), which has a large experience of digital publications on the cultural heritage. Since 1994, the Regional Center for Remote Education is active in Yaroslavl, headed by Irina Vassilyeva (irina@dlc.edu.yar.ru). At the server www.edu.yar.ru , it has launched exciting educational projects with over 100 Yaroslavl schools and education centres and schools in Russia and abroad.

Local museums are also active in the field of digital information. They have launched a joint project to create a museum information network. The networking experience of the Yaroslavl Region is unique in Russia.

Yaroslavl is both a museum city with its own historical face, a major modern city, and a tourist centre with a complex infrastructure. In 2000, Yaroslavl will house the World Hockey Championship.
Of course, the main attraction of the city is the river Volga. I sincerely hope that during ADIT’99 we shall have a chance to travel on the great Russian river. Irina Andreeva (ia@museum.yar.ru), Assistant Director of the Yaroslavl Museum of Art and regional ADIT representative, is working hard on organizing ADIT’99. The whereabouts of the main conference events have already been decided upon.

On May 17, the Second Museum Computer Festival shall take place in the Nekrasov State Science Library. We chose the library to house the festival because it is the most visited public place in town. It receives an average of 2,000 people, most of them students, per day.

On May 18, the opening of the conference shall meaningfully coincide with our professional holiday, the International Museum Day. May 19 and 20 will be the main working days of the conference. We have found convenient premises for plenary sessions: the comfortable hall of the Yaroslavl Puppet Theatre. This is another ADIT tradition.

For May 21, we have scheduled an Internet Day and a Round Table on Regional Policy. Symbolically, the last day of the conference will pass in the hall of the Administration of the Yaroslavl Region, which has been used before for sessions on the Internet. Yaroslavl University staff have offered to broadcast the last day of ADIT’99 on the Internet and organise a video conference with some interested organisations.

Yaroslavl will provide ADIT’99 participants with comfortable lodgings and an exciting tourist program. I am sure Yaroslavl will be lovely in May.

ADIT’99 has its own Organising Committee. The Russian ICOM President Irina Rodimtseva has asked Vladimir Yegorov, the Minister of Culture of Russia, to act as Honorary Chairman, and Anatoly Lisitsin, the Governor of the Yaroslavl Oblast, as Chairman of the ADIT’99 Organising Committee. The Committee traditionally consists of two working groups. One is the local organising body in Yaroslavl, led by the Department for Culture and Tourism (Vice-Chairman Sergei Sorokoumov, cul@yar.ru), the other is the ADIT organising committee.

At last, the most important matter: the motto of ADIT’99. As you remember, the focus of the First Conference in St.Petersburg was to open a professional club (a database on museum specialists in the field of information technology has been drawn up) and to hold a competition in several nominations (a database on the best museum information projects in the field of databases, multimedia editions and Internet-sites already exists). At the Second Annual Conference in Ivanovo we held the First Museum Computer Festival and seriously discussed the opportunities for Russian museums’ participation in European projects. In Yaroslavl, we aim to discuss the creation of the Russian Heritage Network. We have already consulted Yevgeny Kuzmin (mcult.libinf@23.relcom.ru), Head of Department of Libraries and Information at the Russian Ministry of Culture and one of the authors of LIBNET, a project aimed at creating an all-Russian information and library network. The idea to build a museum network is coherent to LIBNET. The basic idea is to put official information about the Russian heritage on the Internet. Only an official institute, the Ministry of Culture, can present exact data on the number of museums in Russia, the size of their funds, the number and descriptions of registered monuments. Since the Web is an infrastructure, it can be used to lots of useful purposes: teleconferences, navigation, data search, educational projects, professional reference guides etc. We shall discuss both official matters and independent public moves at our Third Annual ADIT’99 Conference.

Dear ADIT members!

We invite you to take active part in ADIT’99. You can register for participation at our Web site. We are looking forward to interesting reports and presentations.

With best regards,
Hoping to see you soon in Yaroslavl,
Alexander Dremailov
ADIT President
dream@kremlin.museum.ru

Home page | ADIT'99