January 17 2016, 15:27

Writing from a fairly average library.

It takes about one minute to get a library card. Russian driver’s licenses and any proof of address, such as a letter addressed to you showing your surname, will work. The library card is valid in any of the city’s libraries, and there are definitely more than twenty of them.

In the library, you can borrow books (both physical and audiobooks), movies, music, including digital versions. Books, music, and audiobooks can be borrowed for 21 days (with up to 10 renewals, if no one else has them reserved), while DVDs, music CDs, VHS tapes, and vinyl records are for seven days.

You can return books at any city library, not just the one where you borrowed them. There are 23 more scattered around the city. You can borrow up to 50 books at a time, along with 10 DVDs and 10 CDs. To renew, simply log into your account and click a button. You can even return books at night – there’s a special drop slot in the doors. You can also find and reserve books online from home; if someone has them, you’ll definitely get them after their 21-day period expires.

Now about the electronic books. There’s a special library app, Overdrive. It’s available for iOS/Android, Nook, Kindle, Mac, Chromebook, Kobo, Windows, Windows Phone, and it even supports some MP3 players. It has a huge catalog of ebooks. In general, this service supports 30,000 libraries in 40 countries. Sure, not in Russia. Here, books and audiobooks can be borrowed to your device (protected by DRM). They are also returned automatically, and the system keeps track of rentals. This makes reading (and listening to audiobooks) free.

There’s a scanner-printer-copier. Scanning is free, except they charge for printing and copying (15 cents for black and white, 30 cents for color). Fees also come into play with fines: $5 for a 30-day late return, 15-20 dollars for 60-days late or damages on average. For lost items, the fine starts from $40 and may lead to a possible card blockage. No fines are imposed on children at all.

There are programming classes, and they teach video production. Just like hobby groups in community centers back home, here in the libraries, for instance, they offer something like English language courses (group discussions with a local coordinator to correct mistakes) which run two hours a day from Monday to Wednesday.

For kids, there are Fab Lab courses where they tinker with 3D printers, laser cutters (I don’t know the Russian word), and such interesting devices: DI-Wire http://www.pensalabs.com/ automates the creation of 3D-items from wire.

P.S. There is no Russian keyboard layout here, nor am I allowed to install it, so the text was typed using http://winrus.com/keyboard.htm. Quite convenient, by the way – might be useful for someone in internet cafes abroad.

P.P.S. It’s funny that the library computer’s Windows complains it’s not activated. It threw a bunch of warnings at me.