All museums in Belarus to go online by 2012 year-end

Anna Smolskaya explained that the effort to develop the system of electronic resources is part of the Electronic Belarus Program designed to run in 2003-2005 and until 2010 and the national program of accelerated development of ICT services by 2015.

According to Anna Smolskaya, libraries are the most advanced institutions in terms of electronic technologies. Web access is available in all regional, district and town libraries and in 200 libraries in the agro-towns, which also have access to the electronic catalogs of the regional libraries.

The government program "Culture of Belarus" for 2011-2015 is designed to provide libraries and museums with additional technical means, to connect all libraries and museums in the country to the Internet, to purchase licensed system and anti-virus software, to acquire packages of application software to ensure integration with higher-level directories (integrated library directory and the State Museum Fund Directory).

The work on installing software packages to automate accounting and stock activities and on developing the official websites of all museums affiliated with the Culture Ministry will be finished by the end of 2012. By 2015 it is planned to complete the development of local electronic museum directories, which will include complete description of the main items of the museum fund.

Some 125 museums of 153 institutions in the country operate automated systems of accounting and stock activities. All museum facilities use standard software tools that ensure uniform methods for recording and creating local online directories. The State Directory of the Museum Fund of Belarus was created in September 2010. So far it contains the data on more than 4,000 most valuable items. Kazinform cites Belta. See www.belta.by for full version