Session of the Hermitage Academic Council The Hermitage at book fairs of the country and the world. Results, opinions, perspectives

On 5 March 2009 a session of the Hermitage Academic Council The Hermitage at book fairs of the country and the world. Results, opinions, perspectives took place.

As it seen from the theme of the session, it has been devoted to discussion of results of participation of the Hermitage in Russian and foreign book fairs. Nowadays there is no other museum in Russia, and probably in the world, which would publish as many books, as the Hermitage does, and whose publishing activities would be so versatile. Catalogues of collections and catalogues of temporary exhibitions, some series of popular scientific literature, including children’s series, scientific periodicals editions The Announcements of the State Hermitage and The Works of the State Hermitage, monographs are among the Hermitage editions. Nowadays our main task is to make so that the Hermitage books would fall outside the museum, would be accessible to readers in different parts of Russia and the world. Book fairs are one of the main ways to present the Hermitage editions to public more widely. In the last two and a half years, the Hermitage participated in international and All-Russia fairs in Moscow, as well as in the Nonfiction fair in the Central House of Artist devoted to literature for the intellectual reader. We have regular visitors already, who search for a stand of the Hermitage and are glad to novelties. We have studied a situation on various book fairs and now can define at which of them our museum should participate.

If we are already known in the country, then Frankfurt Book Fair, as we hope, will allow us to declare ourselves to the world and will help to find distributors in the West. However, the fact that our literature is in the Russian language is becoming a complex and often insoluble problem. Since 2008 the Hermitage issues the version of the basic periodical The Announcements of the State Hermitage in two languages: Russian and English, all editions have English resumes, however it does not solve a problem of inaccessibility of the Hermitage editions for the western expert. It is an objective problem, and it probably will not be ever solved completely. One of the ways of its solution is participation of the Hermitage in international publishing projects, search of sponsors for publication catalogues of the Hermitage collections abroad, in particular, in the Great Britain and in Italy (through the intermediary of the Hermitage-Italy science centre in Ferrara). Nevertheless, the basic role belongs here, as well as in other spheres, to the museum. The Hermitage should publish a part of literature in English, and it will become one of the main tasks of publishing activities of our museum for the nearest years.