National Library of Chuvashia

This is the entrance to the beautiful National Library of Chuvashia. It's a huge library, recently renovated, and filled with lights, new tables, friendly librarians - and of course, millions of books.
Marina Vladimirovna is one of the associate directors of the library. I met her through a friend of a friend of someone I found on LinkedIn (of all places) and her friendship has been invaluable. We have been chatting on skype for the last year, and finally meeting her in person was very exciting! She has a very big presence at the library, being one of the directors, so was able to introduce me to the head of every single department, and explain exactly how they could help me in my research. She brought me into every back room, behind every desk, to see every hidden bookshelf that might help my research.

First, she introduced me to Rosa Mikhailovna Lizakova - the director of the library! She is the former minster of Culture of Chuvashia, very kind, and very interested in work being done with Chuvash. I was able to explain my project surprisingly intelligently, and she showed me an interview written online of a sociolinguist from Catalonia here in Chuvashia - Hector Alos i Font. I immediately remembered that Hector and I had exchanged letters months before - so I made a note to get back in touch with him! I was pretty nervous about meeting Rosa Mikhailovna, but she was really one of the nicest people I've met so far!

After our meeting with the director, Marina Vladimirovna showed me the отдел редких и ценных изданий, the department of rare and valuable books! There, I met Tatiana Alexandrovna who gave me a up-close, personal tour of all the oldest and most valuable books in their collection! They were beautiful, and she takes such good care of them. She wore some white gloves to turn the pages for me of books that were hundreds of years old! She even took me in to the storage rooms - which were temperature, light and humidity controlled and showed me their collections - they have a copy of every single book ever published in Chuvash or in Chuvashia.

They have an exhibition right now on the famous Chuvash poet, Gennadiy Nikolaevich Aygi. He's a poet and translator who wrote poetry both in Chuvash and in Russian. They gave me a disk filled with his poetry and readings that he himself gave them when he visited the library a few years ago!

I saw many different departments of the library. I met Marina Vacilievna Dobronravova, who works in the department for the blind and those with poor vision. She showed me their braille printer and a scanner that can read aloud texts in 20 languages. They have classes for seniors to teach them how to type and use computers. They have free skype consultations with lawyers for people who need them, and programs for prisoners too.

I was also given a tour of the main book storage rooms (a couple floors of books all close together). In Russian libraries, all the books are stored away and in order to see one you have to request it by number. The librarians call for the book, and someone in storage puts it into this fancy "книгалифт" or "booklift" and the book comes right up to your floor! They sent up a few practice books so I could watch!

Nadezhna Mikhailovna is the head of the Foreign Languages Department. Every other librarian seemed to be named Nadezhda - so I've been told to use that simply as a default!

Most importantly, I was introduced to Galina Pavlovna Colovieva, who is the head of the National Chuvash Literature and Biography department and the Chuvash Book Center. She, like many of the librarians, speaks Chuvash and is very interested in helping me with my research.


I am so lucky to have become acquainted with Marina Vladimirovna and to have such an amazing relationship with the library. I couldn't have asked for more! Also, I've never actually seen the inner workings of a Russian library before. I felt so privileged to get a sneak peek!