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Valentina SAMSONOVA,
Director, National Library of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)
(Yakutsk, Russian Federation)
Preservation of Cultural Heritage of Indigenous Small-
Numbered Peoples of the Russian North,
Siberia and the Far East
The outcome document of the field session of the Federation Council Committee
on Northern Territories and Indigenous Minorities of the Russian State Duma
On the Use of Modern Information and Education Technologies to Preserve and
Promote Languages, Culture and Spirituality of the Peoples of the North (on the
example of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)) welcomes the activities of the National
Library of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) as a leading institution which uses
modern information technologies in order to preserve native languages, as well
as cultural and spiritual heritage of indigenous peoples of the North.
The National Library of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is the largest library
in the Russian North East and one of the largest ones in Siberia and the Russian
Far East. Its holdings include over 1.5 million items of documents, the most
outstanding being the collections of documents in the Yakut language and
the languages of small peoples of the North, as well as ethnological literature.
Since its early days, the Library has focused special attention on building up
such stock. In 2005-2009, the number of Yakut language books stored in the
National Library increased by 13.3%, and those written in the languages of
the peoples of the North – by 12,5%, thus reaching 54,356 and 1,957 items
correspondingly.
The establishment of the Sandaly-Bichik Memorial Foundation for Documented
Memory of the Peoples of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is underway. It
contains the volumes that came out in the territory of the republic, as well as
literature about Yakutia irrespective of language and place of publication. The
Foundation comprises 29,975 items.
Evgeny Kuzmin, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Council and the Russian
Committee of the UNESCO Information for All Programme believes that
“Yakutia is a unique place of the world. Here it is not only the language of a
small titular nation that is preserved and promoted ‐ the titular nation itself
preserves the languages of the indigenous small peoples of the North too.”
The Library holdings comprise only 625 titles of books written in the
languages of the small-numbered peoples of the North, including in Even
(294 titles), Evenki (157 titles), Yukaghir (68 titles) and Dolgan (21 titles).