On my last day in Belarus before leaving, we visited Polotsk and Vitebsk, near the Russian border. It was a very full day. Unfortunately, due to a hard drive incident, my pictures of this day are lost. Peter Lapo and I were driven by a young man to Polotsk. While driving, we had an excellent discussion about a set of indicators that the Ministry of Education requires of libraries, and a new set of indicators that a consortium of libraries, in which the Belarusian State University Library was taking a lead role, had developed in response. There were formulas constructed based on the number of students, the number of courses, and the number of textbooks. Electronic textbooks were also considered.
Interestingly, one of the measures recommended that an amount representing 2% of the funding for faculty research, provided by the government, be given to the library to support resources for faculty research. In the US, the indirect cost rate, or facilities and administration rate, negotiated between large research universities and the US Department of Health and Human Services often assigns 2% of the rate to library support. So this recommendation seemed very reasonable. There were also recommendations about seating, number of computers, etc.
Polotsk is one of the oldest cities in Belarus, and is located on the beautiful Dvina River and the Polata River. We met Tatsiana Govorova, director of the Belarus State Agrarian and Technical University, who was our guide. The city was one of the battlegrounds for?the Vikings in the late 10th century, as they swept down from the north on their way to Kiev and eventually Constantinople. We visited the Cathedral of Saint Sophia, which was one of three cathedrals of the same name, the other two located in Novgorod and Kiev. It was Orthodox, until it was destroyed by Tsar Peter the Great in 1710. Then it was rebuild by the Poles as a baroque Roman Catholic cathedral.
We visited the nearby Simeon of Polotsk Library and Museum, a museum dedicated to book printing. Regretfully, many of the exhibits are reproductions. Francysk Skaryna was born in Polotsk, and established a printing press in 1517 in Prague. He was one of the first publishers in Eastern Europe, and translated the Bible into Belarusian using the Cyrillic alphabet. His books have a distinctive frontispiece featuring himself.
We drove to Vitebsk, also on the Dvina River, and also ravaged in the fighting between the Nazis and the Red Army. We were met by Alexander and Olga, librarians from Vitebsk, who were our guides for this city. It is now a city of the arts, and the home of Marc Chagall. We visited the house of Marc Chagall and the Marc Chagall Museum and Art Center, which was wonderful. However, the highlight of the trip was the visit to the Zdrawneva, a village outside of Vitebsk, in which Ilya Repin lived for several years. Repin, a realist painter, is associated with the Ukraine and his final house outside of Saint. Petersburg, but his house in Belarus is striking. It was destroyed after he left by the peasants to whom he gave it, but it was re-built in 1988. It is the extraordinary house of an extraordinary artist. There is a gazebo in the back, and after touring the house, Alexander and Olga created a beautiful picnic of fresh vegetables, pork, fruit, bread, vodka, and wine. We toasted each other and libraries. Tatsiana made the interesting point that English is an easy language to speak, because English speakers are forgiving of bad English. Her English was very good.
It is this picture I hold in my mind?s eye, a picture composed of librarian friends, good food, good drink, discussing issues in a place of great natural beauty and artistic significance. In lieu of photographs, it is this memory that I bring back to the US from my all too brief visit to Belarus.