National Electronic Library
# National Electronic Library

The National Electronic Library (NEL) is a site funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, which provides Internet users with access to digitized books, newspapers and magazines in Russian libraries, museums and archives. National Electronic Library is a service that searches the full text of books and magazines that was scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition, and stored in its digital database. In 2015, the site posted 1,671,878 books. The site has a mobile application for iOS and Android

## History

In January 2003 the Russian State Library applied to the Ministry of Culture of Russia with the initiative to create an electronic library, and in February the National Library of Russia joined the project.

On December 17, 2008, the Russian State Library announced the completion of the project.

Since 2013, the Ministry of Culture has begun to develop the project, allocating funding for the creation of a technology platform, the purchase of copyright and the digitization of printed books.

