Russia Is Building an AI Platform to Reinvent Library Work
AFK Sistema, working with the Russian State Library, will develop a comprehensive AI platform to automate core library operations. Over time, the solution is expected to become available to libraries throughout the country.
Russia has more than 40,000 public libraries whose combined collections total nearly 900 million items. At that scale, manually processing new acquisitions and maintaining bibliographic records has become increasingly impractical. The Russian State Library (RSL) is now working with industry partners to automate those workflows.
Monotonous Manual Work May Soon Be Gone
At the heart of the project is ANSIS (Analiticheskaya neyrosetevaya spravochno-informatsionnaya sistema, Analytical Neural Network Reference and Information System), built on domestically developed software included in the Russian Ministry of Digital Development's official software registry. The infrastructure and data will reside on the Russian State Library's own servers, while AI applications are being developed using the MWS AI AgentsPlatform. The platform's core components have already been added to the Unified Register of Russian Software.
The result will give the library intelligent search across its scientific collections, AI-powered text analytics, and automated cataloging. That, in turn, will allow librarians and researchers to focus on scholarly work with the collections instead of spending time organizing storage and metadata.
The Russian State Library's repository contains more than 3.7 million dissertation abstracts, dissertations, and other academic works. Today, bibliographers search for sources manually using keywords and subject classifications, sometimes overlooking highly relevant materials. The new semantic search system will identify sources based on the meaning of a query rather than matching terms alone, improving search accuracy. During pilot testing, the AI identified relevant works in at least seven out of ten cases, outperforming traditional manual searches.
Every year, the Russian State Library receives about 100,000 mandatory deposit copies of newly published works. Specialists currently process each item manually by assigning library classification indexes, determining subject headings, and completing metadata records. Processing a single new publication takes more than half an hour. Under the new workflow, AI will generate recommendations for subject headings, classification indexes, and metadata.
"With artificial intelligence, we stop processing incoming materials and begin working with the collection as a body of knowledge. Cataloging, search, and narrative analysis are not automation for automation's sake – they are a way to finally unlock access to what already exists," said Vadim Duda, Director General of the Russian State Library.
Who Benefits?
The project is designed to transform not just a single institution but the country's entire library ecosystem. The AI platform for library automation will be available to regional, municipal, university, and research libraries across Russia. If the Russian State Library establishes unified standards for cataloging, search, and metadata management, the platform could evolve into an industry standard or become the foundation of a unified digital environment for Russian libraries.
According to experts, automated cataloging helped increase productivity from 300,000 records in 2022 to 933,000 in 2023. AI-powered semantic search also holds particular promise for researchers, students, and educators. Services capable of analyzing vast collections of historical and scientific texts could reveal how social ideas, terminology, scientific disciplines, and cultural narratives evolve over time. In that sense, the platform could help everyone from librarians to scientists use their time more effectively while reaching meaningful results much faster.
A New Stage of Digital Transformation
The AI platform marks a shift from individual digital services to a comprehensive AI environment that supports the core functions of modern libraries. Its significance lies not only in improving work with the Russian State Library's collections but also in its potential to be replicated across the country.
Looking ahead, the platform could serve as the basis for pilot deployments at major federal and regional libraries. Broader adoption will depend on connection costs, the readiness of local infrastructure, the quality of digitized collections, and the platform's ability to integrate with library software already in use.
The initiative redefines how libraries approach digital transformation. Its most significant long-term impact may be the conversion of fragmented digital catalogs into an intelligent system for working with the nation's accumulated body of knowledge.
