Lib.ru

Lib.ru, also known as Maksim Moshkow's Library (Russian: Библиоте́ка Макси́ма Мошко́ва, started to operate in November 1994) is the oldest electronic library in the Russian Internet segment.

Founded and supported by Maksim Moshkow, it receives contributions mainly from users who send texts they scanned and processed (OCR, proofreading). This method of acquisition provides the library a broad and efficient augmentability, though sometimes it adversely affects the quality (errors, omissions).

The structure of the library includes a section where one can publish his own literary texts ("Samizdat" journal), a project for music publishing ("Music hosting"), a travel notes project ("Foreign countries") and some other sections (See Maksim Moshkow's projects collection section).

Maksim Moshkow's Library received several Ru-net Awards, including the National Internet Award (2003).

The headline on the site Lib.ru says "With support from the Federal Press and Mass Communications Agency". According to Moshkow, his project received $35,000 from that organization in September 2005, which indicates some level of government support for the online publishing of in-copyright works.

Maksim Moshkow's project could be compared to some projects and is sometimes referred to as Russia's Project Gutenberg.

On April 1, 2004 the "KM Online" media company, which is known for forming its own library by copying texts from the other electronic libraries, issued a lawsuit against Maksim Moshkow's Library in the name of Eduard Gevorkian, Marina Alekseyeva (pen-name "Alexandra Marinina"), Vasili Golovachov and Elena Katasonova. It was later discovered that only Gevorkian had had real claims against Moshkow. Moshkow's lawyer was Andrey Mironov from the Artemi Lebedev Studio, while KM's interests were presented by the so-called "National association on Digital Technologies (NOCIT)".

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