News
08/09/2026. The Unifying Power of Language: Participation in a Teleconference on the Day of the Languages of the Peoples of the Russian Federation
September 8, 2026:
Russia is marking the Day of Languages of the Peoples of the Russian Federation for the first time. To mark the occasion, an interregional online library teleconference titled The Unifying Power of Language was held, featuring the participation of the National Library of Karelia, which presented the experience of the Foreign/Own project.
Presentations by the teleconference participants reflected the diverse approaches taken by libraries to preserve, support, and protect the linguistic and cultural diversity of Russia’s peoples. Colleagues representing national libraries from the Chuvash Republic, the Republic of Tatarstan, and the Komi Republic, as well as research libraries in Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, and other cultural institutions, shared their experiences.
The National Library of Karelia has showed the eight-year long experience of the Foreign/Own project, which combines literary and linguistic elements with a "national component." 
The project’s main goal is to support the Karelian language by introducing speakers to world literature and promoting reading, translation, and language learning. Participants in the Foreign/Own project include people of various ages and professions who are studying Karelian at language courses. The course program is complemented by the project's monthly literary and linguistic programs held at the National Library of Karelia. Participants not only explore works of world and domestic literature but also translate them into the language of their home region.
In 2026, one of the results of the work by the project participants was publication of an electronic collection of translations of fairy-tales by the Brothers Grimm into Livvik Karelian. This result could be considered as an example of a combination of ”the local and the global”: the national component – the Karelian language – is being combined for the first time with the legacy of German folklorists. The collection was presented to the library community during the Unifying Power of Language online teleconference.