About the service

How we work

Virtual reference service (VRS) is a free of charge online service of the National Library of Belarus (NLB), which fulfills users’ information requests with the help of the Internet. Employees of the reference and information service department and other structural units of the library answer your questions. Answers are formed with the use of information resources of the library and the Internet. Questions are accepted in 24/7 mode and are processed on the first in, first out basis.

The archive of answers to questions is available to all users. Questions asked by you are stored in your personal archive. An answer to a question may contain:

• reference to sources of information in the Internet for further independent work;
• bibliographic list of literature (no more than 10 titles). A complex bibliographic search is carried out by employees of the reference and information service department on a paid basis;
• complete bibliographic description of a requested document;
• information about the presence of the document in libraries.

You will receive the necessary information with the source, from which it was received, in the answer to a factual question.

Information we do not provide

1. We do not accept questions regarding the commercial (e.g. about buying or selling of something) and entertaining (doing crosswords, answers to quizzes, intellectual games, etc.) information.
2. We do not solve specific problems in physics, mathematics, law, etc.
3. Questions, answer to which is the provision of abstracts, essays, etc., are considered in the last term.
4. We reserve the right to delete inappropriate questions.
5. If there are several topics or bibliographical description specifications in your request, we will only choose one topic / one bibliographical description at our discretion.