Preface
         Conference RCDL-2012 continues the series of annual scientific conferences "Digital
Libraries: Advanced Methods and Technologies, Digital Collections". Five years later, the
Conference once again takes place in Pereslavl-Zalessky in the Program Systems Institute of the
Russian Academy of Sciences.
         In the years since the founding of the Conference, the scope of research and developments
in the field of digital libraries and systems for scientific researches support greatly expanded.
Thus, the exponential growth of volumes of observational, experimental and published data
revolutionizes ways of organizing research. These data become the center of research and require
the creation around them of a special e-ecosystems – research data intensive infrastructures
(hereinafter the "research infrastructures"). Such ecosystems must ensure the accumulation of
data and knowledge generated by scientific communities, creating an environment for
interdisciplinary research through the exchange of information between scientific disciplines,
reducing duplication of efforts and resources, as well as providing the integration of research data
with scientific publications. Reflecting trends in the e-ecosystems advance in the world, the
program of RCDL-2012 is dedicated to various aspects of building research infrastructures, in
which digital libraries become an important component.
         The Conference is attended by employees of research institutes, educators and graduate
students of universities, experts in libraries and the IT industry. Among the participants of
RCDL-2012 are the representatives of different regions of Russia and Ukraine. Also well-known
experts in the field of research infrastructures from Austria and Italy have been invited.
         The RCDL-2012 program provides a wide range of discussions of actual methodological
and applied problems of creating IT infrastructures to support research and other activities. In
particular, it is supposed to discuss techniques and technologies for creating and preserving
digital content, integration of heterogeneous information resources from a variety of sources,
conceptual and ontological modeling of subject domain, analysis, processing and search of
textual information and images, extracting information from text, the use of spatial data, methods
and means of scientometrics in scientific digital libraries, information security. It is supposed to
discuss also the methodology and tools to develop research infrastructures and digital collections
of information resources in various areas of science, problems of the implementation of specific
projects of digital archives and digital content creation.
         As at the previous RCDL conferences, a significant attention in the RCDL-2012 program
is paid to the discussion of research and development activities in this field carried out within
projects supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research.
         The Conference will be opened by the invited talk of Andreas Rauber (University of
Technology, Vienna; he is a repeated participant of the RCDL Conferences) on the digital
curation as a key component of the research infrastructure, functions of which are evolving from
the preservation of data to the preservation and verification of processes. The Conference
program also includes the tutorial of another guest of the Conference - Giuseppe Amato (Institute
of Information Sciences and Technology, Pisa), dedicated to the problems of content-based
search in very large archives of visual documents.
         An important place in the RCDL-2012 program takes a discussion on technologies for Big
Data storage and manipulation that represent one of the most actual directions of information
technologies development in many countries. At the sessions of the Conference, devoted to Big
Data, an overview of the projects performed in this area, platforms used and prospects of the
development of Big Data technologies will be presented. Specialists of the world's largest
software company in the area of databases and information systems – Oracle Corporation –
consider in their talks the functionality of designed in the company software and hardware
facilities for support and analysis of Big Data, as well as of the cloud computing. It is of great
interest the report of Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Dubna) about their experience in
practical use of grid-technologies for the storage and processing of hundreds of petabytes data for
the sake of the international scientific community of specialists in the field of nuclear research.
Works in this area are held at the Institute in connection with its participation in the research
programs undertaken around the CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
        The RCDL-2012 program, in addition to the invited talk and tutorial, contains 13 sessions,
in which 33 full reports and 16 short communications will be presented.
        RCDL-2012 organizers are confident that this conference will contribute to the further
development of scientific research in the field of digital libraries and research infrastructures, as
well as practical developments in this field and in related areas of information technologies in our
country.
        Chairs of the RCDL-2012 Organizing and Program Committees express their gratitude to
all authors of presented at the Conference papers, to Program Committee members for the great
work in the paper reviewing and selecting, as well as to the Russian Foundation for Basic
Research and Nanotechnology and Information Technology Branch of the RAS for the support of
the Conference. RCDL conferences Steering Committee is especially grateful to the staff of the
Program Systems Institute for their responsible and laborious work on preparation and hosting of
the Conference.

       RCDL-2012 Organizing Committee Chair
       S.M. Abramov
       Program Committee Co-chairs
       S.V. Znamensky, M.R. Kogalovsky
       Chair of the Steering Committee of the RCDL Conferences
       L.A. Kalinichenko