The National Library of the Republic of Tatarstan (NLRT) has an electronic library containing dissertations of the Russian State Library (RSL) via a virtual reading room. The RSL has a unique collection of dissertations which was created in 1944, according to the order of the All-Union Committee of Affairs at the higher school of the Council of National Commisariats of the USSR.

The collection annually includes about 17,000 candidates and 8000 theses for doctors' degrees. It includes more than 250,000 dissertations in a year. Service is now provided to readers in a traditional way, and new forms of service are in use. The development of computer technology has enabled the digital format of the dissertations, stored in a machine-readable form and the ability to provide them not only in the reading rooms of the RSL, but also on the internet in other libraries.

Available on the site of the RSL are over 60,000 dissertations and author's abstracts from various fields of knowledge: economic sciences, jurisprudence, pedagogical sciences, psychological sciences, philosophical sciences, etc.

Users of the Republic of Tatarstan now have the right to access the full texts of the dissertations. Without leaving Kazan, each interested person can take advantage of the services of the virtual reading room in the building of the NLRT.

According to the Law of the Russian Federation concerning copyright and adjacent rights (1993, 2000) and the contract between the RSL and the NLRT, electronic versions of dissertations are not kept in an electronic form for users and are not provided by e-mail.