Live Pages is an Android app offering a new way of reading Russian classics. Interactive elements and new navigation scenarios completely change your idea of reading. With Live Pages, the reader gets to experience a classic book in a new way. It’s not just a regular reading app; it’s a real literary encyclopedia where text is complemented with interactive options and a large amount of additional information from various areas: history, linguistics, geography, etc. All this turns reading into an in-depth study of an era and helps you to get a better understanding of the book.
Support
- Supporting culture and arts
- Supporting education and science
Beneficiaries
- Schoolchildren and school teachers
- Adults
Project working language: Russian
Time frame: since June 27, 2015 till now
Status: active
Updated: 02.12.2019
Contact details
Svetlana Etmanova
Tel.: +7 [499] 951-5956
Project web-site https://www.samsung.com/ru/livepages/https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.livepagesapp
Social media
Video
Social challenge and reasons for project’s initiation
Immediacy of the social problem
General: Stimulating readers’ interest in Russian classics using modern technology
Particular: Education is the key priority in Samsung’s social activities
External reasons for project’s initiation
Low interest among readers
Internal reasons for project’s initiation
Promote reading through mobile technology
Target audience and stakeholders of the project
Target audience (beneficiaries)
The main group of beneficiaries:
Any user with a mobile Android device
All the people in Russia as well as people overseas who like the Russian language, both schoolchildren and adults
Satellite groups of beneficiaries:
- Schoolchildren, teachers of Literature and Russian
Stakeholders
- Schoolchildren reading the novel for the first time are accustomed to using mobile technology and get access to a convenient instrument for reading, since interactive scenarios and gamification turn the learning process into a game.
- Adults look for quality content and a chance to rediscover the great Russian classic, appreciate it through the lens of culture, get insights from history, linguistics and geography.
Mission and goals
Mission: long-term contribution to popularization of reading
Goals:
With this project, Samsung Electronics sought, on the one hand, to support nationwide efforts to promote reading and, at the same time, present its vision of how mobile technology can spark interest in classical literature and the Russian language.
Excellent implementation of the project was made possible through the help of experts and partners supporting the initiative: linguists of the Tolstoy Digital group and the School of Linguistics at the Higher School of Economics. Fekla Tolstoy, a member of the Tolstoy family and the leader of the Tolstoy Digital group, is the project’s curator.
Project description
Implementation stages of the Live Pages project
In 2015, Literature Year in Russia, the project was launched and presented to the general public on Red Square on June 27 as part of the Moscow Book Fair. Smartphone and tablet versions of the app were designed.
All key functions were made available: in addition to the text of the novel, all the interactive features were added: the map, charts, positioning and audio guides.
In 2015, Live Pages becomes part of a large-scale international “War and Peace” reading marathon organized by VGTRK. On December 8-11, over 1,300 people around the world read Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece live on air from cover to cover. Samsung was the technology partner of the marathon. Some participants read the novel on Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 tablets provided by Samsung. In total, the reading lasted 60 hours and covered 25 cities in Russia and other countries, including Austria, Belgium, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Serbia, South Korea and the United States. Many venues used for the reading were in some way related to the book: these were theaters, museums and historic buildings. Tolstoy descendants living in Russia, the United States and France joined the reading.
In order to promote Russian culture and language abroad, parts of the immortal classic were read in Samsung’s home country, South Korea. The reading was joined by Mr. Lee Kyu-hyung, chairman of the Korean Coordination Council of the Russia-Republic of Korea Dialogue, senior advisor at the Samsung Economic Research Institute and former Korean ambassador to Russia; Kim Sunmyung, director of Pushkin House in Korea, and others.
In 2016, more books were made available through the app.
The second novel to become available in the new format was chosen by a popular vote. Users picked Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Later, Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, The Captain’s Daughter by Alexander Pushkin and The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov were added to the library.
Available functions
Live App has a large number of interactive features which offer a new level or reading experience. Users can get to know the characters better and immerse themselves in the period of the book. The app supplies a lot of useful and at times even necessary information: geographical, historical and linguistic references. For all words in foreign languages, instant translation is provided. In addition to footnotes by the author and translations, the text is augmented with comments by historians and literary critics.
The menu offers a number of options, each allowing to study the book from a different perspective.
The Timeline function enables you to put the events of the book helps in the context of history. The plot is collated with historical events, with comments and quotes from the author. Push notifications let the user know what happened in the book or in history on this particular day.
The Character Evolution function lets you trace the path of every character and their meetings with other characters: you can see important events in the life of a selected character on an interactive timeline with comments and quotes.
The Characters section has personal cards for each of the main characters. Each card has an avatar, a list of key quotes which are linked back to the text, and the most common epithets used by the author (presented as a tag cloud), and a link to the map of the character’s journeys.
The Places section is an interactive map of places where the book’s important events take place. The user can go to the map straight from the text of the book. For every place on the map, additional information is available: a detailed description of the location, quotes from the novel, and a list of characters who have visited this place. The map covers the entire Russia and some European cities, enabling the reader to see the book through the lens of geography and characters’ movements.
The Routes section shows the routes of various characters on the map.
The Word Games section is a glossary of rare and obsolete words and a quiz with tough questions on the words used in the book, its plot and history. Gamification makes the reading process entertaining and helps to learn new facts.
Because of modern technology, readers now have access to a multitude of facts previously scattered across various media: locations, historic events not mentioned in the novel, and intertwined stories of characters. A treasure trove of information helps the reader discover new facets in the familiar book.
Currently, the Live Pages library includes Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, War and Peace and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Crime and Punishment and The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Twelve Chairs and The Little Golden Calf by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov, Eugene Onegin and The Captain’s Daughter by Alexander Pushkin, A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, Who Is Happy in Russia? by Nikolai Nekrasov, Woe from Wit by Alexander Griboyedov, and The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov, as well as two books by contemporary authors, laureates of the Big Book and Yasnaya Polyana awards: Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin and Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina.
The latter two books were done in partnership with Elena Shubina imprint of AST Publishers.
Team and partners
Team
Excellent implementation of the project was made possible through the help of experts and partners supporting the initiative: linguists of the Tolstoy Digital group and the School of Linguistics at the Higher School of Economics. Fekla Tolstoy, a member of the Tolstoy family and the leader of the Tolstoy Digital group, is the project’s curator.
Developer: Articul Media
Partners
- State Historical Museum
- ABBYY
- izi.Travel, a multimedia guide platform
- Elena Shubina imprint of AST Publishers
- Rossiisky Uchebnik
Achieved results
Immediate results
Over 300,000 app users
21 books by the end of 2020
Social results
Positive feedback from users, growing number of downloads
Social effect
Live Pages has received numerous awards, including the Creating the Future Award of the Moscow International Education Fair, the Runet Award and others.
In 2018, Samsung partnered up with Rossiisky Uchebnik to support the students of Russian language and literature by providing quality platforms for studying the works of Russian authors: mobile app Live Pages and online project The Reading Country. Rossiisky Uchebnik will be the Educational Partner of Live Pages, while Samsung will be the Digital Partner of The Reading Country. Samsung and Rossiisky Uchebnik plan to work together in an effort to promote the use of modern technology in school, including preparation of content for Live Pages and The Reading Country. Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov was picked as the first book digitized as part of this cooperation.
Internal project assessment
Analysis of user feedback and recommendations (Google Play, social media)
Feedback from beneficiaries:
“I think this is a good opportunity to get young people interested in Tolstoy’s novel. I am absolutely convinced that Live Pages will attract many new readers to War and Peace.”
“It is a wonderful combination of literature and technology. It’s a new chapter in communications and, more importantly, education. Postmodernism claims that our life is a text. Today, we see digital text entering our lives in addition to spoken and written texts. We understand that the best teaching method today is to combine all formats, oral, video, audio and written ones. This app is an excellent example of this convergence.”
“We should remember our timeless classics. They never get old. Now, each person will get a chance to rediscover these great books, studying their historical context and living through the book together with the author and his characters.”
Project’s distinctive features and know – how
Live Pages is an interactive encyclopedia which offers a chance to study Russian classics in a new way. The app provides enables readers to dive deep into the book. The text is supplied with interactive features, charts and various navigation tools putting all necessary information at your fingertips. Users can examine the book with functions like Timeline, Character Evolution, Places, Characters and Word Games. Extensive commentary helps to better understand the book. Users can also test their knowledge of rare words using the Word Games function.
Plans of further development
Live Pages plans to keep adding the classics of Russian and foreign literature, as well as contemporary Russian books, to its library.