Vadim Duda, Director General of the Russian State Library, joins the Executive Committee of CENL

Vadim Duda, Director General of the Russian State Library, joins the Executive Committee of CENL

Accessible Library: What is it?

Ensuring accessibility of library services is one of the most urgent tasks of modern librarianship. The concept of “accessibility” which is actively used in the regulatory framework for librarianship and in the works of library scientists, at the same time remains insufficiently substantiated and developed. The article presents the options for the disclosure of the concept of “accessibility” and correlates the concepts of “access” and “accessibility”.In the regulatory framework in dictionaries and reference books on librarianship, the term “accessibility” started to be used relatively recently. The UNESCO Information for All program, as well as organization of the Open Access Movement to scientific information, played an important role in the awareness of the world community of the need for universal access to information. The beginning of the 2000s in Russia is a period of active study of electronic libraries, for which the concepts of “access”, “accessibility” and similar are an important component. During this period, there has been increasing the importance of the issue of barrier-free environment for people with disabilities, where the concept of physical accessibility is the key one. In librarianship documents, the term “accessibility” is also used as physical opportunity to obtain information.At the moment, this concept is introduced in the State Standard of Russia GOST R 7.0.103-2018 “Library and Information Services. Terms and Definitions”. The concept reflects the general trend of using the term “accessibility” mainly in the digital environment; however, the concept of “accessibility” is much broader and is not limited only to access to electronic resources and physical accessibility of the library. The concept of “accessibility” should be considered through information barriers (physical, assortment, navigation and search, deunification), since overcoming them will allow the library to become as accessible as possible. The problem of accessibility of library services has several aspects, and it is important that the scientific community and librarians realize the complexity of this problem and focus their attention not only on ensuring the physical accessibility of the library, but also on removing other information barriers.

Participation of Central Libraries of the Subjects of the Russian Federation in the Organization of Scientific Activity

activities (R&D) carried out by the central libraries (CL) of the subjects of the Russian Federation. The author carried out the study basing on the questionnaire survey conducted by the National Library of Russia on the assignment of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation in accordance with the decision of the Annual Meeting of the Heads of Federal and Central Regional Libraries of Russia in 2020. Central libraries, in accordance with their functions and priority goals, are the basis of the country’s library system. Their role as scientific, methodological and coordinating centres of the library system of the region is established at the level of federal and regional library legislation.The questionnaire survey revealed that most libraries have regulatory and legal grounds for conducting R&D. Employees of the central libraries are actively engaged in scientific-research work on a wide range of topics. At the same time, there should be distinguished two main areas of scientific activity of the central libraries: scientific support for the activities of libraries and historical and cultural research of regional nature based on library collections. Along with that, it is necessary to develop common approaches to solving organizational issues of R&D and its support from methodological centres and management bodies. One of the problems is to bring the results of scientific work to a wide range of users. The paper notes that it is expedient to do this by including electronic copies of scientific publications of the central libraries in the section “To Library Professionals” of the National Electronic Library; by compliance with the federal legislation in the area of legal deposit and legal deposit of printed publications in electronic form; by including scientific publications of the central libraries in the system of the Russian Scientific Citation Index with placement in the Scientific Electronic Library (eLibrary). The use of the scientific potential of the central libraries is a significant condition for achieving the goals set out in the “Strategy for the Development of Librarianship in the Russian Federation for the period up to 2030”.

Information-Communication Platform of Library as a Tool for Formation of the Knowledge Space

The article discusses the issues of popularization of scientific knowledge on the basis of public libraries. The author substantiates the importance of library and information institutions in the process of spreading scientific knowledge among wider population. The article considers the problematic aspects and tasks of libraries in the direction of improving the scientific literacy of users.The author characterizes the project “Information-Communication Platform for the popularization of Science”, developed by specialists of the Mikhail Lermontov Interdistrict Centralized Library System (St. Petersburg), which covers a wide range of scientific areas providing a general overview of topics and more specific information for those who wish to obtain in-depth sight into a particular subject area. Special attention is paid to the organizational issues of the implementation of platform: the purpose of creation, the target audience, the basic principles, the main objectives of the project. The article considers the forms of mutually beneficial cooperation in the popularization of scientific knowledge within the framework of the project with partner organizations. The author describes the requirements for the operation of interface. The platform contains three major types of information resources: documentary full-text data bases, bibliographic resources and media resources. The platform anticipates interactive communication of library users — students and representatives of pedagogical community — with well-known scientists for discussing technical developments and achievements of humankind with particular attention to subjects of current interest: pandemic, coronavirus, vaccination. The information-communication platform allows monitoring the interest of young people in various scientific areas. Participation in the project motivates young people to scientific activity, which is one of the basic factors of reproduction of scientific personnel potential.

Development of Digital Skills of Library Specialists in the Distant Format

Digitalization of the library sector requires library staff to develop digital competencies, information retrieval skills and new knowledge in the field of data processing. The purpose of the study was to identify the digital skills of specialists of public libraries and the opportunities for their development when mastering additional professional education programs with the use of distance learning technologies. Educational programs for advanced training of library specialists, implemented within the framework of the Federal project “Creative People” of the National project “Culture”, have become the basis for such work. The article analyses the experience of participation of the St. Petersburg State Institute of Culture in educational projects for professional development of practicing librarians using distance learning technologies, the topics of programs offered by the centres for continuing education and advanced training of creative and managerial personnel in the field of culture in 2019—2021. Programs of additional professional education give priority to the formation and development of digital skills in the following categories: information (information literacy), communication (communication and collaboration) and creative skills (creation of digital content). There is an obvious shortage of educational programs related to the formation of critical thinking of users of digital resources and information security. Communication skills of librarians participating in the Creative People project implemented in their willingness to undergo formal training remotely, in a positive attitude towards the distant forms of professional development, despite their labour intensiveness. It is established that in the structure of thematic preferences of library specialists for future training in the system of continuing professional education there prevail the topics related to the formation of information and communication competencies. The article notes that significant proportion of specialists who have mastered the advanced training program are not ready to clearly determine in what types of practical activities their knowledge and skills can be applied. The obtained results make it possible to correct the topics of educational programs of further professional education of library specialists, to clarify the list of priority didactic tasks and the tools of distance learning technologies used for their implementation.

European Experience in Organization of Military Libraries in the Russian Empire

Due to the lack of comprehensive research in the area of use of the experience of military libraries in Europe, the article for the first time examines the ways of studying it and the forms of implementation when establishing military libraries in the Russian Empire. The purpose of the study is to identify the influence of Europe on the military librarianship in Russia.The author collected data from dozens of pre-revolutionary publications, articles from the military periodical press and regulatory documents that allowed to characterize the source base of the study as representative.The article presents the history of military libraries of European states. The results of research show that the main ways to obtain information about them were: the study of foreign military literature and the military periodical press; analysis of regulatory and legal documents (statutes, rules, manuals, regulations, catalogues) regulating the activities of these libraries; foreign business trips of officers and generals in order to familiarize themselves with the structure and functioning of foreign armies and their libraries; reports of Russian military agents; participation in international exhibitions of books and textbooks.The author revealed dozens of articles indicating that the experience of creating and operating of military libraries abroad was widely covered in the Russian military periodical press. The military Department of Russia closely followed these processes, adopting and implementing the best and useful of them taking into account Russian realities. The study of the creation of military libraries in Europe became a prerequisite for their organization in Russia. The European experience was reflected in the ways of budgeting and acquisition, in the forms of management and supervision over them, the formation of regulatory framework and in the variety of their types.The conducted research expanded the understanding of the state of military librarianship in European countries, about the ways of studying their experience by the Russian military Department and the forms of its practical application in the structure of military libraries of the Russian Empire.

Innovative Activity: State Regulatory Legal Acts and Possibilities of Their Application in Library Practice

Innovative ways of the development of libraries is a topic that has a sufficient degree of elaboration. However, the documents that provide regulatory and strategic support for the creation and implementation of innovations, as well as the boundaries of their applicability in the library sphere, are not sufficiently examined. The article presents the regulatory legal acts and documents of the strategic planning system that influence the development of libraries and can be used to create and implement sectoral library development programs. Most of these documents have status of regulatory legal acts. They can be used as a conceptual and methodological basis for creating programs and strategies for the development of libraries, given that the availability of such documents has already become mandatory for many branches and organizations, not only in the industrial or commercial spheres of the economy.

Organisation and Maintenance of Library Authority Files in Russia and Abroad

The article provides review of foreign and domestic publications on the problems of creation, development and use of authority files (AF) of names of persons, names of organizations, geographical names and other objects both at the international, national and regional levels. The paper presents analysis of the foreign experience of AF maintenance. The authors note that, due to the availability of universal collections and qualified specialists, AF formation abroad is usually carried out by national libraries. A substantive analysis of foreign publications has shown that national AFs (NAF) are characterized by data variability and diversity of approaches. The authors studied the experience of successful combination of NAF created according to different methods within the framework of the international corporate project — Virtual International Authority File (VIAF). The article notes that most of the Russian libraries do not use AF, since AF, created in republican and regional scientific libraries, as a rule, are not publicly available. At the same time, creation by a separate library of its own AF leads to high labour and material costs, and the formation of a large number of AF leads to the variability of the AFs created for the same objects. The authors conclude that for efficient use of AFs within the country, it is necessary to apply unified methods and rules for creation of authority records. Another way out is the application of the Semantic Web technology, which allows linking AFs created according to different methods. It is necessary to make maximum use of existing dictionaries or create dictionaries based on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Resource Description Framework (RDF), RDF Schema (RDFS) and Web Ontology Language (OWL) standards.

Quality Assessment for National Libraries

National libraries as well as any other progressive institutions have to assess the results of their performance. Depending on the type, functions, structure, areas of activities, organizational and financial methods, any national library can test wide sets of performance indicators consistent with its mission. Those indicators may differ from the indicators being tested by other national libraries. Quite often national libraries can also use additional indicators if financial/sponsoring organizations or target user groups etc. require this.The paper considers the methods and procedures for measuring quantitative indicators of national libraries’ performance according to the new international standard ISO 21248:2019 “Information and documentation: Quality assessment for national libraries”, which is partially based upon the ISO 11620:2008 standard “Information and documentation. Library performance indicators”. The author presents specific examples for calculating indicators using formulas and detailed description of steps for calculation of indicators depending on the library mission and goals. Along with qualitative indicators, the new standard recommends to use qualitative indicators to assess the impact of national libraries not only on their users, but also on society as a whole. In recent years, libraries have developed and probated methods to justify their importance. One of those methods is user surveying by means of special questionnaires made on the basis of ISO 16439:2014 standard “Information and documentation. Methods and procedures for assessing the impact of libraries” and circulated by libraries among their users to educe and differentiate interests of different user groups to provide them with subsequent target service.

Books and Events: Trends, Projects, Achievements in the Light of the 34th Moscow International Book Fair

The leading event for the library and publishing sector — the 34th Moscow International Book Fair (MIBF) — took place on September 24—27, 2021 at the Central Exhibition Complex “Expocentre”. The forum was held in a “hybrid format”, foreign participants joined the events online. There were announced the winners of the National competition “Book of the Year — 2021” and the 9th Competition of the Russian Library Association “The Best Professional Book of the Year — 2021”.The business program of the MIBF contained sectoral conferences and round tables devoted to the insight of state of the book industry. The 2nd International Conference “The World Book Industry in new realities: new technologies, new challenges, new prospects”, the sectoral conference “The Russian Book Market — 2021”, the round table “Books in the city” took place at the Fair. The MIBF outlined the vectors of the development of modern culture, creative industries and creative entrepreneurship in the context of books; prospects for the development of new formats for the reorganization of territories and the formation of a stable local identity; intersection points of interests of citizens, local and federal authorities, business and cultural institutions. The article summed up the overall results of the MIBF.