University Library Under The Impact Of Social And Cultural Transformations

Abstract

The relevance of the topic is determined by the need to comprehend various aspects of the activities of the university library in the context of global computerization. The article deals with university libraries functioning in the context of social and cultural transformations in the epoch of Industry 4.0. It analyzes the impact of university libraries on self-actualization and self-determination of the student’s personality. It reveals the concept of “self-development of professional competencies” as a process of focusing systematic, conscious actions of students on themselves. The research problem is connected with university libraries functioning and their support for professional self-development of the student’s personality in the context of modern globalism. The research tasks were solved on the basis of analyzing scientific literature, reporting documents and the experience of university libraries. The observation methods as well as the methods of questioning and interviewing were used. The article gives a short survey of the history and evolution of the university libraries in the Chuvash Republic. The study showed their skills to independently search for literature in electronic catalogues and electronic databases. The popularity and importance of university libraries for education and science have been known since ancient times, but in the epoch of globalization and social, cultural and technological transformations, which have brought about Industry 4.0, they are evolving into a new type of scientific and educational platform providing students with access to electronic databases and electronic resources.

Keywords: University libraryelectronic libraryindependent workinformation requestselectronic resourcesself-education

Introduction

In modern conditions education is becoming a strategic resource for the development of the state as well as an important economic sector. In the Concept developed by the Government of the Russian Federation for the long-term socio-economic development of Russia for the period up to 2020, as applied to higher education, the goal is the introduction of a modern innovative model of education (Strategy24.ru, 2019).

At the same time, the quality of professional skills is largely determined by the effectiveness of using the capabilities of the educational environment created at universities. The modern humanistic paradigm of education proclaims the rejection of rigidly planned socio-cultural standards of consciousness and behaviour imposed on students. Instead there comes the dominating idea of free development, self-actualization and self-determination of a person as a result of his/her personal choice. Within the framework of this paradigm the ideas of a developing education, and educational environment and space have gained real strength in personality formation. They have a considerable impact on the nature of humanization and democratization in society and with it on the changing role of university libraries as well.

With the proliferation of global computer networks libraries have gained a competitor capable of performing these tasks with much greater efficiency. The digital nature of the network information flow today has largely updated the problems of storage, retrieval and access to information. The further development of the digital information infrastructure brings about even more impressive changes, expressed in the delivery of information to each user in accordance with his/her current interests, location and other specific requirements (Pushkin & Pushkina, 2019). Today the data arriving to the user are more and more alienated from standardized texts towards video or audio content, objects of holography, of augmented or that of virtual reality (Kopperundevi, 2017; Pateriia & Parmar, 2017).

Problem Statement

The changes over the period of educational reforms have exacerbated a number of problems relating to the implementation of the Federal State Educational Standard for Higher Education (FSESHE) for the new generation. These are the introduction of competence approach in educational environment, the transition to a new multilevel system, changes of the conditions of functioning of universities that brought about the changes in the work of university libraries. At the same time reconsidering the problems of searching and gaining access to information in libraries shifts the focus of information processing activities onto its transforming into knowledge and beliefs both at the level of a particular person and the society as a whole. The importance of this process cannot be overestimated: what sources, by whom and how are mastered determine the system of values and relationships both at the level of the university staff and at the level of the entire modern civilization.

In our study we relied on Andreev’s (2003) fundamental law of the phase transition of development into creative self-development of the personality, the essence of which is that the development of the personality at a certain stage of his/her life activity in the process of positive quantitative and qualitative changes of the "self" at a certain stage is transformed into creative self-development of the personality. Since professional competencies are an individual’s ability to effectively solve a certain class of professional tasks, by the self-development of professional competencies we understand the process of purposeful, systematic conscious actions of students learning about themselves, including independent deepening in and expanding of professional knowledge, self-improvement of qualities, abilities, and competencies in general, which make it possible to increase productivity in their professional activities. The independent work of students contributes to the development of their activity, responsibility, creative approaches to solving problems of the educational and professional level and can serve as the basis for restructuring their position in the educational process, since it should be recognized as a free, internally motivated activity.

In these conditions the urgent issue is to consider the resources of university libraries, the problems of library and information services and the increasing role of students' independent work, improving the content and forms of its organization in university libraries. The research problem is the identification of library and information support for professional self-development of the student’s personality in university libraries in the context of social and cultural transformations in the epoch of transition to digital ecosystem.

Research Questions

The issue of the emergence of libraries in our country goes into the distant past and is closely related to the invention of writing and the distribution of the first manuscript books. At all stages of the development of society, close attention was paid to the collection of manuscripts, books and other media. Pursuing the goal of collecting and preserving books and manuscripts brought about the formation of various institutions: repositories, archives, as well as libraries. Initially, there were views according to which the main function of the library was to store manuscripts and books intended for a variety of purposes: for church services, for teaching literacy, for reading, etc. It is worth mentioning that the Russian word библиотека denoting library was derived from ancient Greek bibliotheke ( biblion – book, theke – repository) and means book-repository. In Ancient Russia the idea of library was denoted by means of other words similar in meaning with book-depository, e.g. книжная пала (book chamber), книгохранилище (book storage, book depository). Subsequently they underwent such profound changes that nowadays nowhere in the world the concept “library” has been reduced to the meaning "a book depository" only.

Libraries as collections of written monuments arose in ancient

times, e.g. libraries of Ancient Egypt, ancient Greece and Rome, monasteries of the early Middle Ages, etc. They began to develop rapidly from the 15th century after the invention of printing. For a long time they were viewed as dead enclosed vaults which were not thought of as institutions intended for any practical use. Only after the French bourgeois revolution the idea of library accessibility for readers did emerge in some countries.

The first libraries in the territory of the future Russian Empire appeared during the formation of ancient feudal states in the Caucasus and Central Asia in the IV-VI centuries, and in the XI-XIII centuries in Russia. The first attempts to create libraries intended for wide use date back to the beginning of the 18th century, but only at the end of the 18th and 19th centuries did they become widespread. Significant achievements of Russian culture included the creation of such large library institutions as the Libraries of the Academy of Sciences (1724), the Library of Moscow University (1756), St. Petersburg Public Library (1814) and the Moscow Rumyantsev Museum Library (1862) (Ivanova, 2014).

The life of the library is closely connected with the cultural, socio-economic, political attitudes of the state. Any society forms the book world and dictates its requirements to the latter. In addition to all this the library creates its own law and order. Libraries turn into the environment where the circulation of knowledge takes place, and the reader and book discourse unfolds. Certain rules and standards of behaviour are to be followed, on the one hand, and information control ensuring its safety, on the other hand, allow considering the library not only informational but also cultural and disciplinary space.

The library receives books on various subjects and functional affiliations. There they are selected, classified by branch of knowledge, encoded and placed on shelves according to their code. As objects and symbols of the era they stand on the shelves and wait in the wings. Herzen (1954) wrote: “The whole life of mankind has consistently settled in the book: tribes, people, states disappeared, but the book remained. It grew together with humanity, all teachings that shocked the minds, and all passions that shook the hearts crystallized into it ...” (p. 184).

Libraries as important cultural centres, the most accessible centres for the dissemination of knowledge are inextricably linked with science, education and self-education. This connection was pointed out by one of the outstanding library scholars A.I. Kalishevsky who firmly believed that library and science, library and education have always been inextricably linked. In his opinion this makes the library a special, independent tool of enlightenment. Not only a lower or a middle school, but even a higher school cannot give sufficient knowledge. It only forms and develops cognitive abilities of a pupil. Knowledge is a matter of his mental independence, which is achieved through self-education and books (as cited in Stefanovich, 1962).

Consequently the intellectual activity of self-change, self-development, the result of which are the changes that occurred in the subject itself is associated with the manifestation of the independence of the individual and creative abilities in the process of cognition, self-education.

Individual’s self-educational work with literature can proceed in different ways, depending on the goals, program and intellectual development of the individual. Researchers consider self-education as an activity that unfolds internally and is carried out through various kinds of mental operations performed by a person on ideal objects. This activity results in the “appropriation” of knowledge determined and coloured by personal attitude and included in his/her personal knowledge system that is viewed as a result of self-education.

Correct understanding of the meaning of self-education helps to outline a program of professional self-development, improvement of one’s knowledge. It should, on the one hand, motivate, broaden the general knowledge horizons, and on the other hand, encourage independent work on a book which is of great educational value as it forms a person’s views, his convictions, and develops independence of thinking, contributes to the acquisition of skills of an analytical, critical approach to reading.

Purpose of the Study

The new culture-based paradigm of education does not recognize knowledge in isolation from its cultural and historical, and personality essence context. True knowledge should have a pronounced sociocultural and individual's personal meaning, for only then will it be able to serve as a means of humanitarization and humanization of social life.

One of the most urgent issues of university libraries is the development of education taking into account not only world experience and trends but the federal programs implemented in our country to support national education. In the context of the formation of the information society an extremely important tool for organizing the self-educational activities of university libraries is to ensure public access to socially significant information, primarily of a scientific, educational and cultural nature.

Thus the purpose of our study is uncovering the structure of information and library services, informing users about the information resources and services provided by the library, and ensuring professional self-development of students in the context of modernization of education in the science library of Chuvash State University named after I. N. Ulyanov.

Research Methods

The study was conducted on the basis of fundamental principles of library science, analysis of pedagogical and psychological literature in the context of studying forms and methods of organizing students' self-educational activities at the university science library. Studying reporting documents, interviewing readers and library staff, analyzing readers' reviews, employees' experiences, casual conversations of library users were also of great value.

Findings

In the year 2000 databases began to be created by the Scientific Library of the Chuvash State University named after I.N. Ulyanov. In 2004 an electronic reading room with only 5 workplaces was opened for access to information resources. In 2005 the formation of an electronic library began. An electronic library is a distributed information system that allows anyone to reliably store and efficiently use a variety of collections of electronic documents received in a form convenient for the end user through global data networks. The electronic library contains a full-text collection of monographs and textbooks of the University teachers. The texts in the electronic technical library are presented in html, doc and pdf formats. Nowadays the University’s Scientific Library is the largest university library in the Chuvash Republic in terms of fund size (about 2 million copies). In order to improve the organization of professional self-development of students in the context of modernization of education the University library systematically updates and improves the methodological support of independent work of students. It offers innovative technologies to be used in the educational process including interactive technologies and computer testing. The librarians improve the consulting techniques and methodological work taking into account the individual characteristics of students. The librarians provide everyone with the opportunity to learn new experiences in his/her own style encouraging and supporting students' creative and research work. Large-scale transformations associated with the inclusion of networked information arrays in the reader service system originated from the moment the university library acquired reliable access to the Internet in the presence of an extensive intra-library local network. The existence of a channel with high bandwidth combined with a sufficient number of workstations in the reader area allowed beginning a gradual redistribution of the information load on Internet sources.

Today a reader comes to the university library not only for a traditional document but also for electronic full-text publications. The number of calls to the library’s Web server is growing steadily while regular visits are gradually decreasing. Online readers prefer to work with library collections or, more precisely, with online library services and get everything they need on their own computer. A virtual reader should be served no worse than a real reader – this is one of the main trends in the development of library and information services today.

Currently the main information resource providing user interaction with the whole spectrum of library and information services is the electronic catalogue. This is the most user-oriented part of electronic library technology which acts as a navigator of the user's information behaviour. The introduction of an electronic catalogue in the library and information services has become a launching pad for independent user work where he can choose a strategy for communicating with the library. The user is given the opportunity to choose either to be directly present in the library or to use remote access to the library resources and services. But the main thing is that now the use him/herself builds algorithms for finding the necessary information.

Another equally important trend in the university library is the provision of information resources of other organizations to its users which allows expanding the range of information services. Currently information resources containing electronic collections of a scientific and educational nature, including electronic library systems (ELS), are becoming increasingly important. Electronic library systems (ELS) are a popular format among students for obtaining necessary literature.

The next most important and intensively developed information resource is the formation of University’s own full-text electronic collections. The composition of the university collections includes mainly educational literature of teachers of the University.

The key link in the development of the information and educational space of the University is the availability of a fully independent library site. The first step in creating a library website is to conduct a detailed analysis of the information needs of its potential visitors and take into account their users’ interests in developing a common structure and strategy for developing a virtual resource. The library site is well designed, and last but not least it is convenient to use. There is an access to an electronic catalogue, to foreign and Russian full-text resources. The links to websites of Russian and foreign libraries are also provided. The presence of full-text resources and web-sites is necessary not only for students, but also for teachers. Electronic resources simplify the work of students with the necessary information and provide access to books that are available in one or a limited number of copies. This is the most important and necessary provision in the educational process of students.

The website of the University Scientific Library provides a list of electronic resources that can be used from library computers: Russian full-text resources, foreign full-text resources, Web sites of libraries.

The following is the list of Russian full-text resources including:

• Scientific electronic library "CyberLeninka",

• Electronic library system of the Publishing House "Yurait",

• Digital library "NELBUK",

• Electronic library system ZNANIUM.COM,

• Electronic library system "Lan’",

• Electronic library system “Konsul'tant studenta. Elektronnaja biblioteka medicinskogo vuza",

• East View,

• Digital library of dissertations (RSL),

• Scientific Electronic Library eLIBRARY.RU,

• University Information System RUSSIA (UIS RUSSIA),

• Polpred.com Media Review,

• A single window of access to educational resources,

• CONTROL ENGINEERING Russia,

• "Consilium Medicum",

• NDT Territory.

In the era of computer technology the main prospect of the development of libraries is the development of electronic resources, electronic catalogues of libraries, software to improve and simplify the work of university libraries.

Electronic catalogues of textbooks and manuals are important attributes of libraries, local networks of universities and bookstores although they are rarely used directly in classrooms. Their role in the education system however cannot be underestimated. They are used by students, undergraduates, graduate students in their independent work when writing term papers, dissertations, in the preparation of articles and reports. Since 1995 the University has been publishing a periodical – the scientific journal “Bulletin of Chuvash University”. The journal is included in the “Abstract Journal” and VINITI Database of the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Federation, the International Abstract Database Ulirich’s Periodicals Directory of Serials Solution (Pro Quest).

Chuvash State University named after I.N. Ulyanov is the largest university in the Republic. The university takes its beginning in 1967. With the opening of the university the library also begins to operate. The university includes 17 faculties, 3 branches and the Centre for Continuing Education. Since 1992 the Scientific Library of the Chuvash State University is a regional scientific and methodological centre, providing coordination and cooperation of methodological, bibliographic, information and research activities in the Republic for libraries of higher educational institutions. The methodological association consists of 6 libraries. All forms of methodological support are present in their activity: studying, summarizing and identifying best practices, advanced training and retraining of university libraries, providing methodological assistance, etc. There are four sections at the methodological association:

• acquisition, processing and storage of funds;

• information and bibliographic work;

• readers service;

• degitizing and bibliographic processes.

Interuniversity scientific and practical conferences, seminars, round tables are held by the University library regularly.

One of the libraries as part of the methodological association is the scientific library of the Chuvash State Pedagogical University named after I.Y. Yakovlev. The date of its foundation is considered October 1, 1930, when the first higher educational institution was opened in Cheboksary. The library occupied one room with a size of 41.8 square meters. It also housed a primitive reading room. According to archival documents at first the book fund of the library was completed by transferring insignificant receipts of book stocks from other universities of the country and from personal libraries to it.

Nowadays, the university’s scientific library is located in five educational buildings. The total area of ​​its premises is about 2 thousand square meters. The library has the departments of acquisition of literature, processing literature, storage of funds, service, reference and bibliographic, computerization of library information processes. Book collections numbering over 800 thousand copies contain scientific and educational literature on the profile of the university. Of particular value is the collection of psychological and pedagogical literature, a collection of pre-revolutionary and rare editions.

In 2002, an electronic reading room was opened. Readers of the library got access to the electronic catalogue and to all databases. At first the electronic room had only 5 computer seats, and in 2005 – 16 seats. A list of educational and scientific resources of the Internet is provided on the website of the scientific library of Chuvash State Pedagogical University. The selection of web addresses does not include all available sites on a particular topic, but only those that contain texts of publications (full-text databases) and do not infringe on copyright. In the scientific library of the Chuvash State Pedagogical University they systematically update and improve the methodological support of students' independent work. The library is constantly introducing innovative technologies into the educational process, including interactive technologies and computer testing. In order to improve the organization of students' independent work the library stuff conduct methodological consultations taking into account the individual characteristics of students, providing everyone with the opportunity to learn new experiences in their own field, encouraging and supporting students' creative and research work.

The scientific library of the Chuvash Agricultural Institute actively participates in the methodological association. The Institute was founded in September 1931, and in 1995 received the status of the Chuvash State Agricultural Academy. Over the years of its existence it has become a forge of personnel in the agricultural sector. The only agricultural university in the republic for its many years of history has trained about 25 thousand specialists with higher education. The Academy conducts multilevel training in 8 areas (undergraduate) and two specialties of higher professional education – veterinary, technological and economic. The structure of the Academy includes 5 full-time faculties and a faculty of advanced training.

The scientific and technical library of the Chuvash State Agricultural Academy provides the educational process and scientific research of the university with literature and information. Its library has 3 specialized departments – acquisition and cataloguing of funds, information-bibliographic and service department. The library provides readers with the necessary literature through an extensive network of loans, reading rooms, and mobile department loans. The total fund of the library is 322947 copies. Since 2001 the electronic catalogue and databases have been formed. In 6 databases of own make-up there are currently 215018 bibliographic records. On the publications entered in the electronic catalogue (EC) barcodes are placed. Both bar-coding and the creation of a retro-catalogue have become a preparatory stage for the electronic issuance of documents. Since 2011 electronic issuance of documents has been in the reading room.

Since 2003 the library has been participating in the “Chuvashika” regional corporation to form information resources of the republic and provide access to them. In 2012 the database “Electronic library of the Chuvash State Agricultural Academy” was created.

Each student and Academy teacher has access to:

• electronic library system of the Publishing House " Lan’",

• electronic library system "Student Consultant",

• information system of the Federal educational portal EDU.RU ,

• University Information System RUSSIA,

• accounting reference system "System Glavbukh",

• scientific electronic library eLIBRARY.RU,

• Scientific electronic library "Cyberleninka",

• educational video portal univertv.ru.

The modern world is changing and developing very fast. All these changes have affected all areas of our lives: culture, social life, science and, of course, education. The principles of operation of modern university libraries are significantly different from the work of university libraries even 20 years ago. Electronic reading rooms for independent work of students, electronic catalogues, and web sites have been opened for library users.

Cheboksary Cooperative Institute, a branch of the Russian University of Cooperation, was opened in 1962. Since the first days the scientific library of the Institute has kept up with the times. The Institute trains students in 12 specialties. The history of the library begins in 1972. In 1994 the library acquired the first computer and the creation of an electronic catalogue began. Since 1999 the library has been in the virtual world. It was then that the first page was created on the Institute’s website www.coop.chuvashia.ru. A year later an electronic reading room was opened. In 2004 the electronic catalogue of the library via the Internet for remote users became available. Since 2007 it has become possible to use Internet resources in the reading rooms of the library.

The youngest university in the Republic, the Chuvash State Institute of Culture and Arts, founded in 2000 is not far behind in library and information services for students and teachers. The library has been in operation since 2001. Its fund as of January 1, 2018 is more than 17,000 copies.

An annotated catalogue of electronic educational resources is offered on the website of the Chuvash State Institute of Culture and Arts in the “library” section: “Lan’” electronic library system, “IQlib” electronic library system, e-Library.ru , Scientific Electronic Library, Single window for access to educational resources.

Studying the experience of university libraries shows that they constantly inform their users about the information resources and services provided. The promotion of information resources is facilitated by organizing special exhibitions, creating and disseminating information leaflets with the lists of recommended resources, regularly posting information on the websites of the Scientific Libraries.

Many universities not only create their own electronic databases, but also gain access to independent electronic resources for using in the educational process. To ensure free access to the integrated catalogue of educational Internet resources and to the electronic library of teaching materials for general and professional education by order of the Federal Agency for Education in 2005-2008 the Information System "Single Window for Access to Educational Resources" - IS "Single Window" - was created, which combines electronic resources of free access for all levels of education in Russia into a single information space. As a rule, access to electronic resources is implemented locally in universities, but it is also possible from any point connected to the Internet (using individual access cards).

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of using electronic resources provided by libraries the library users were asked the following question: "From what sources do you most often receive information about library services?" Of all respondents 44% of users answered “from the library web page”. The users who claimed “from other sources” learned about library electronic resources from fellow students. The library makes extensive use of new forms of information and bibliographic services. The respondents were offered a list of services provided by the university library. They were expected to choose those services they used and those of which they were well aware. The most popular service among respondents was access to remote databases on the Internet (20%).

A large number of respondents as the survey showed have an idea of the new electronic services provided by the library: virtual exhibitions (37%), guest books (18%). Services such as providing thematic, address and factual references (10%) and preparation of bibliographies (7%) are in the least demand today. This can be explained by the growing information literacy of library readers, their ability to independently search literature in an electronic catalogue thanks to group and individual consultations. Also, the questionnaire presented a list of electronic resources available in the library. It was necessary to note the resources that the library users heard about and used. The most popular resources among students are Scientific Electronic Library eLIBRARY.RU (31%), Scientific Electronic Library "CyberLeninka" (13%), Single Window access to educational resources (12%). To the question “Are you satisfied with the range of databases provided by the library for independent work?” 15% answered in negative, 72% answered positively and 13% found it difficult to answer. To the question “What databases would you like the library to have access?” the respondents found it difficult to answer.

In conclusion the respondents were asked to express their wishes about services they needed and in what form they would like to receive them. The need for expected services was as follows. The leading options were changing the service system (17%), bibliographic description of specialized Internet resources (15%), informing the users about print publications in the Chuvash Republic on the library site (8%). To the question “What form of learning do you prefer to be a confident user of new electronic resources of the library?” the answers were electronic guides (62%), training seminars (28%), teaching aids and manuals (10%).

The analysis showed sufficient awareness of and use by users of the resources and services offered by the University library. The study allowed us studying and identifying the library and information needs of University library users. This form of research allows introducing new forms of information and bibliographic services, to find ways to increase demand for information resources and services. Respondents' answers indicate that today they want to work with library resources remotely.

Conclusion

For centuries the main and the only resource on the basis of which readers were served was the fund of the library or that of the information service. It were the volume and composition of the fund that measured the possibilities of the library for organizing appropriate services. The composition of the fund was disclosed by using a reference-bibliographic (reference searching) toolkits.

The situation began to change with the awareness of the limited capabilities of any individual fund. For a long time the main tool for exercising information interaction was the interlibrary loan.

First traditionally interaction was built at the departmental level, but after some time the advantages of interagency cooperation at the regional level were recognized. The creation of unified territorial reference and information funds became widespread. However, the effectiveness of interaction directly depends on the availability of navigation tools in information resources. As a rule consolidated printed catalogues began functioning in this capacity. In addition to them reference books on the region’s information resources began to appear. A good example is the “Directory guide to the libraries of St. Petersburg” (Ivanova, 2018).

The end of the XX century was marked by the rapid development of information technology, which helped reduce the impact of geographical, departmental and other barriers that stand in the way of ensuring the availability of information. Information services began to focus on the use of the aggregate information resources of society. The navigation tools in these resources were electronic catalogues of both individual libraries and library consortia. The interlibrary loan has transformed into electronic document delivery. The increase in the volume of potentially available resources made library workers look for navigation paths in them.

The research was conducted for two months. It allowed studying and identifying the needs of users in information services for professional self-development. After analyzing the websites of university libraries and the history of the emergence of electronic libraries we found out that the creation and use of electronic catalogues, electronic databases and electronic resources in general began in 2001–2002. Electronic resources make the work of students with the necessary information for independent work more effective and provide access to books that are available in one or a limited number of copies. This is one of the most important and necessary premises in the educational process of students. The availability of an electronic catalogue and databases can significantly improve the efficiency and quality of the search for the necessary literature. The analysis of thematic requests made through using the electronic catalogues and databases shows that the number of requests is growing from year to year and their topics are expanding that allows introducing new types of information and bibliographic services. The relevance of the popularity of electronic resources in the information and educational space of the library is undeniable in the conditions of social and cultural transformations in the context of digital ecosystem.

Analyzing the diversity of the activities of university libraries we can conclude that it is associated primarily with the modernization of basic library technologies in:

• securing the library funds – the use of Internet technologies and e-mail when searching for the necessary publications, creating a database of orders that allow processing and monitoring the implementation of users’ orders; the formation of collections of electronic documents;

• providing the safety of the funds – the use of digitization as an effective method to restore, replicate and provide access to rare and small-sized publications;

• library processing and analytical description – machine-readable cataloguing and electronic catalogue databases;

• the service of readers – automated registration and accounting of users, organization of open access funds (reference and encyclopaedic, periodicals and literary and artistic publications), providing remote access to information resources; creation of media centres and Internet classes providing the use of electronic information;

• informational and bibliographic work – the creation of a new form of informing and presenting bibliographic resources of a Web site, the transformation of traditional classes in the development of the BBL into training courses "Fundamentals of Information Culture", the use of Internet resources in reference and information services;

• humanitarian and educational work, new forms of exhibitions that have turned traditional book and magazine spreads into cultural and educational events.

Today new users have come to university libraries, with changing and complicated requests and requirements. This is due to the emergence of new faculties and specialties in the structure of universities, the restructuring of the system of teaching disciplines, changes in educational standards, the development and deepening of the processes of humanization of higher education.

In the new conditions of using information technologies and technical re-equipment, university libraries, while retaining their fundamental principles, are acquiring new functions and organizational forms of their existence and user service.

Changes of the functions of a public library naturally lead to a change in the professional responsibilities and, accordingly, the competencies of library staff, designed to perform much broader professional tasks.

Highly motivated employees work in libraries, having a wealth of knowledge relating not only to library and information activities, but also to many other areas of knowledge and practice, however, the specifics of the profession forces them to constantly take care of the constant updating of their professional competencies.

This series includes such competencies as sociability, the ability to interact with others in the process of activity, critical thinking and creative approach. These skills combined with a confident knowledge of digital technologies, innovative thinking, the ability to competently build an educational trajectory of students for assisting them thus in their professional self-development form an integral part of contemporary library professionals.

Solid principles of the staff of a public library that permeate all its activities are made of respect for the interests of library users, the desire to fully satisfy their intellectual needs, politeness and understanding of the social role and responsibility of libraries in society.

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