Libraries in the U.S.S.R

1993

This conference was the first major professional event since the politics of "perestroika" and "glasnost" began to have an impact on relationships between librarians in the U.S.S.R. and the remainder of the world community. A substantial English language source on professional education in the U.S.S.R., this is a collection of the normative documents on which library education is based, and gives shape to impressions about the structure of curricula, the contents of the syllabi, and the methods of teaching. The papers present a view of the professional education at the end of the Soviet era, and are valuable for colleagues studying the system's development or who are engaged in technical cooperation projects.

2009

This article examines the complex changes that have occurred in Polish academic libraries, especially the University of Warsaw Library (UWL), after the fall of communism in 1989.Shortly afterwards, thanks to grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, an accelerated transformation in all library practices began. In preparation for automation, the authority file was created, introducing the process of applying international standards in bibliographic description in a new climate of interlibrary cooperation. The Library of Congress classification and access to open stacks were introduced for the first time in Poland in a newly constructed UWL building. A crowning achievement of the transformation is the first Polish union catalog, Narodowy Uniwersalny Katalog Centralny [National Union Catalog], NUKAT, launched in 2002. University of Warsaw Library history UWL came into being in 1816 with the creation of Royal Warsaw University in the Kingdom of Poland[1], newly formed under Russian rule. The lexicographer, Samuel Bogumił Linde, author of the first large scale dictionary of the Polish language, was the first library director, and Joachim Lelewel, a well known Polish historian, was his deputy. The catalog cards with Linde's handwriting can be still found in the library's card catalog. The collection grew steadily as many institutions donated their own holdings to the library (Biblioteka Uniwersytecka w Warszawie: przewodnik 1979). In 1819 government regulation assured that the library would obtain a deposit copy of every publication from the territory of the Kingdom of Poland. Today a number of Polish libraries, UWL amongst them, are entitled by law to receive a deposit copy of items published in Poland. From the very beginning UWL was also a public library and it remains one. By 1831 the library holdings had grown to 134,067 volumes, including early rare imprints and manuscripts. After the November 1831 uprising against imperial Russia the library was closed. The collections, except Polish materials, were taken to St. Petersburg. The library reopened soon afterwards as the State Library and the deposit copy law was reestablished. Reflecting the political climate of times, mostly Russian materials were acquired. In 1862 Warsaw University was reactivated under the name of Main School and its library, the State Library also became known as the Main Library. The January Uprising of 1863 did not close the Main School or its library but put its existence in a limbo for many years, during which the tendency to collect only Russian materials increased. In 1869 the Tsar transformed Main School into Imperial University and the library fell under its control. Although dominated by Russian publications and Russian librarians, the library still collected Polish materials. Often it was given generous donations and on the eve of the First World War it had 610,000 volumes. The library had two catalogs, an alphabetical and a subject one, both incomplete. In 1894 the library had moved into a new building, gaining more storage space in magazines with walls specially designed to protect them against fire. The collections remained there until 1999. When Russian authorities left Warsaw in 1915, they took the most valuable collections of the library with them. On August 7, 1915 the library fell under Polish authority again and soon started to serve its patrons. The library survived the Second World War and, even though the German administration closed it, a skeletal staff of Polish librarians was maintained. They illegally loaned books to schools that operated underground during the German occupation. As with previous invasions, the oldest and most valuable items from the collection were transported to Germany during the war. The library was plundered again and again. During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, after which Germans had leveled most of Warsaw to the ground, the library, miraculously remained standing. Polish librarians worked hard to protect the collections from fires and bombs. In 1945 the library was reopened, and the collections that had not left Poland were returned to the devastated building. The library opened to the public and with the help of the government slowly recovered its collections. It started a library instruction program for students, and began to compile the central catalog. In the first few years after the war the collections grew to 350,000 volumes and soon UWL became the largest academic library in Poland, a status that it lost, due to the lack of funds, to the more fortunate Jagiellonian University Library in Krakow. This brief history is important because it shows clearly the library's great resilience against all the odds, and foreign powers trying to destroy it by stripping it of its collections. It was mainly during the Russification era that the idea of a library as a holder of national heritage had gained special strength. The efforts to collect Polish materials in order to preserve them and then contribute to creating or recreating a national bibliography became the main goals of libraries. In circumstances that required library leaders to fend off policies of foreign powers, maintain the basic functions, preserve and enrich the collections, the practical considerations of everyday functioning of the library became less important. Operational efficiency: facilitating access, streamlining tasks were not the most important goals for libraries. This climate of "guarding" rather then "opening" took another twist during the

This paper seeks to understand the interaction between library knowledge organization practices and the social role of public libraries through an examination of the development of the Dewey Decimal and Soviet Library-Bibliographic classifications. I show that in spite of significant differences in the ideologies motivating the ontological design of the classifications themselves, the methods and motivations behind creating these classifications were very similar, whether the location was late nineteenth century America or early twentieth century Soviet Russia. Both classifications are highly instructive as snapshots of thinking contemporary to their creation, and in the Soviet Union, library classification was construed as one more layer in the process of information control and indoctrination in Marxism-Leninism. As products of a modern (as opposed to postmodern) intellectual climate, the overall tendency of these classifications to serve as a public common ground, a set of generally accepted knowledge principles, makes sense, however misguided any particular set of principles might have been. Today’s society, however, no longer wants or needs the kinds of unifying narrative that public library classifications speak to, raising questions as to how appropriate these modern classifications are for a postmodern world whose priorities have shifted radically in the last thirty years.

A guide for researchers planning to undertake work in archives and libraries in the former Soviet Union, principally in Russia or Ukraine. Loads of practical information for each institution from people who've worked in them recently.

Regrettably, the name Harriet G. Eddy is not well known in the profession of librarianship today. No entry for her can be found in the Dictionary of American Library Biography or in any of its supplements or even in the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science; furthermore, one will find nothing in Cannon’s Bibliography of Library Economy. For that matter, no one seems to have written a doctoral dissertation on her pioneering work nor is there any entry in Library Literature for analytical articles about her, much less book-length monographs about her contributions, despite the fact that a rich resource exists in the California State Library and at the California State Archives. Notably, too, Eddy is not on the list of the 100 most influential librarians of the twentieth century either; and, there is barely mention of her in the secondary literature.

Library Trends, 2014

The aim of this paper is to provide readers with a snapshot of the Lithuanian library sector since the year 2000. The sector functions as a modern, open, user-oriented, and professional system comparable to other library sectors in Europe. The community of Lithuanian librarians is organized in several professional associations that help in developing different aspects of library work: cooperation, supporting and expanding library activity, and coordinating mutual initiatives. The legal foundations for providing access to information, and the institutions providing information and ensuring its preservation in various forms, are set out in the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania and a set of laws regulating library work. The Lithuanian Ministry of Culture is authorized to regulate state administration of all libraries in Lithuania. The library system consists of the networks of public libraries, academic libraries, school libraries, and special libraries. This paper presents the developments in each of these networks over the past fourteen years. In 2011, a "scientifically" derived strategic plan was developed, which marked a new turn in the management of the state library sector.

International Library Review, 1972

Path of Science

It is necessary to establish a new paradigm of organization and functioning of the libraries within the context of globalization and information revolution. The basis of these changes is democratization of the national program of librarianship development in Ukraine based on modernization of libraries in all its forms: from library staff trainings to funding for the material maintenance of the library. Investment in library infrastructure is the contribution to human future. This paper attempts to identify vectors of the state policy and prospects for the improvement in the field of librarianship in Ukraine.

Library Trends, 2014

This paper presents the most important changes in the library system of Latvia in the late 1980s, when, as a result of a nonviolent struggle, Latvia regained full independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. Particular attention is paid to contributions by private foundations in the United States-the George Soros, Andrew W. Mellon, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations-to fulfill the main goal of library work: namely, helping to create a democratic society in which everyone has the opportunity to express their views and be able to freely access information. During the Soviet period, libraries were mainly agents of the dominant power; they were often forced to ignore the needs of Latvian society or even to work against them. The activities of libraries were strictly regulated and controlled. Latvian independence has allowed the libraries to end political censorship and strict control, and to independently determine their future directions and work methods. Political changes occurred so rapidly that the immediate normalization of professional work after fifty years of occupation was not possible. However, US private foundations supported strategically important areas of library work: automation and access to the internet, the creation of the State Unified Library Information System (SULIS), and the professional development of library staff. The US foundations, through requirements for the cofinancing of large-scale projects, also motivated state and municipalities in Latvia to increase their investment in libraries. The interest expressed in libraries by these foundations emphasized that Latvian libraries were vital. Consequently, targeted investments shortly after independence ensured the timely inclusion of the basic elements of the national library system-the National Library of Latvia and public, school, tained representations of history that did not comply with communist ideology. However, as these works reflected the actual situation in the USSR, they had to be kept in a special collection (specfonds, speciālās glabāšanas nodaļas), which was, in effect, a library within a library, with its own carefully selected and politically vetted staff, stock registers, catalogs, and reading rooms. These special collections were closed to other library employees and were located in the three largest research libraries

The International Information & Library Review, 2013

This version may not include final proof corrections and does not include published layout or pagination.

The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 2010

Abstract Since achieving statehood in 1991, Armenia has faced major economic and political obstacles which have significantly affected the nation’s research libraries. This research paper will quantitatively and qualitatively examine the challenges facing Armenian research libraries just over twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Specifically, the authors analyze their interviews with five library administrators[1] at five major institutions, respectively. These include Yerevan State University Library, the National Library of Armenia, the Fundamental Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, the Republican Scientific-Medical Library of Armenia, and the Papazian Library of the American University of Armenia. The instrument for the interviews consists of 73 questions based on the 2004 Association of College and Research Libraries Standards for Libraries in Higher Education[2] and evaluates the following factors: •The library’s mission, goals and objectives •Public or user services •Instruction activities at the library •Resources (print, media, or electronic) and collection development •Access to the library’s resources •Outcome assessment, or evaluation of the library •Staffing issues •Facility maintenance and plans for library development •Communication and cooperation both within the library and with the user community •Administration •Budget In addition, we will focus on the strengths and weaknesses of these libraries and investigate the growing open access movement in Armenia. Based on our findings, the authors wish to facilitate dialogue and consider possible approaches to help these libraries meet Armenia’s pressing information needs. Key Words academic libraries; Armenian libraries; post-Soviet countries; quality management

Roczniki Biblioteczne, 2024

Research and its source base. General studies. Monographs, research articles, popular-science works on the history of libraries and librarianship from the Middle Ages to the end of the 17th century and in the 19th and 20th centuries.

2004

2017

Libraries are key players in national development. Uzbekistan, despite an old civilization teeming with rich history and cultural heritage, has only declared independence as the Republic of Uzbekistan in 1991 following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Over the past years of independence, libraries have undergone a lot of changes. In 2016 the second president started a new direction described as “A Quiet Revolution and Revolution from Above” introducing reforms and forging development. This paper focuses the analysis within the four key library institutions on spaces and innovative technologies. Specifically, it will address the questions: 1) how libraries in Uzbekistan provide spaces for promoting community engagement and 2) how innovative technologies adopted in Uzbekistan are reshaping libraries to promote transformation and reforms. The researchers, being aware that information about libraries in Uzbekistan is very limited, shares a perspective of how libraries in Uzbekistan cont...