The role of libraries as a social institution in the transforming Russian society

The authors analyze the identified research and real-case publications on the critical problem: the libraries’ role as a social institution non-corresponding to the mission being conferred on them and its implementation. The purpose of the article is to actualize the problem related to the libraries’ role as a social institution and to attract attention of researchers in various domains, evoking interest to building professional competences in the specialists of social and cultural areas, including libraries. The authors suggest to develop management standards for the social institution of libraries to improve the quality of library services. The uniqueness of the study lies in the general analytical and comparative methods applied to existing standards, laws and conceptual documents for the institutions of culture. The researchers use competitive and systems methodological approaches. The empirical data of revealed sources are obtained through the methods of comparative analysis and systems analysis. The originality of the article is that the role of libraries is specified as a social institution going through transformation and intensive digitalization. The key functions of many social institutions (educational, cultural, families, etc.) are deflecting; their missions and roles are changing and being lost. On one hand, this is due to the chaos and inconsistency of transformation processes, and on the other hand, due to weakening control system and strengthening management system in business and economical processes. Today, despite the national programs, the problems of social systems affect economics, finances, ecology, etc.

The current socioeconomic situation of transformation and intensive digitalization in every sphere of the Russian society, calls for regulated functions of social systems and their components. The analysis findings demonstrate that the libraries as a social institution have been losing their mission, while random and chaotic transformation processes result in imbalance and do harm. The social institutions depreciate the libraries’ implementing social functions which is evidenced by the analysis of legal and regulatory and conceptual acts in the cultural and social sphere. One of the solutions is to strengthen management of the libraries as a social institution and improving expertise of librarians.

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