DEVELOPMENT OF LIBRARY EDUCATION IN THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN

Abstract

Library as an ancient institution of written language, enlightenment, culture and education ever took a significant part in social life hence the library profession and training highly skilled specialists for the library sphere deserve special attention. Training of librarians in the constantly changing information society demands specialized government policy. The Republic of Uzbekistan government, in every possible way, favors the modernization of higher education in general and library education in particular, thus the formation of the young generation of specialists with high professional culture is one of the most important tasks for the republican government. The development of all social spheres, active implementation of up-to-date information technologies and intensively developing industry call for the creation of a flexible and coordinated system of training of well-qualified specialists. The necessity of elaboration and realization of a new model in library and information education in the Republic of Uzbekistan, which could meet the modern society needs and effectively respond to their changes, promoting the national library education accession to the world scientific and informative space is a long-term pressing question. Nowadays, higher library education in the Republic of Uzbekistan still experiences many difficulties and has many urgent problems to solve, e.g.: – to implement step training of specialists, – to organize the system of personnel retraining, – to improve the selection of entering educational institutions, – to widen the sphere of making use of graduates, etc. The article presents the experience of reforming library and information education in the Republic of Uzbekistan in different periods (since1970s – up to the present time). It has revealed both positive and negative sides of library education reformation in the Republic of Uzbekistan.