Development Trends of the Organizational Structure of Service Management in the Regional Libraries of the Russian Federation

Abstract

Publications devoted to the organizational structure of library and information services are analysed. It is shown how the organizational structure of services has historically changed; in what periods, in addition to the Reading room, there appeared Lending department, Extension library service, Reference and bibliographic division, Mass work department, Media library, Center for legal and social information, Remote library service, etc. There are proved the reasons caused the emergence of new structural divisions: changes in society and culture, growth of the number of users, increase in demand for separate types of documents, etc. There are presented characteristic features of structuring within library and information services: the category of users, the form of service provided and terms of receiving the service, the area or subject of documents, the type of documents, the language of the document text, the function performed by the employee. The analysis of structure of library and information services of 55 regional libraries of the Russian Federation is presented. There are compared the structures of these libraries in 1980 and now. It is shown that changes in the structure of library and information services are associated with the use of modern information and communication technologies, certain steps in humanization of society in relation to people with disabilities and other socially vulnerable groups of the population, with the aim to preserve the tradition of reading, regional culture, culture of small peoples, as well as the need to attract a significant number of people to the library as an information and cultural centre, and to make it attractive for the young people.