Electronic Resources as a Technological Infrastructure for Reading in Libraries

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to improve and modernize the electronic resources introduced into the work of children’s library institutions in Ukraine in order to accelerate the process of document delivery to users and provide quality service. The research methods are based on applying the analytical and synthetic approach as a general scientific principle of implementing technological library processes through electronic resources to attract schoolchildren to libraries. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the further study and disclosure of creative forms of activities using information technology in libraries for children that activate reading. New library concepts such as “service fair”, “e-governance”, and “corporate project” are revealed. The children’s library becomes an active participant in the market start-up, which begins to build its work based on innovations and creative technologies. The effectiveness of the work is assessed by real cases that are carried out using the design methodology. The results of research on children’s libraries in Ukraine show that today’s young information consumer is a qualitatively new type of user, the “web generation”, the “Internet generation”. For the library to attract these students, it is necessary to change the forms of activity, improve professional skills, and actively introduce new services based on the study and implementation of modern information technologies. Library staff often reformat some of their socio-cultural events to the virtual space. As for the Volyn children’s libraries, they remain centres of communication, learning, reading, and the development of creative and intellectual abilities. Combining traditional and creative forms and methods of work, librarians work to encourage students to read, to make them interested in books (through mass events), and to stimulate the use of information resources available in the library. Libraries aim to enhance the social role, provide free access to information, enrich the spiritual culture of users and deepen their knowledge of the historical past of the Ukrainian people; promote national and patriotic education of users, form a reading culture, create a safe, comfortable environment and provide positive conditions for the creative abilities’ development. Conclusions. The research has examined and analyzed the range of new library services in children’s libraries of Ukraine, particularly Volyn, based on the use of Internet resources of modern information technologies. In library activities today, the most important thing is to inform schoolchildren about the role of the modern library in society, the new opportunities provided by modernized creative service departments; encouraging participation in project activities, and promoting them among students and parents. In the current operating environment, libraries are obliged to adapt more actively to providing services to children with special needs: disabled, socially vulnerable, temporarily displaced and internally displaced children; to provide users with free, barrier-free and unhindered opportunities to receive virtual information from any department in accessible forms.