Features of Implementation and Protection of Human Rights in the Library Sphere of the Russian Federation: Experience of the First Review

Abstract

On October 18, 2018, the National Library Russia (NLR) hosted the Round table “Implementation of citizens’ rights to library services” within the framework of the visiting Session of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights. The discussion of library issues in the human rights context, initiated by the NLR, was held for the first time. The participants of the meeting considered the activities of libraries and their founding parties - government authorities - on ensuring the legal rights of citizens to access to culture and information. The topics of discussion included the implementation of cultural policy, library legislation, normative standards of library allocation, physical and information availability of libraries and library collections, the problem of access to online electronic resources and the organization of services for special groups of readers. The article uses the materials of the annual monitoring of the National Library of Russia, the reports (presentations) of the central libraries of the subjects of the Russian Federation, placed in the open database, formed in the framework of the research work of the NLR “Actual problems of transformation of the regional library systems in the information society” (http://clrf.nlr.ru/). The author presents the opinions of specialists from the libraries of St. Petersburg, the Leningrad and Pskov regions, as well as the members of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights. Based on the presented views and factual data, the author concludes that libraries do not practically analyse their activities from the human rights perspective, and the state library policy does not fully contribute to the activities of public libraries to ensure the constitutional rights of citizens to use cultural institutions and to have access to cultural values and information of the Russian Federation.