GENDER COMPONENT OF THE LIBRARY PROFESSION: CONTENT ANALYSIS OF PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATIONS

Abstract

The article deals with gender segregation on the example of the IT sphere of modern libraries. The characteristic of this problem is presented through the research of professional journal editions of the USA and Russia during 1980–2017 in the context of the analysis of the gender of the authors of the publications. According to the results of the study, including content analysis of librarianship publications, which cover the issues of IT implementation in the work of libraries, it was found that the following signs of gender segregation exist: almost a uniform distribution of scientific publications among women and men which represent the IT field in the library, despite the background of the female contingent among the library staff; there is a significant quantitative advantage of male co-authors; IT majors are more likely to collaborate with their female counterparts to develop collaborative projects, which is reflected in co-authored publications about IT issues; there is a slight tendency of increase of the number of women authors of publications in the professional library publications with a technical bias in recent years. It has been found that, despite some successes, women librarians are not only less published than men in professional information technology magazines, but also less represented in the IT field of the library. It is noted that the effective methods to address the issue of gender segregation in the work of modern libraries can be: participation in activities to promote IT careers by implementing on-the-job training programs, mentoring and internships, creating online networks for women in IT, involvement of women in research and innovation in order to develop their capacity to apply creative approaches and to fill research with new content.