Sustainable Development of Cultural and Human Capital: the Role of Libraries and its Assessment

Abstract

Strengthening of the role of cultural and human capital in the life of society raises research interest not only to the essence and content of these concepts, but also contributes to the development of librarianship discourse of this issue. The important role of libraries associated with the preservation of cultural heritage, on the one hand, and their increasing importance in the knowledge management system, on the other hand, make libraries the key part in the structure of formation and sustainable development of cultural and human capital. The results of generalized analysis of the research study on this topic demonstrate the underesti-mation of the role of libraries in social life. Detailed study of some evaluation tools in the form of indicators, indices and indexes, ever-existing, regularly performed or specially developed for the particular purpose, has allowed to analyze them from the point of view of inclusion of the elements of cultural and human capital, as well as the possibilities for evaluating the activities of public libraries of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. For this purpose were used the results of the study related to the implementation of the Project “Cultural Map of Russia. Literature. Reading” at participation of the Russian Library Association. Comparison of the data obtained with the use of these instruments demonstrates the need to develop special integrative indicators to assess the development of cultural and human capital, as well as the role of libraries in this process and strengthening of librarianship discourse of the perspective of cultural, natural and human capital for sustainable development. Methodological basis of this discourse is in the grounds of postnonclassical science.