Russian traditions of enlightenment in the activities of the scientific library

Economic, political and social changes in Russia occurred in the nineties of the twentieth century predetermined the emergence of a new socio-cultural situation, which in turn led to the transformation of the style and quality of the existence of the society, its public relations, value orientations. With increasing destabilization of the socio-economic, value and intellectual foundations of the post-Soviet space steady adherence to humanistic traditions established in the European and Russian sociopolitical and philosophical thought seems to be of current importance for domestic libraries. The educational function of the library is one of these traditions. Russian libraries have traditionally played a significant role in the educational activity. From the standpoint of culturological approach, а library is а part of the cultural continent, i.e. a library existed within the culture for centuries, changing and transforming externally and internally. A special mission and considerable work for creation of the spirit of culture, its formation and strengthening is assigned to the library. Today the post-Soviet library community returns to the idea of enlightenment, overcoming skepticism of the nineties of the twentieth century, when on the wave of reckless deideologization this concept has become associated exclusively with the propaganda activity and therefore disappeared from the lexicon of library scientists and practitioners for a long time. Return to the ideals of the enlightenment is performed at a different level. Possibilities of implementing the educational function are conceptualized and developed in the context of other socio-cultural conditions. In view of the current socio-cultural situation the educational mission of the libraries is interpreted as ensuring development of the human potential (intellectualization of the society) through continuing education and free access to the cultural heritage of mankind for all members of the society. Preamble of the Code of Professional Ethics of а Russian librarian approved at the regular session of the Russian Library Association (May 2011, Tyumen) indicates that understanding of the librarian mission in the society is no longer fit into the framework of mediation, but includes objectives of conservation, development and dissemination of the cultural heritage of the nations of Russia. The educational activity of the library is implemented through a set of all its functions, and those which are most inherent to a certain type of libraries dominate in this process. Therefore, educational tasks of the libraries of different levels vary. For a scientific library the educational task is much more mediated and can be identified with its basic information function, and broader with providing optimal conditions for the implementation of the latter. That is, educational goals are "dissolved" in the information function of the library. The main purpose of the academic (scientific) libraries can be formulated as the utmost contribution to establishment of the objective scientific truth through information support of the learning process.

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