Tetiana Kashtanova, Liliia Pylypenko, Tetiana Pidgayna. Innovative technologies as a factor in the development of the activities of the national scientific agricultural library of the national academy of agrarian sciences

DOI: https://doi.org/10.62204/2336-498X-2023-3-9

INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES AS A FACTOR IN THE

DEVELOPMENT OF THE ACTIVITIES OF THE NATIONAL

SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURAL LIBRARY OF THE

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF AGRARIAN SCIENCES

Tetiana Kashtanova,

Candidate of Historical Sciences,

National Scientific Agricultural Library of the NAAS, Ukraine,

htv2476@gmail.com; ORCID: 0000-0002-6912-2298

Liliia Pylypenko,

National Scientific Agricultural Library of the NAAS, Ukraine,

lilichka.pylypenko@gmail.com; ORCID: 0000-0002-6408-048X

Tetiana Pidgayna,

Candidate of Historical Sciences,

National Scientific Agricultural Library of the NAAS, Ukraine,

pidgayna2012@ukr.net; ORCID: 0000-0002-8896-8336

Annotation. The article is devoted to the currently relevant topic of the influence of innovative technologies on the activities of library institutions. It was determined that the combination of the traditional culture of communication with books and new modern information technologies in the libraries makes it possible to present information quickly, topically, and vividly. Since the user service was, is and remains the main criterion for evaluating the performance of libraries. Among the main technological innovations, it is worth noting remote access to library resources by a wide range of Internet users. Library pages on social networks provide information about the mode of operation, address, link to the website, and information about library activities. The main directions of the digital library, the advantages of using an automated library information system, the principles of creating digital resources are highlighted. The importance of the further creation of the National Electronic Library of Ukraine was determined, considering the Russian-Ukrainian war. The protection of the cultural heritage of the state in terms of documentary heritage, which is located in memory institutions throughout Ukraine (libraries, archives, museums, etc.) is carried out through its digitization and the creation of a reliable system of preservation and access to digital copies of objects. One of the problems related to the creation of the National Electronic Library of Ukraine – the automated library information system (ALIS) – has been identified, since libraries have different systems. It is worth emphasizing that the National Scientific Agricultural Library of the NAAS is also actively creating a digital library, digitizing, first, especially valuable and unique documents that are classified as national property. Among the main strategic directions of the library’s work is the introduction of modern information technologies. They provide effective provision of information and library services that influence the training of professionals and the quality of educational and research processes in all spheres of society. Considering the generalization of the important role of the concept of open access in the creation of the information industry space, it is worth noting that open access is not something new, but now this form is opening itself at a new level – it is a new round in serving modern users. It is through the digital information resource that libraries become more accessible because the freedom and simplicity of independent search and selection of information is provided.

Keywords: informatization, innovative technologies, electronic library, digitization, digital document.

Introduction. In Ukraine, the agro-industrial complex is traditionally considered one of the main segments of the domestic economy, the further development of which is impossible without scientific and information support.

Agrarian science needs both optimal information within the country and access to global information resources and the prompt integration of research by domestic scientists into them.

The integration and globalization of science requires new approaches to its information support through the development of a strategy for the modernization of library and information activities through the implementation of state and international programs, projects, ensuring free access of citizens to global information resources, the development of the ideology of social and information equality and the availability of information with the simultaneous application of uniform standards, protocols, heterogeneous scientific environment.

Some domestic and foreign scientists devoted their publications to the study of the worldwide system of scientific agrarian information. The issue was repeatedly considered at scientific conferences, meetings and gatherings, reflected in various concepts, programs and laws.

Currently, the role of the scientific library is especially emphasized, its tasks are defined in the process of forming a new information society. This made it necessary to review the traditional functions of scientific libraries from the point of view of new information technologies. The relevance of the research is beyond doubt, because increasing the information and communication role of libraries dictates the need to use innovative technologies that increase the role, quality, and efficiency of library and information activities.

Analysis of recent research and publications. The works of V. Verhunov (2020), I. Borodai (2016), L. Tatarchuk (2022), V. Verhunov, V. Derlemenko, and G. Shamayeva (2011) are devoted to the study of implementation of the latest technologies in library and information activities, the issue of preservation of library funds of the NSAL of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences. Modern information capabilities of libraries, creation of digital content of the world and national book heritage are covered in the article by H. Solovei (2023). A comparative analysis of the implementation of digitization projects by domestic libraries was carried out by M. Shevchenko (2021). But their scientific output needs further analysis and study of some issues.

The purpose of the article is to reveal the practical application of innovative technologies in the activities of the National Scientific Agricultural Library of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences.

Presenting main material. The development of the global Internet, the emergence of non-traditional sources of information, including full-text digital databases, turned libraries into real information centers that became active conductors and distributors of information resources in the global information environment. The change in the nature of information activity, which is associated with the emergence and development of new global network technologies and geographically distributed information distribution systems, puts forward certain requirements for the planning and development of modern information and library systems [1].

For many years, traditional libraries developed means of organizing a huge amount of printed materials that make up the information base of scientific research. Hybrid libraries are real modern libraries that try to determine the place of digital and paper resources in a modern library, to perfectly present both information environments (paper and digital materials) to the user [1].

It is de facto recognized that the status of the traditional scientific library has changed: there has been an evolution in the direction from a passive “paper” book repository to an active distributor of digital information resources, that have become an essential and increasingly important component of library funds.

Scientific libraries have the task of radically improving the information provision of the agricultural industry in the context of sustainable development of society and state-building processes, which include, in particular, the achievement of a new level of service to scientists, specialists, and researchers based on traditional and modern information products and services.

Based on the systematic formation of own digital resources, increasing their potential and organization of access to internal and external digital resources, their use in scientific and information provision of agricultural science, education and technology, taking into account the requirements of the time, the National Scientific Agricultural Library of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences (NSAL of the NAAS) joined the processes of informatization and became a producer of its own digital information resources.

The service of readers with the help of information technologies is significantly different from the traditional one: global information resources become available to the user, individual conditions for the use of information are created, every real reader wants to become a virtual one, the characteristic feature of which is a high information culture.

The introduction of technological innovations into the activities of the library led to radical changes in the processes of creating, accessing and distributing information. Free access to the information resource became the basis of the reorganization of the user services of many libraries. Including connecting librarian workplaces to the Internet, full Wi-Fi coverage of the entire library area.

The online library service is continuously developing and provides remote access to library resources for a wide range of Internet users. The library page on the Facebook social network informs about the working hours, address; gives a link to the site; offers short notices about library activities. In the worldwide network, the National Scientific Agricultural Library of the NAAS is represented through the http://dnsgb.com.ua/ website, that has been operating since 2006 and is a multimedia portal that provides an exceptional opportunity to position the achievements of the institution in the information space, namely, it provides access to digital catalog and databases, digital bibliographic products of the library, online services: “Virtual Help”, document indexing, digital delivery of documents. An integral part of the website is a virtual reference service, which provides an opportunity to search for information about the availability of necessary publications in the fund, to create a thematic list of literature and to obtain other types of library services. Currently, the use of virtual communications and the capabilities of online services and programs is a prerequisite for library competitiveness. Therefore, virtual exhibitions are relevant and in demand – a new information library product that consolidates traditional and digital methods of information presentation; is an integral component of exhibition activity, an effective tool for attracting users to the library, a means of creating its positive image [2].

Traditionally, the library functions as an information hub, where all information flows in society intertwine for their further redistribution in accordance with the needs of users. And the latest digital technologies for the unlimited expansion of social connections of users are gaining weight, and libraries play the role of information support for these connections.

It is the activation of processes in the information society that requires libraries to create and further integrate new programs, actions, and proposals to provide the user with services that are in demand at the time, namely, the expansion of the range of services for working with book collections, rare editions, and historical documents stored in library institutions.

The emergence and development of the Internet, an unprecedented channel of communication and dissemination of information, contributed to the liberation of access to information from national barriers and borders. The new historical stage of the development of society, the global informatization of society caused the transformation of traditional information technologies and resources. The Internet and other digital information sources have become an important and integral part of the global community. Social progress began to be determined by the process of accumulating knowledge. One of the logical consequences of this was the beginning of the process of creating digital libraries, the main task of which was the integration of information resources and effective navigation through them. Currently, there are no standardized definitions of the term “digital library”. For a long time, the terms “virtual”, “electronic”, “computer”, “online” and “digital library”, which today are often considered synonymous, were used simultaneously. Analysis of the evolution of professional terminology in this field showed that the vast majority of Ukrainian specialists use the term “electronic library”, and Western specialists use the term “digital library” [3].

It is worth noting that in Ukraine, the creation of the National Electronic Library began at the end of the 1990s with the Law of Ukraine “On the National Informatization Program”, which provided for the development and approval of the state program “Electronic Library”.

The library community joined the discussion and implementation of the action plan regarding the formation of the national system of electronic libraries and information resources, in particular, the creation of the National Electronic Library in Ukraine. First, in the National Library of Ukraine named after V. I. Vernadskyi, later, since 2000, – libraries of universities and research institutions of Ukraine.

A new stage in the development of the national electronic library system began in 2010, when the President of Ukraine set the task of creating a National Electronic Library: “The national project should be the creation of a National Electronic Library, which will combine educational, scientific, university, and museum resources into a single network”. At the highest state level, a clear emphasis was placed on the need for a comprehensive solution to the problem – the creation of a national electronic library, that, along with the task of preserving the historical and cultural heritage, will also perform the function of accumulating educational and scientific materials and ensuring access to them. Plans to create a “full-scale electronic library” were confirmed on March 17, 2011 at a meeting of the Public Humanitarian Council under the President of Ukraine. On April 7, 2011, in his speech with the annual Message to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the President once again emphasized the importance of the introduction of modern technologies, the formation of accessible educational electronic libraries as key areas of education reform [4].

In 2023, at a coordination meeting of representatives of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine, the State Archives Service of Ukraine, the NGO “Ukrainian Library Association”, national, state, university and public libraries, national museums and archives, the project to create the National Electronic Library of Ukraine (NEBU) with the support of UNESCO and IFLA was announced. The goal of the project is to protect the cultural heritage of Ukraine in terms of documentary heritage located in memory institutions throughout Ukraine (libraries, archives, museums, etc.) by digitizing it and creating a reliable system of preservation and access to digital copies of objects via the Internet on a long-term basis. Currently, the experience of libraries of other countries in creating national-level electronic libraries and the experience of Ukrainian libraries, archives, museums, and business have been studied.

It is extremely important to realize that an electronic library is not an analogue of a traditional library. It differs in the types of information media, technological processing of formation, organizational forms of creating and serving users, rights to information products and their distribution, means of navigating readers to resources and services. Its main tasks are to ensure prompt access to scientific resources, the formation of an effective toolkit for conducting scientific research, preventing the loss of valuable scientific assets for future generations, and guaranteeing effective navigation.

The electronic library of the NSAL of the NAAS, the complex formation of which began in 2011, is a database of distributed digital resources of its own generation, digitized, borrowed arrays, which makes it possible to reliably accumulate, store and effectively use digital documents accessible to the user in a convenient form through data transmission networks, which aims to achieve a qualitatively new level of completeness and efficiency in meeting the informational needs of agricultural science and production. In fact, it is a distributed information system, which makes it possible to accumulate, store and use various collections of digital documents. Practice shows that the implementation of information and library processes in the activities of the library does not remain unnoticed by readers [5].

The concept of open access plays an important role in the creation of industrial information space. For ease of use, folders “Open access information resources” have been created on computers in the media center, and resources can be found on the library’s website in the “Resources” section. There are agricultural databases, agricultural information portals, magazine collections, electronic libraries, which are open to access: more than 20 bibliographic, abstract, factual and full-text databases containing about 20 million records of the worldwide information flow and millions of full-text pages, which provided an opportunity to use international digital resources for scientific research.

The further development of the electronic library of the NSAL of the NAAS is promising. Therefore, the introduction of modern information technologies is one of the main strategic areas of work of the NSAL of the NAAS. With the emergence of new, “nontraditional” sources of information, traditional ideas about the library as an autonomous book repository with limited access to information resources are changing. Traditional library functions are changing, and new ones are emerging, which determine the new role of libraries in the information space – the role of a producer of digital resources and an information mediator and guide in the information space.

The experience of European countries, namely, Poland, Latvia, Germany, France, Great Britain, shows that the digitization of documents that have scientific, historical, cultural and artistic value is one of the best means of providing remote access for a wide range of users. In the vast majority of European countries, under the auspices of national libraries or in cooperation with other interested parties, national level electronic libraries have been implemented and are maintained in an up-to-date state.

Digitization of printed publications is a high priority activity of the National Scientific Agricultural Library of the NAAS and a method of preserving library funds. Accumulation of digital content is one of the main trends in today’s culture and an objective condition for the development of global information civilization. A comprehensive analysis of the experience of document digitization shows the importance of digital technologies for the preservation of world’s heritage [6].

The defining principles of creating digital resources in the NSAL of the NAAS are based on the principles of technological quality of digital materials and metadata, international standards, digital preservation strategies and providing wide access to digitized materials. The procedure, conditions and criteria are determined by certain limits, e.g., chronological, socio-value, quantitative, cooperation. The process of document digitization is preceded by a timely expert assessment of the condition of rare and valuable publications, their accounting, the presence of a control sheet of the movement of each original, etc [7].

With the designation of the funds of the NSAL of the NAAS as national property, digitization of documents became of primary importance. First of all, especially valuable and unique documents, publications of high demand are digitized [8].

Today, it is no secret that the Ukrainian library community has a number of issues. After all, we want libraries to be modern, visited physically and virtually, and there is no way to do it without an appropriate level of IT in libraries and without national projects [9]. A large number of libraries require computer equipment. Even more libraries need to connect to high-speed Internet and implement IT systems, at least for the website and automation of library processes – ALIS [9]. Automation brings a number of new opportunities to the work of the library, simultaneously eliminating a significant number of routine operations, which means increase of the efficiency of work.

The goal of automation of work processes is to increase the productivity and efficiency of the work of library employees and, as a result, a high-quality library service.

The most widely used systems in Ukraine are: ALEPH 500, Koha, Irbis, UFD (Ukrainian Fund House), UniLib, MARK-SQL, Absotheque UNICODE. Data exchange between different library systems is carried out using special data exchange formats

(UNIMARS|USMARS|RUSMARS).

Each library chose an automation systems at its own discretion according to its capabilities. Currently, the library community needs an ALIS that would support modern international standards. Thanks to the standards, you can fully connect your databases with other library databases, exchange bibliographic and authoritative records, participate in future national (centralized cataloging system and consolidated catalog) and existing international projects. For example, WorldCat is the world’s largest bibliographic database with more than 240 million records of all kinds of works in 470 languages. WorldCat was founded in 1967 by Fred Kilgour. The database is created by the joint efforts of more than 72,000 libraries from 170 countries.

The NSAL of the NAAS uses IRBIS, which is developed and owned by a Russian company. The armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine led to the rupture of all cultural ties. And, as a result, the Ukrainian library community needs to switch from Russian software to another, which would allow to establish effective technological processes. National and state libraries with a large volume of book collections and databases need both funds and human resources and state support for the transition to another ALIS. All over the world, institutions of this level operate with powerful commercial systems capable of meeting their needs at top level.

Conclusions. Summing up, we can state that a characteristic feature of today is the increase in the production of information in digital form. One cannot but agree with the opinion that the future of libraries lies not only in holding funds, but in providing access to information. The key to the competitiveness of each library as a center of access to a much larger universe of knowledge is the creation of a single integrated information space of the state.

The creative and fruitful work of leading libraries, thanks to the introduction of innovative forms and methods, through the modernization of library processes, is a significant contribution to the development of the information, socio-cultural environment in Ukraine.

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