Research and Practice Conference “Constants and variables in librarianship”

On November 26, 2020, the research and practice conference “Constants and variables in librarianship” was held in Surgut, in offline-online mode on Zoom platform. The event was organized by Surgut Centralized Library System through the support of the Public Libraries Section of Russian Library Association (RLA).
Alexander S. Karaush, Cand. Sc. (Engineering), Associate Professor, RNPLS&T Director General, NALF Vice President, spoke at the Conference and delivered his paper “Library reality in IT. Modern requirement for specialists”.
He insisted that library specialists had to follow the recent trends in digital environment development and analyze features and details of complex technologies to understand the interaction of their industry with IT-systems and formats. He emphasized that copyright, modern software packages, digital document management were the competencies to be already learnt and mastered by librarians to interact comfortably with modern digital environment.
Well-known experts attended the Conference; among them Vadim K., Stepanov, Associate Professor of Library and Information Studies of Moscow State Institute of Culture; Natalya A. Ilibaeva, Chief Librarians of Library Technologies and Methodology Department of Surgut Centralized Library System; Irina Yu. Matveeva, Cand. Sc. (Pedagogy), Head of Library and Information Activities Chair, Chelyabinsk State Institute of Culture; Lyubov V. Perlova, Leading Psychologist of Library Technologies and Methodology Department of Centralized Library System, etc. The participants discussed transforming requirements for professional library activities, values and competences of various generations of librarians, problems of publications selection for collection development and transformation of libraries’ internal and external environments through design and development.
The conference proceedings are available at Surgut Centralized Library System website.