Revista Română de Biblioteconomie și Știința Informării = Romanian Journal of Library and Information Science

Public libraries and vulnerable categories of users

Corina Dovîncă — 2025-02-10

This study deals with a current concept, that of social inclusion, in relation to the public library – an institution with a strong civic responsibility. Regarding the need of aligning with the dynamics of society, the library is constantly undergoing successive changes, assuming new roles and transforming from a passive space for documents storage, to an active centre for social interaction, a community space, a place of diversity and dialogue, a meeting place for all members of a community. The role of public library in facilitating the process of social inclusion, namely the inclusion of vulnerable people in the community, can be considerable, but the relationship between these concepts is still little explored, at least in the Romanian bibliographic landscape. The second part of this study presents a brief typology of vulnerable people in Romania. The choice of the described categories starts from the main problems facing the Romanian society at the moment, the emphasis being placed on the needs of vulnerable people and on the role that public libraries can have in satisfying them.

Mission and operation of the Reference Service of the American University Library

Bogdan Alexandru Gheuka — 2025-02-10

Therefore, the existence and operation of a university library in the contemporary era cannot be conceived outside of the computerization and digitization process, and a collection that does not include documents on this innovative type of support is a nonsense. That is why the permanent training of librarians in the area of information and documentation technologies, communication and information in real time, accurately, are determining elements in the contemporary process of modernization and continuous evolution of libraries in general and university and specialized libraries in particular. If the reference librarian doesn't fulfill his duty, the library fails in its mission. The reference librarian is the key to the success of the services rendered by the library. The library services must revolve around information users. Since the university and academic libraries provide the informational support to a homogeneous, well-defined public, the introduction of new information technologies in libraries led to the need to diversify the range of services provided, beyond traditional library services and products. Reference librarians have practically become IT specialists rather than book handlers or "collection keepers", good connoisseurs of one or more languages of international circulation. The future of university libraries, given that they are no longer the only information managers, depends on how they will manage to adapt their services and collections to user requirements. To this end, I have briefly addressed in this paper-work, the way reference services are organized and function within university library systems from USA.

The library business

Bogdan Vătavu — 2025-02-10

In this article I investigate the way free market ideology permeated the public space of the library. Employing concepts borrowed from critical theory (such as the central concept of commodification) and from the field of critical information literacy, I attempt to outline the manner in which the free market has impacted the public library, from the privatization of management and outsourcing, to more subtle forms of commodification such as the push for information, entertainment and consumerism, to the detriment of knowledge, education and citizenship. I conclude the article by summarizing some propositions from professionals in the field which are meant to decelerate the advance of the free market on the domain of the public library and to reclaim it for the community.