Potikha Andrii

Optimization of Library Collections in Ukraine in the Context of Hybrid War

Abstract: In the context of Russian aggression against Ukraine, the ideological confrontation has intensified. The propagated Russian language and culturein Ukraine is becoming a tool for propaganda of the “Russian world”. Russian politicians are trying to spread this ideology around the world, especially in Ukraine. In the last two decades of the USSR, the fusion of Russian and Soviet identities laid a powerful foundation for illiberal nationalism, which became the basis of Putin’s consolidated authoritarian regime, as wellas a source of racism, xenophobia and chauvinism. This ideology underlies many works of both fiction and pseudo-scientific literature from the USSR and the modern Russian Federation. At the beginning of large-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2022, Soviet and Russian books constituted up to 60 % of books stored in Ukrainian libraries’ collections. In some libraries, this percentage is lower, but there is a problem of what to do with it. According to the results of the study, the total collection of public libraries in Ukraine (rural, town and city) is almost 154,5 million units. Books published before 1991 make up more than 50 % of the collections of 40,8 % of city libraries and 50,4 % of rural and town libraries; publications from 1991-2013 makeup 20 to 50 % of the collections of 66,7 % of city libraries and 61,9 % of rural and town libraries; publications from 2014-2022 also make up 20 to 50 % of the collections of 33,2 % of city libraries and 22,3 % of rural and town libraries. In this regard, libraries have tightened the optimization of their collections, which includes not only the removal of harmful literature, but also the processing of scientific publications containing important information and not havingan ideological direction and having no analogues. In addition, an important factor is the replacement of seized literature with new modern Ukrainian publications. In Soviet times, all scientific literature was published almost exclusively in Russian, so it cannot be replaced or thrown out until it is replaced by appropriate publications. The question here is not how to clean up the collections, but on the contrary, how to saturate them with specialized literature. And this is a problem that will take long time, finances and personnel to solve.

Keywords: optimization of library collections, harmful literature, ideological confrontation.

  Full-text PDF    https://doi.org/10.15407/np.73.101     Citation

• Potikha Andrii (V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, Ukraine, Kyiv, [email protected]) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4750-1542

Cite:
Potikha Andrii (2024). Optimization of Library Collections in Ukraine in the Context of Hybrid War. Academic Papers of V. I. Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine, (73) 101-117. (In Ukrainan). doi: https://doi.org/10.15407/np.73.101

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