Methodological problems of librarianship in N. S. Kartashov’s heritage

Abstract

The article is devoted to the 90^th anniversary of N. S. Kartashov’s birth and exposes his contribution into the theory and methodology of library science. The heritage of N. S. Kartashov, who has been a great scientist, tutor and library work organizer, is multi-faceted. It reveals the specific features of his scientific research: fundamentality, depth of investigation; practice orientation; accessibility of results; credibility and logics of argumentation; high level of methodological approach to research. The methodological problematics final expression has been presented in his textbook «Comparative Librarianship». The author has worked out a conception of a new trend in the library science, which is based on using a comparative librarianship method. Depicting the essence of comparative librarianship N. S. Kartashov states that it represents an independent branch of library knowledge having its own aims, tasks and specific subject. The branch tasks are revealed as the following: «It analyzes the state, main tendencies and laws of the library theory and practice development in different countries, regions and globally primarily in a comparative aspect; uncovers the ratio of global tendencies, and national and regional specificity; identifies positive and negative aspects of the international librarianship experience, forms and means of mutual library culture enrichment, and determines at last the borders and limits of foreign experience transition to national ground [12, p. 5]». N. S. Kartashov has worked out all attributes of the new direction: object, subject, principles, functions and methods. He has suggested the structure of the comparative librarianship method, procedure of research based on it, the system of criteria and indices of comparison; described the instruments which may be used in the investigation. In his book «Regional Librarianship» the author shows that a great scale and size of the country, variety of regions in natural, geographical, resource, social, economical, demographical aspects demand elaborating special strategies of regional development in all fields, and in particular in librarianship. Regional environment influences the process of forming information needs, the number and structure of readers, composition of collections and their usage, library resources development and organizing the public library services. N. S. Kartashov has substantiated a row of new categories: «local library system», «integrated library system», «territorial organization of librarianship», «territorial structure of librarianship», «library space», «regional library program» etc.