Services demand of scientific and technical libraries: professionals’ opinion

Abstract

The problems of demand is extremely significant for scientific and technical libraries (STL). The libraries within organizations depend directly on the support of people who make decisions. Their value for the enterprise development is no longer as obvious for senior management. There is a temptation to attribute STL’ low status not only to the «unfriendly» information policy by the management, but to admit that this problem is communicatory in a greater degree. The demand for any library is closely related to the establishing the connection with stakeholders. To generate user and non-user awareness, and raise conversance on available services and resources, STL need to find ways to promote services and resources. In the services marketing, promotion is any communicative activity which object is forming and stimulating interests to a product, organization or activity. STL need to choose the right vector of their activity, to reveal «bottleneck», overcoming which the library is able to take on. The paper represents preliminary results of a survey of STLs’ employees to identify the most perspective services (from the point of respondents’ view). It concludes that the majority of respondents noted the insufficient demand for library services, which is reflected in decrease in number of visits and printed publications demands. In this regard, STLs try to create digital collections and introduce modern services according to their technical equipment. Modern specialist lives under the time deficiency conditions. As a result, there is a lack of time to read including professional literature. Therefore, as a popular service is the preparation of thematic collections and digests. According to some respondents, «library staff should be ready to compile texts on request». In general, this is quite consistent with the global trend, the manifestation of which is the growing popularity of projects such as «Short Reading» and «Smart reading». Respondents indicated the relevance of such areas as intellectual property management. At the same time, they noted the insufficient level of existing competencies. STLs should be a guide of information culture for their users. The library is quite capable to occupy this niche, acting as a navigator, consultant and even coach. A similar experience already exists.