Libraries and legal regulation: Council on Culture takes a close look at libraries’ legal regulation

The Federation Council of the Russian Federation held the first in 2010 session of the Council of the Federation Commission on Culture under the Chairman of the Federation Council, which had a special focus on the legal regulation of libraries.

The discussion brought together members of the Federation Council, State Duma deputies, representatives of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, librarians, and representatives of the scientific community. The participants highlighted issues of unsatisfactory financing, inadequate IT implementation, insufficient acquisition of library funds, and social security benefits of libraries’ staff. Andrei Busygin, Deputy Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation and Viktor Fyodorov, Director of the Russian State Library delivered reports at the meeting.

Russia has been rapidly losing its status of the most reading country, emphasized Sergei Mironov, Chairman of the Federation Council, addressing the participants of the session. He labeled the current situation “systematic decline of the culture of reading”. The Speaker of the upper chamber of the Federal Assembly cited the figures of the VCIOM, according to which only 22% of our country’s population read books on a regular basis, other 35% - read too rare or didn’t read at all. He focused the attention of participants on the dramatic decline of the libraries’ role in the society: according to sociological polls, only 14% of the population used books from public libraries.  

Sergei Mironov stressed that Russia lacked a single system of library management. That fact caused an efficiency decrease in formation and utilization of library resources. Another problem is wear and tear of storage units of libraries’ funds as well as the equipment of the majority of libraries.

“Rural libraries are facing serious challenges, - highlighted the Chairman of the Federation Council. –Meanwhile, for some people they are the only window into the world’s cultural and information space”. The Head of the Russian Parliament pointed out the necessity to computerize rural libraries and drew special attention of participants to the fact that not more than 15% rural libraries had a telephone communication.

According to Sergei Mironov, school libraries are also in a poor condition, though their mission is to promote moral and cultural upbringing of the young generation.

Another crucial and grave problem is a low salary of librarians.

As regards the issues of the legal regulations of the library science, the Speaker of the Federation Council commented on the “unfriendly nature of some legislation articles towards our libraries”. In particular the toughening of copyrights observance requirements can demolish the social efficiency of libraries’ policy. The example of rights violation is the most dramatic among the handicapped, who are in fact deprived of the constitutional right of getting a service not within the library. Problems of legal nature emerge during the conversion of books into an electronic format. Sergei Mironov emphasized the urgency of updating the legislation relevant to the copyright and intellectual property issues.

A profound concern of the professional community is for the Federal Laws “On the Placement of Orders for the Delivery of Goods, Performance of Works and Rendering of Services for State and Municipal need” and “On the General principles of Organization of Local Self-Government in the Russian Federation”. They have badly affected the acquisition of library funds.

The Chairman of the Federation Council called for introduction of changes into the tax legislation concerning the issues of library funds’ taxation.

On the other hand, Sergei Mironov stressed that a series of urgent legal acts necessary for the library science had been adopted in Russia: parliamentarians had introduced changes into the Law on Library science, new concepts such as “book memorial” and “a library fund” had been introduced, regulations on formation and preservation of the national library fund had been established.