Development of General Issues of Library Science: Modern Problem and Situational Discourse

The author presents the problems of general library science that need profound development. First, it is necessary to determine the relationship between the concepts of “library science” and “general library science”, as well as the content of the concepts of “partial library science”, “special library science”, “electronic library science”, etc. The author emphasizes to bring the Standard GOST 7.0—99 “Information and library activities, bibliography. Terms and definitions or coming to replace it the State Standart GOST “Library and information activities, bibliography. Terms and defenitions” into compliance with the Federal Law No. 78-FZ of 29.12.1994 “On Librarianship”, primarily in terms of the relationship between the concepts of “information and library” and “library and information”. Both of these terms are incorrect. Then, it is necessary to give the scientific definition of the concept of “library”, which differs from its normative-legal definition, as well as to abandon the terms and concepts artificially introduced into the library science thesaurus. It is required to separate the concepts of “librarianship” and “library activity”, to abandon the idea of library as a social institution for the provision of services. The existing approach leads to the steady displacement of cultural activities from the sphere of government responsibility into purely market relations, forms a false understanding of the phenomenon of cultural values, from which the spiritual component is derived. In the field of services, being a type of marketing, albeit non-commercial, as it is in librarianship, the preservation, production, transmission and dissemination of spiritual values cannot be carried out. The author proposes in place of the concept of “service” as the ultimate goal of librarianship to put the concept of “goodness” and to understand the library as a social institution providing socially significant goodness. The system approach requires the development of each of the library components as a four-element system. The author declares the need to correct almost the entire conceptual apparatus of library stock studies and catalogue science, littered with the introduction of the term “information resource” instead of the concept of “document”, which, in turn, needs considerable clarification. The author makes proposal for the implementation of the current actual tasks of general library science.