The methodologist staff in central libraries of the Russian Federation subjects

The relevance of the paper topic is due to the need to study the personnel situation in the methodological departments of the central libraries (CB) of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation (RF) in the context of sociocultural transformations and active development of digital technologies. The article objective is to present to the library community the results of the study ”Personnel of methodologists in the central libraries of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation” and subsequent observations of the work of the methodological departments of the regions. It reflects the analysis results of quantitative, job, age composition of the personnel, the educational level of specialists, functional changes in methodological units, the system of advanced training of methodologists, and problems of demanded educational activities. The staffing potential level is quite high in most libraries, because methodologists belong to a promising age group of 55 years with higher education, broad competences, sufficient work experience, regularly updating their knowledge.  At the same time, the author concerns the staff small number and further reduction in its number, the lack of opportunities to fill vacancies, the uneven workload of methodologists by a number of supervised libraries, the lack of standards for staffing special structural units and methodology to determine them, as well as the optimal structure of units. Methodists perform a wide range of responsibilities, being universal specialists, competent on various issues. There is a complication and increase in the requirements for methodical activities. 97,9 % of methodologists have higher education, but their large part does not have a special library education. Methodists receive regular training, but there are virtually no special training courses for methodologists in the training system. The identified problems require solution at coordinating the efforts of the methodological centers and state support.

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