Audiovisual components in russian libraries'local literary resources

Abstract

Local lore studies is one of the most important public libraries activities. It aims not only to gather and preserve the cultural and historical heritage of the region, but also to ensure its accessibility, to stir and maintain the public interest in valid local lore information, to promote and popularize local lore sources.

There is a growing interest in local history and culture in contemporary society, so libraries use various tools to disseminate local history content, encouraging its scientific, educational and cultural use. Library local studies are intensively developing in the electronic environment now and libraries are increasingly focusing on remote users. One of the priority activities in that regard are various electronic resources and services covering all local studies types: historical, literary, ethnographic, geographical, ecological. Researchers found local lore literary resources to be best developed on library websites because of growing humanitarian nature of local studies.

Additionally, in recent years, new media formats have emerged and developed, impacting on information delivery and consumption. In particular, traditional printed forms shift to more visual, easy-to-understand and attractive ones, as for example video.

The websites of large Russian national, regional, and central libraries were examined to ascertain how widely videos are used in library local literary resources. The analysis revealed that video documents are presented on forty-one of eighty-four libraries websites. In thirty-two other libraries, the local literary video content is presented only on Youtube channels and not included in any information resource.

The bulk of the video content types is represented by documents generated by the libraries themselves and a smaller number are materials received from regional archives, museums and broadcasting companies, or created in collaboration with them. The videos produced by libraries are very diverse, from traditional book and exhibitions reviews to documentaries, videobooks, cartoons and stage performances. The most frequent video documents are biographical materials, book opening events and reviews, lectures, interviews and meetings aimed to introduce contemporary local writers and poets.

Furthermore, libraries not only provide users with ready-made video content, but involve them in its generation. These are usually various events, reading competitions, flashmobs and other initiatives to draw users attention to local authors or to local, regional or ethnic literature as a whole.

Thus, local lore literary activities not only have got online, in global information space, but libraries also successfully  introduce new forms of communication that help to present and promote the literary heritage and modern literary life of the region to the public around the world.