Enache, Part 3
3. Current Problems of Romanian Librarianship
Although since 1989 Romanian libraries have developed in a positive way — I shall mention firstly the automation and the founding of the Department of Bibliology and Information Science, which may be one of the greatest positive changes in post–revolutionary Romanian librarianship — there are still numerous reasons for concern.
Our library legislation has already become obsolete and it is insufficient for the work conditions, duties and aspirations of librarians in today’s world. Despite this, we must recognise that in the last years, several new laws have arisen concerning libraries such as the Deposit Copy Law, the Copyright Law, the Archives Law and the Library Law. Without this type of law, Romanian librarians had an acute sense of professional insecurity.
Our material resources are completely insufficient. Many libraries are inappropriately housed so that many readers’ demands cannot be satisfied. The document collections of works published abroad in the past 50 years are insignificant and do not provide correct information for Romanian specialists. An insufficient budget deprived all fields of study of the purchase of valuable and important books and representative serials. Subscriptions to a number of major periodicals had to be interrupted for several years and many series have remained incomplete for a long period of time.
Ignoring the financial needs of the libraries also determines negative consequences for activities in automation, so that today only a few libraries in the country could be automated. There are no networks or internal links; international connections are poor; there are only very few Internet connections. In a world where information transfer has become a prerequisite to progress, these shortcomings are forcing an anachronism on Romanian libraries and are closing the door to cultural and scientific life in them.
The library status generally does not coincide with all dimensions of expression found in this professional category. However, status projects do exist and they will enjoy recognition in the future. Through them librarians will rediscover in public, school and academic libraries the option they have earned.
Due to the librarians’ low salaries, which most likely represent the most under–appreciated category in the field of culture, a constant fluctuation in staff with various specializations has spread throughout the libraries. Also due to the lack of experienced specialists, libraries are confronted with great difficulties concerning a certain problem of highest importance — library services management, and especially strategic planning.
After a tremendous number of planning forms as one of the catastrophic totalitarian tendencies, this process is being neglected today, causing a certain lack of perspective and chaos in library activities. “Who does not look forward does not understand the dimensions of the present anymore either,” as a famous Romanian bibliologist once said.
In a library, planning is a very complicated process as it is difficult to make prognoses for such a dynamic field from which the effects can only be felt decades or centuries later. As well, the support for planning in the field of culture was not even accepted lightly. Planning library services is a relatively new thing as the famous bibliologist Carlos Victor Penna stressed not long ago. We must realize that in the present there is still no unifying, scientifically accepted methodology able to guide these activities. The scientific perspectives in the library profession have no national basis as they comprise only the activities of a few departments and that is only because no one is willing to see that libraries, with their astounding contributions to the preservation of knowledge, are one of the most important factors for development in society.
The implementation of democracy and the transition to a market economy in Romania has not been advantageous to Romanian libraries; however one can say that the current mood has had a hostile effect on this development and cultural progress. Although educated professionals have tried to emphasize the importance of libraries and their integrative role in a professional strategy, they have come up against bureaucratic obstacles, bitter irony or collective silence.
What Romanian librarianship needs today is a national vision and an understanding of the national importance of libraries. Only very few have admitted the internal inability of libraries to cooperate in order to determine culture and the transfer of information, thus fault must be found equally on the inside and on the outside. Even a macroeconomic framework doesn’t work, as it was shown by the problems encountered in coordinating networks as well as in orienting and educating librarians.
An overall problem in cultural structures is the lack of professional managers. Library management is not able to set up interdisciplinary programs with clear objectives, nor to analyze correlation and expenditures, reinforce interdisciplinary fields intelligently or take on responsibility. Other elements of planning related to library sciences education, required or elective, are being ignored.
Finance, the most important part of management and planning, does not have tangible dimensions as it is far removed from the current needs of libraries. Internal elements in business management are determined by norms and indicators (indices), and with these interlinked with the quality of librarians’ work, the material reward of performance and the size of financial resources have no official character.
The departmental division does not promote useful solutions. Although it provides for directorates and services assigned to coordinate the libraries, no qualitative program has been developed. These bodies, which are, unfortunately, Cinderella ministries, are structurally not involved in the most important activities in the field of education and culture. Even the facilities which are essential for the development of library services will have no better perspectives if the present institutional attitude is not overcome. This leads to solutions which lack compatibility, quality and style.
Many of these problems and difficulties with which the library profession is confronted originated in the lack of specialists in this field and in the insufficient attention paid to planning. Therefore, we must act immediately:
- The adoption of a librarianship strategy which considers this planning as a fundamental element of market economy, in which the structures and objectives of information are becoming more intense and more variable so that the planning and management of library services cannot remain indifferent to social dynamics.
- The integration of library services planning into national education and research planning.
- Systemic and systematic planning of library services at a national level. Only after this occurs, aspects such as development, salary problems and material demands can be given full recognition.
- An increase in responsibility for professional library associations by unifying individual efforts for the promotion of their own field and as part of the general progress of automation.
- Removal of the conservatives still dominating library thinking.
- The development of research on a national basis in the field of library and information science.
- The creation of the national library information programme. Automation today is the only means for rationalizing library science processes.
- Breaking away from the professional isolation through initiatives and direct, mutual ties with the library organizations from neighboring and other European countries.