Year of sustainability, openness, and new roles: A Ukrainian university library in wartime

  • Received March 22, 2023;
    Accepted April 5, 2023;
    Published April 10, 2023
  • Author(s)
  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.21(2-si).2023.14
  • Article Info
    Volume 21 2023, Issue #2 (spec. issue), pp. 114-122
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One year of russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine to seize its territory and destroy the Ukrainian people as a nation, its language, culture, scientific achievements, and educational traditions have demonstrated the incredible adaptability of universities and their libraries. This paper aims to analyze the administrative aspect of the urgent adaptation of library teams of Ukrainian higher education institutions to martial law conditions in the example of the Scientific Library of the Ukrainian State University of Science and Technologies (USUST). The paper considers the experience of survival, resilience, and adaptation of the USUST library to the war, which can be extrapolated to other libraries of Ukrainian higher education institutions. In addition, the study comparatively analyzes quantitative indicators of five university libraries as of January 1, 2022, and January 1, 2023. The main vectors of library activity are distance, openness, unification, and improvement of the single information space. The primary motivating factors for librarians’ resilience and adaptation to wartime working conditions are belief in the Armed Forces and the victory of Ukraine. The study emphasizes the importance of university libraries’ support of open educational resources as one of the methods of overcoming the Ukrainian linguocide. Library directors in wartime, with predominantly female staff, note the impact of psychological factors on their professional activities. Despite the threatening trends, libraries continue to support educational and scientific processes in their universities, launching new directions of activity.

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    • Table 1. Statistics of the university libraries of Ukraine
    • Conceptualization
      Tetiana Kolesnykova
    • Data curation
      Tetiana Kolesnykova
    • Formal Analysis
      Tetiana Kolesnykova
    • Funding acquisition
      Tetiana Kolesnykova
    • Investigation
      Tetiana Kolesnykova
    • Methodology
      Tetiana Kolesnykova
    • Project administration
      Tetiana Kolesnykova
    • Resources
      Tetiana Kolesnykova
    • Software
      Tetiana Kolesnykova
    • Supervision
      Tetiana Kolesnykova
    • Validation
      Tetiana Kolesnykova
    • Visualization
      Tetiana Kolesnykova
    • Writing – original draft
      Tetiana Kolesnykova
    • Writing – review & editing
      Tetiana Kolesnykova