Why do you need a library?

On International Reading Day , a publisher, a librarian, a literary critic and the founder of an intelligent bookshop reveal what a library should be like for children.

Anna Narinskaya, literary critic, special correspondent for Kommersant Publishing House

Firstly, I don’t see much difference between a children’s library and a library in general. Both the Internet and multimedia should be in any library. But for us, these words are an absolute substitute, if you ask any library director who now wants to please his superiors, deputies, etc. and make the library meet some requirements, then the first thing this person will say is: “We will now have the Internet and multimedia.” This can all happen at home, in a cafe, in a gaming center, and the library has absolutely nothing to do with it.

The first thing that should be in a library is books. And these must be paper books, because as an object, and especially for a child, a book cannot be replaced by anything. And the question here is not only in their quantity, but in ensuring that they are correctly selected and correctly presented. So that they are easy to find and want to take. So that the child develops an understanding that there are questions that he can answer only by looking at a book. And that there is a certain part of life that becomes much more interesting if books are present in it. And therefore, in my opinion, children's libraries are not a question of an Internet outlet, it is a question of two things - a book collection and, almost always, funding. I know libraries, especially in provincial cities, where there has been no renewal of the collection for ten years.

I think that the person who could come up with some kind of network system, a franchise, so that people could repeat it - each in their own library and in their own city, would be an absolute genius. It should be based on activities with children, on what kind of books there should be, what kind of funds there should be, how books should be presented. The issue of book selection is simply decisive. Now this is a little better, but, for example, in the second half of the 90s - early 2000s, the amount of trash that was published and received in libraries was incalculable. There are absurd translations of wonderful books - for example, "Carlson". Simply because they did not want to pay the copyright holders and simply translated the texts almost by computer. Libraries are filled with all this trash, and they offer it to children as books. All this, in my opinion, is paramount.

We must understand that multimedia and a book for a child are in conflict. What do our libraries, which are richer and have terminals, do? They just become internet cafes. There are many such examples. A child, about 13 years old, comes home and his mother asks him: “Where have you been?” He answers: “In the library.” And mom is very happy. And if he said that he was in an Internet cafe, she would not be so happy.

I don’t see any possibility in the coming decades that the book will be completely replaced by some kind of electronic variation. Because the more a child gets carried away by even the most beautiful educational games and pictures accompanying the text, the less he will be carried away by the text itself. It is in the West that everyone understands this very well; everything is better organized there.

Boris Kupriyanov, publisher, one of the co-founders of the Phalanster bookstore

I will say something completely radical: there should not be a library for children and adults. There should be one library. It can be divided into zones. The presence of a children's library is a completely Soviet phenomenon. A modernist phenomenon. I like it, but the problem is that it was invented to promote reading among children. And nowhere in the world is there such a division. In Russia there are also youth libraries - a completely crazy thing.

A modern library should be for people - this is the first and most important point. Today's libraries are more for management. It must be mobile, must respond to all trends that should exist in society, to all moods, to all directions. It must, without in any way forgetting its main functions as a book repository, move to a new stage of development. To become a place for truly promoting reading and to restore a function that has long been lost in our country - to become the cultural center of a microdistrict, district, village, city. The place where people gather not only to read (this should be the main reason), but also where people gather to somehow improve themselves intellectually and culturally.

In Europe, for example, and in Latin America, the library is also considered as a city living room. As a place where various informal cultural events take place. Many Moscow libraries cope with this function easily. This must be a place for some growth. Not specialized, not a branch of some institute or theater, but a place where local, horizontal connections are united. The assemblage point of horizontal activity.

Alexander Gavrilov, critic, literary figure

Libraries, before and now, have two functions: the library is a collective information treasure, that is, it provides access to those volumes of information that are too expensive to purchase for private use. On the other hand, the library is a community center that performs other functions there in the same areas. It is the skillful combination of these two functions that allows libraries to be role models throughout the world. A children's library is no different in this regard.

Why are library projects in Russia not successful in large numbers - because they believe that any information is a treasure. The typical position of a Russian librarian is that we lie on books; we don’t know what’s in these books and won’t tell anyone. Because until the end of the 80s, we all existed in a situation of information deficiency. The current creature's only main task is to find as many sources of information as possible. Beginning in the late 80s, the culture of information overload was fully formed in the 90s. The biggest oversupply is associated with the advent of the Internet and other electronic media. Today the task is to set up an individual filter to cut off unnecessary information. And today’s task of the library is to provide access not only to any books with pictures, but, mainly, to be the tool that allows you to distinguish good books from bad, useful from useless, stupid. Help in the formation of this very individual information filter.

If we look at successful book projects of recent times (among them is the library bus of the Russian State Children's Library (Russian State Children's Library - PP), or the bookselling bus "Bumper", or the transformation of the Turgenev library from what it was into a normal library center), then we will see that everywhere these two things are combined in one way or another - the formation of the reader’s communal request, meaning bus projects, and the selection of high-quality material and an explanation of why it is high-quality.

Children's libraries lack old functions - they do not know anything about new writers, books, or new information environments. Nothing about what their territory of existence is. They still assume that providing physical access to the book is their job. This is wrong.

Olga Myaeots, head of the children's literature department of the All-Russian State Library for Foreign Literature named after M.I. Rudomino

A children's library should be like what I have now: I stand on one leg, do ten things, and something is constantly happening here. There are a lot of children around me now, and we are making up stories about the three little pigs.

In general, a children's library is like a train station. People come and go, living here should be comfortable for both adults and children. There must be a lot of light in the room. It’s not so much important what technologies are here, but it’s important that it is clean and bright. In addition to books, computers, you need something creative to happen all the time. This is a place for people. The most convenient place.

A very good definition was given by the English film director Peter Greenaway. "What is heaven?" - they asked him once. “It’s a library in the garden,” the director replied.