Communicative Practices in Virtual Space: Features of Application in Modern Library Activities

The article focuses on the analysis of the change of the information and communication environment towards the dominance of virtual communication channels of the network character in it. This change is caused by the improvement of computer technologies and the growing influence of the Internet on all spheres of human activity. It is noted that one of the most widespread and accessible public communication tools today, with a high level of user engagement and sufficient communication tools, is social networks − online communities with similar interests, messaging, and sharing. The main features of social networks are accessibility, interactivity, personal involvement of users in the generation and retransmission of display content, maximum feedback speed, user personalization. Therefore, modern libraries are striving to use the social networking environment as a communication platform, which helps to convey information to users in a convenient way, expand the range of services to meet their information needs, advertise library services, attract new users, solve the professional tasks of librarians. The representations of libraries on social networks, by means of which the conditions for the fulfillment of these tasks are created, considerably extend, thus, the field for library to perform its communicative function. In this context, there has been a significant expansion of social communication space in general and of library in particular, due to the formation of two types of communication interactions − virtual (mediatized) and real (direct), which makes possible to consider the library as a multilevel communication system. Research into libraries virtual communication interactions, in particular through their representation on social networks, is recognized as deserved scientific attention. This communication examines the process of communication facilitated by network representations, and which in sociology and psychology has been called communicative practices. The definitions, formulated by scientific discourse means, of communicative practice as an orderly set of rational activity samples, are presented. This activity aims at transmitting / receiving socially meaningful information, or as typical means of communication, through which person interprets, represents his/her values and norms and builds common field of meaningful interaction of communication subjects. The features of virtual communication, specifics of communicative practices in online communities and the possibilities of their application in library network offices are considered.