Acquisition Strategies: Challenges of Digital Age

The article focuses on the process of library acquisition at the CSL of Karazin University in the context of increasing digital media influence and revaluation of library in social and cultural life. The system approach to the library as a social institution is used as a methodology. In the beginning, the main statistics of CSL collections is shown: 3 419 910 total copies, including 1 174 105 magazines and 9356 annual sets of newspapers, more than500 000 copies that were published before 1917. There are three memorial libraries devoted to the Ukrainian writer Ivan Svitlychnyi (5065 copies), the famous reporter and the scientist Evhen Fedorenko (2135 copies), and the public activist Bohdan Zaputovich (1036 copies). The importance of the library collections in historical and cultural communications between generations is emphasized. The general communication function of the social institution of the library in diachronic (historical) and synchronic (contemporary-spatial) aspects is problematized. Synchronic approach to the library function is realized due to modern library services and the latest educational gadgets. Activities in CSL of Karazin University aimed to support integrating the university community into global educational and scientific trends are described: 31 894 interior digital network documents, 1360 paid online textbooks, a number of accesses to Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) for students. On the one hand, the increase in services in the library renews the interest of users. On the other hand, it is revealed the imbalance between the Instruction for stocktaking of documents that are collected in the library funds and library practices that appeared due to digital technologies. This applies to the requirements for an electronic document to be on a substantive medium. This causes difficulties in stocktaking for digital documents. As a conclusion, it is stated that saving the library as a social institution that will function as transfer of information to future generations depends on a material and technical base that capable to provide accumulation, competent storage and access to significant amounts of digital data, which undoubtedly become the dominant media.