Higher education for library professionals in Russia: analysis of trends 2014–2020

From 2014 to 2020 Russian library sphere and LIS education went through the active transformation process that continues today. This transformation was forced by several factors. Firstly, the professional standard was developed, but was not implemented. Federal State education standard for LIS, on its turn, was renovated twice – 3+ version accepted in 2015–2016 and 3++ version implemented in 2017. Secondly, the development of digital environment, digital culture and digital economy in Russia led to the changes both mission of the libraries and the demand for higher education from potential students. Lastly, several factors of latest years also influenced both libraries and LIS education - in 2019 National project «Culture» started and stated education of LIS professionals as one of its priorities, and in 2020 the pandemic of COVID-19 influenced both work of the libraries and education process for young professionals. The aim of our research was to get the overall picture of dynamics of key indicators of LIS education programs on the period from 2014 to 2020 with the tools of data analysis. Data was gathered from the open bank of Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Russia. The number of applications for the programs, number of students accepted for the program (state funded education and commercial education) and the number of female students accepted were analyzed for bachelor and master’s degrees. The gathered data helps to look for trends and to interpret (with some limits) these trends using the factors that might influence the enrollment campaigns of LIS education programs for the period under study. The major limitation of the research was the design of desk study, so the sociological methods of data gathering were not used. We consider sociological research as one of the major perspectives for the research.