Academic and research libraries in the digitalization era

Abstract

Academic librarians have to upgrade continuously their competences to meet the demands of researchers and emerging requirements to the profession. The authors present the results of the survey of 227 researchers of academic and research institutions. The 2023 survey was designed to reveal the most demanded competences of academic librarians. The positive correlation is found between the frequency of library services use and the size of academic institution the library belongs to; the smaller the institution – the more frequently the researchers use the library independently of their institution specialization. The authors argue that the academic library services have been still demanded in the scholarly environment. The younger researchers (up to 23 yo) use the library services more intensively than the other age groups. The scientific community expects the librarians to master the competences of working with publishing systems, reference databases, new information systems and web-services