Bibliotecile publice din Republica Moldova și criza lecturii

Abstract

The reading crisis is a situation, a social context that goes beyond the field of library science, education and cultural management. The critical moment of the book in a society is manifested by both quantitative and qualitative data, the latter having a long-lasting impact, configuring mentalities, creating socio-cultural and political representations. The critical spirit is a value of the book culture. It generates civilizational boundaries, a modus vivendi, cultural and educational habits, social development, scientific and cultural progress. Reading cultivates critical thinking, polemics, and human discernment. Public libraries, undergoing various transformations, accepting change and the crisis it often brings, are those community actors whose impact has grown more and more over the last three decades. Public libraries became democratized and modernized after the fall of the USSR. They began to relate with society horizontally, becoming centers of community development, abandoning the Soviet concept in which the library kept, conserved, and indexed a title or an author. We identify flexible institutions with applied strategies in the field of book impasse recovery.