Organization of Work of Volost Libraries and Village Libraries and Reading Rooms in the Districts of the Oryol Province in the First Years of Soviet Power

The article, based mainly on archival documents, considers the process of organizing the work of libraries in districts of the Orel province in the 1920s. Everywhere in towns and villages of the province, there were opened mass public peoples libraries, were created cultural and educational centres, village libraries and reading rooms, clubs, people’s houses and other cultural and educational institutions of new type. The author notes that during that period a lot of work was done in Oryol province to unite libraries into a single network. The article shows that the main “cell” of library network in the village becomes the volost library. Village libraries and reading rooms created in each locality were “the primary focus of cultural and educational work”.

Special attention is paid to the study of forms and methods of library services to the population in the volost libraries and village libraries and reading rooms in the 1920s. The political and educational activities of the volost libraries and village libraries and reading rooms were very diverse in the studied period. Taking into account the high level of illiteracy of the population of Oryol villages, libraries preferred active forms of “living word and work with a book”: loud reading, conversation, agitation staging, drama club, illustrative evening, etc. The author notes that special attention was paid to the organization of work with children in the volost library. It is important to understand that along with the common cultural development of the rural population, active propaganda work was carried out in order to solve the current political problems.

The 1920s is a separate period of library history, which is interesting for understanding by the modern Russian library science. The author concludes that this material expands and complements the existing understanding in regional library science of the librarianship of the Oryol province of the post-revolutionary decade, proves its stabilizing nature, which laid the basis for mass library construction in the following decades.

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