Service Department

Head of Department: Veronika D. Schubert

Phone: (+73822) 78-51-10

E-mail: haritonova@lib.tsu.ru

Location: New Building, 2^nd floor, office 44

Department Structure

• Reading Rooms Service: 9 reading rooms
• Service of Electronic Delivery, Registration, and Analysis
• Circulation Desk
• Interlibrary Loan
• Reader Registration Service
• Сollection Development Service
• International Resource Center
• English Reading Room
• German Reading Room

Main activities

Informational support of educational and research activities at Tomsk State University:

• Prompt service for the readers with documents and electronic resources in different branches of knowledge, in reading rooms and at the Circulation Desk.
• Consultations of all types and fulfilling inquiries.

Cooperating with the faculties and research departments of the University to inform them of the services and resources of the Library, promote the Library services, and provide informational support for educational and research activities:

• Individual informational service for professors, staff, and postgraduates
• Providing information about new arrivals, available electronic library resources, and how to access them
• Electronic delivery of documents and interlibrary loan services

Monitoring the informational needs of the users.

Main services (free)

- Registration of new Library users, issuing and extending reader cards.

- Providing documents at users’ request.

- Copying information from databases to readers’ digital media.

- Fulfilling bibliographic and information inquiries.

- Providing individual consultations on searching and using different information resources (including electronic ones)

- Assigning the universal decimal classification number to theses

- Online inquiries

- Informing professors and postgraduates about Library services via email and meetings

- Organizing and holding exhibitions, meetings with the Library users, mass events, and tours

Additional services (paid)

• copying
• printing
• scanning

Historical information

In 1961, the Service Department was established as a structural unit of the Library. Until then, services had been carried out in two reading rooms (one for students and one for researchers) and at the delivery desk.

Establishing the Department was the beginning of arranging a system of branch-specific services for the users. In the span of 10 years, 3 branch-specific divisions were created, each having its own reading room and circulation desk, and 4 dormitory reading rooms were also created.

In 1978, after the New Building had been put into operation, academic libraries and reading rooms were placed primarily there. Simultaneously, a number of new reading rooms were created: Journal Room, Social-Politics Literature Room, Microfilms Room, and Magazines Room (the stock of which was in open access for the first time).

The end of the 1990s was marked by fundamental changes in the system of user services, when the Library was awarded a grant from a program financed by the European Union.  The Library became a member of the “Developing Library Management” project and began a process of strategic planning and implementing a VTLS library system. In 1996, a process was begun to prepare branch-specific reading rooms with open access and to combine branch-specific circulation desks into one Department of Electronic Delivery of Documents.

In 1997–2007, the following branch-specific reading rooms with open access were organized: Philosophy and Sociology, History and Linguistics, Fiction, Law and Economics, and Applied Sciences. The American Information Center and German Reading Room were added to the structure of the Department. A database of Library users was created, old-fashioned library passes were replaced with modern plastic reader cards, and a computer-controlled system of entrance control was implemented.

Since 2005, the Department has conducted surveys on various topics regarding the Library services.

In 2014, a target model was presented that defined the “growth zones” of the Department, such as: transforming and updating the conventional forms of informational library services based on using the foremost IT-technologies according to the strategic goals of the University and the changing needs of the readers; the emphasis is placed on interacting in the virtual environment and actively advancing the information to the user. All this is based on the anticipatory development of forms of information and means of accessing, transforming, and storing this information with the help of modern telecommunication systems and technologies.

The results of the research “Users of the Library on the library space” and the concept of Research Library space transformation led to establishing a 24/7 Information Center in the structure of the Department. It currently provides access to the information resources around the clock, 7 days a week. There are silent places for individual work and co-working zones for meeting or socializing.

At present, the Department has a staff of 40 employees.