| Popis: |
In the article the author explores the semantic signs of the term «subscriber» and features of its use in library activity in Ukraine in the middle of the ХІХ and at the beginning ХХ century. The author described the main historical factors that influenced the formation of the content of this concept, inparticular in connection with the development of commercial libraries, and proposed the definition of the term «subscriber» on the basis of studying the specifics of its use in public bookshops and the payment of library services in public libraries. The specificity of formation and tendencies of the development of the cost of payment for the use of publications in public libraries of the specified period was investigated. The purpose of the proposed article is to distinguish characteristics of such a category of readers as subscribers of public libraries of the 19th and early 20th centuries; disclosure of the specificity of the formation and trends of the development of the social and professional membership of public libraries of the specified period. In his scientific work the author widely used general scientific and historical methods of research: historical-comparative, chronological, biographical methods, the method of diachronic analysis, etc. The following definition of the term is proposed «subscriber» (reader, user) - a kind of user of public libraries in the Russian Empire in the second half XVIII - at the beginning XX century, which was the main body of book readers, whose representatives, as a rule, were distinguished by a constant interest in reading and a clear continuity of visits to the library institution for a fee. Subscribers were the names of those who regularly came to the library and received books and magazines for reading under the certain conditions of the corresponding fee for library services (for a month, a quarter, six months, a year, etc.), visiting a reading room book-book or ordering a publication home. The main categories of subscribers were: «annual subscribers», subscribers for six months, for three months and a month. It should be noted that not all visitors (readers) of the library were its subscribers. In the Russian Empire and in the Soviet Union the cost of library services was always differentiated, depending on the categories of subscribers (readers), their material status and social status. The payment for the use of library services reflected the real social inequality and changed in accordance with socio-political changes in society. However, both in the Russian Empire and during the Soviet era in the 1920’s, there were free public libraries and various forms of providing free library services for certain categories of subscribers (readers). With the development of democratic relations in society, book library funds gradually became increasingly accessible to readers of various social groups. Free-of-charge forms of library services were increasingly distributed to various layers of the population and representatives of different social classes. Accordingly, the term «subscriber» gradually lost its sense of meaning associated with the payment of the service and was increasingly replaced by the notion of «reader», which finally took root at the turn of the 1920’s and 1930’s until this term was finally left out of public use. |
