A survey of the condition of academic and research libraries in Armenia twenty years after independence, assessed according to the ACRL's Standards for Libraries in Higher Education. Presentation delivered by D. Aram Donabedian and John Carey at Spring Research Forum of LACUNY International Relations Roundtable, May 2012. Drawn from the paper: Donabedian, D., Carey, J., and Balayan, A. (2012). Twenty years after: Armenian research libraries today. LIBER Quarterly: The Journal of European Research Libraries 22(1), 3-41. Available at http://liber.library.uu.nl/index.php/lq/issue/view/429

1. Twenty
Years
After:
Armenian
Research
Libraries
Today

2. After more than seventy years of central funding from
Moscow, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left its
republics without the necessary funds to support their
infrastructures.

3. Monastery libraries

4. “Gospel of Eight
Painters”
Title page from
illuminated manuscript of
Gospel of Matthew
by
Armenian artist Toros
Roslin, 13th
century

5. First Armenian printed book,
“Urbatagirk (Friday Book)”, 1512

6. Yerevan

7. Yerevan State
University
Yerevan State University
(YSU) Library, with two
million volumes, was
established in 1920 and
is the oldest academic
library in Armenia.
Thirteen thousand
students are enrolled in
Armenia's largest
university in 20 faculties
and in more than one
hundred departments.

8. The National
Library of Armenia
The National Library of
Armenia is the country's
library of record and holds
copies of all works
published within its
borders. It is also the
largest repository of rare
and early printed Armenian
books from 1512 to the
present. The Library was
founded in 1832 and is
comprised of
approximately seven
million volumes.

9. The Fundamental
Scientific Library
The Fundamental Scientific
Library (FSL) of the National
Academy of Sciences of
Armenia was founded in 1935
and contains three million
volumes. These include 16th
through 18th
century works in
Armenian, Russian and other
languages. In addition, the
library has 27 special
collections of the papers of
eminent Armenian artists and
scientists and regularly
publishes various
bibliographies and
biographies.

10. The Republican Scientific-Medical
Library (RSML) of Armenia
Established in 1939 as the
main source of medical
information for health
professionals, the library's
collection is comprised of
500,000 volumes. "The
RSML . . . provides education
and training to health
professionals and health
sciences librarians, and
manages a national network
of libraries of the major
health care institutions in
Armenia" (Braude, R.M.,
Shirinyan, A. & Zargaryan, T.,
2001).

11. The American University of Armenia,
Papazian Library
The Papazian Library of the
American University of
Armenia was established in
1991 with the founding of
the university. AUA’s
beginnings coincided to the
day with the founding of the
second Armenian Republic.
The library contains over
42,500 volumes and readers
may also access 73,000
online journals and books. It
is Armenia's only fully open-
stack library.

12. Mission, Goals and Objectives
• “[T]he libraries surveyed here display a
heterogeneous range of missions. . . . The
libraries . . . employ diverse means of
evaluating their performance and informing
patrons of the library’s accomplishments.”

13. Services
• “[F]our out of the five libraries maintain and
utilize qualitative and quantitative
measurements in terms of their ability to
serve users. . . . [A]ttention is centered on
supporting the following activities: acquiring
new digital resources, digitizing existing
collections and meeting accreditation
guidelines.”

14. Instruction
• “[T]he role of the librarian as one who works
with teaching faculty to develop library
curricula in support of specific courses was
not as widespread in these libraries as it
currently is in their Western counterparts.
Perhaps this will change as Armenian higher
education moves beyond the more
regimented Soviet model.”

15. Resources
• “The responses gathered here reveal
additional factors unique to Armenia’s social
and political history that can pose additional
complications. . . . The libraries studied here
also expressed a growing interest in open
access.”

16. Access
• “The Electronic Library Consortium of Armenia
(ELCA) . . . is comprised of university libraries,
national libraries, research institute libraries,
and special libraries . . . and focuses its
activities on “[c]ollective access to e-
resources, education and training, local
systems and union catalog services” (
http://www.eifl.net/country/armenia).

17. Outcome Assessment
• “[M]ost libraries examined here do not
undergo formal evaluation by an outside body
or agency, but do implement their own
measures for assessing performance and
obtaining user feedback.”

18. Staff
• Lack of a national standard hampers professional
development
• Armenian MLIS program aligns itself with European library
standards
• Program goals: to prepare students for "a diverse variety of
careers in library administration, public services, technical
services, reference services and collection development...."
• However, curriculum weighted toward technical services and
library/systems technology without a corresponding strength
in the other areas listed

19. Facilities
• “Maintaining or improving the library’s
physical plant is a priority for most of these
libraries. . . . [C]oncerns centered around the
age or condition of buildings, access or proper
space for patrons, or around issues of
information technology infrastructure.”

20. Communication and Cooperation
• “Overall, the libraries seek to employ effective
strategies that allow for the free flow of information;
encourage staff to suggest new ideas or procedures;
establish a regular means to exchange information;
engender effective working relationships with other
departments on campus . . . ; provide technical
support for information technology; and maintain
networks sufficient to provide reasonable response
times for local and remote information.”

21. Administration
• “In response to the question, how
effective are the policies and procedures
that determine internal library
governance operations . . . three [out of
five] respondents gave no reply. . . .”

22. Budget
• “Respondents indicated . . . that the library
has sufficient money for basic needs but only
for survival, not growth. . . . [T]he library most
comfortable with its current budget is . . . the
American University of Armenia.”

23. Recommendations
• Budgetary challenges
• Open access publishing and open source
software
• MLIS degree/national standards
• Information Literacy
Donabedian, D., Carey, J., and Balayan, A. (2012). Twenty years after: Armenian research
libraries today. LIBER Quarterly: The Journal of European Research Libraries 22(1).