‘Human-size’ Library

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyze the direction of changes in the functioning of modern libraries especially in three aspects: library missions, their space and the subject of services – books – and their form to be more precise. The need for changes is necessary. Everything, if not progressing, seems to remain static and start to regress in time. In the case of libraries the reforms are implicated by the desire to tailor services to the expectations of the modern reader and are partially forced by modernistic present. The article is an attempt to answer such essential questions as: Does a reading room deprived of books change its definition? Are libraries a place for reading materials or only for people? To what extent the librarian and the library services become hybrid – beyond the library services (in the traditional role of the library)? Does the previous form of publication of books fade away? The article discusses also the problem of the necessity to establish a mobile library and the legitimacy of implementation of  modern trends.