Ecological Education of the Population in the Libraries in the Arkhangelsk Region

Barents Library Conference “Environment. Library. Knowledge” Arkhangelsk, June 24–27, 1997

Ecological Education of the Population in the Libraries in the Arkhangelsk Region : [Paper Presented at Barents Library Conference “Environment. Library. Knowledge” (Arkhangelsk, June 24–27, 1997)] / I.P. Tikunova // Экология культуры : инф. бюллетень. − 1997. − № 3. − С. 34-37. – The translation is made by T. Klushina.
Ditto. – Mode of access: http://www.arkhadm.gov.ru/culture/Publications/EoC/EoC1997-3/05.pdf.

Ecological education of the population is one of the strategies of every library in the Region.

The main aspect of the educational issue in a library is the access to literature on nature and its laws. The most interested users are the younger schoolchildren due to their inquiring minds and their school tasks.

The Arkhangelsk Region is rich in forests, and it is only natural that the main topic of library activities for children is forest and its inhabitants. .As for pets, the most popular are dogs and cats: the exhibitions of their «portraits» are held in most of the libraries.

Revealing the secrets of nature, libraries make their task to inspire children to love and care for nature. «Enter the world of nature as a friend». «Let's be friends of nature», «We all can help nature» – these are the themes of the library lessons in ecology, of the competitions and other activities when children are taught how to behave in a forest, in a field or on a lake, where they are taught to take care of the domestic animals, and further on, to take care of nature.

While working with younger schoolchildren librarians try to arrange their activities using games and theater sketches, they arrange excursions and hiking tours which help children to comprehend the information better.

As for services for older pupils, librarians usually depend on their school programs, according to their themes they arrange indexes, prepare book reviews and talks on ecology. To form the ecologically based views the schoolchildren are suggested to hold a court listening on ecological situation in their region, to take part in reading aloud with commentaries of specialists, discussions where they formulate their own solutions of the local problems.

Dealing with other groups of population, librarians consider their main task to inform people of the ecology and the ways to diminish the negative influence of man's interference in nature, to use nature rationally. In some of the district librarians were initiators of «round-table» talks with local authorities, environmental officers.

Unfortunately, the library activities in environmental education are complicated by the lack of financing for acquisition of new literature and periodicals on ecology. To minimize the acuteness of the problem some local committees on environment and natural resources presented the libraries with their informational editions and some gave money to subscribe to the periodicals.

The All-Russia and Regional Competitions of libraries in environmental education and seminars for librarians helped a lot to promote ecological knowledge and information of the people.