Dragana Sabovljev
Gradska narodna biblioteka „Žarko Zrenjanin“, Zrenjanin
dragana.sabovljev@gmail.com

No. 29 (November 2016), p. 3-17

Library Legislation and the Position of Employees in Public Libraries in Serbia

Summary

This paper deals with the legal status of professional workers in public libraries in Serbia. It analyzes the achievements of library legislation prior to adoption of the Law on Library and Information Science Activities (2011), and the regulations adopted since the beginning of its implementation in 2012. The objective of the study was to determine whether these legal acts constitute a good basis for improving the status of employees. The assumption is that the law should enable advancement and training of library workers in accordance with the new role of public libraries which they have obtained due to the development of a global network and information technology. Legislation that standardizes and regulates their work has to be changed, upgraded and harmonized with international regulations and standards in order to provide the basis on which Serbian public libraries become part of a global library and information system.
Library legislation in Serbia, as an independent country or part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia or the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, has a long tradition. It has followed the development of libraries, regulated their work and harmonized itself with international regulations. However, library legislation in our country is not sufficiently explored and, therefore, there is not much information on how it is applicable in practice, to what extent it is possible to obey certain provisions of the laws and regulations in this field, given the state in which the whole society finds itself in a certain period, or how it is harmonized with other laws applied in the library and information field, and which are an essential part of the organization of its functioning.
The paper concludes that the current Law on Library and Information Science Activities and subordinate legislation enable improvement of many segments of the professional activities, but the position of professional workers and their status are not improved, either due to lack of harmonization with other regulations governing their work, or due to imprecise and superficial interpretations of its provisions.

Keywords:

public libraries, legislation, Serbia, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, international regulations, international standards, library workers, formal education, professional titles, professional training

Submitted: 29th September 2016
Correction to the manuscript: 5th October 2016
Accepted for publication: 10th October 2016.

Library Legislation and the Position of Employees in Public Libraries in Serbia by Dragana Sabovljev is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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