The Research Library of Armenian State Pedagogical University (ASPU) is periodically enriched with new educational, scientific-research books and journals. Every month, the
library receives more than 50 foreign-language magazines for different specialties.
The library receives the material upon the request of the lecturer-professorial team; however students do not use it in their works.
Head of the Research Library, historian, culture expert and journalist Tigran Petrosyants says university students rarely use foreign literature in their practice.
“The reason can be the poor knowledge of foreign languages. When students come to the library to order books, we inform them about works of modern foreign literature, but they again take Armenian books, citing different reasons,” he said.
The director of the library has raised the issue many times: while the use of foreign-language sources is not mandatory, it is desirable to include foreign-language literature in scientific works, he says.
Tigran Petrosyants says in many cases students learn that the University has foreign-language journals only after they visit the library.
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The second-year student of the Department of TV-Journalism, Margarita Petrosyan, uses Russian-language literature almost every day. She confessed that she would be glad to use Armenian-language books if there were such. She was unaware of contemporary magazines printed in Russian and other languages.
Besides books, the library also provides students with access to the Internet and online library resources. In this context, it is due to mention that students are allowed using Armenian-language websites and translations from different language.
The second-year student of the Department of Psychology, Bella Harutyunyan, says she also uses foreign literature in her course papers but, as she says, professors from different generations indicate different sources of information: senior professors advise that they read books, while junior professors are inclined to use the Internet.
Tigran Petrosyants asserts that they offer and provide students with a wide range of foreign-language literature; it is the lecturers who can make students use the material.
The changes introduced in the university curriculum can help solve the problem. They envisage that bachelor graduates should know at least one foreign language besides Armenian (the choice of language is optional and left to students).
The library of Armenian State Pedagogical University after Khachatur Abovyan was founded in 1922 with 190 pieces of literature.
The library has 24 antique and more than 3000 valuable books, 768 pre-Soviet Armenian magazines. Over 702 dissertations and 758 abstracts are stored in the bibliographical section of the library. Besides, the library receives 17 newspapers and 82 scientific and theoretical journals.
The Research Library has over 18 000 readers and more than 600 000 books.
