Abstract:

Cultural (and Historical Heritage) of the world have great impact on the modern and future development of the human civilization. Preserving and keeping this heritage plays a significant role both for the conservation of humanity’s memory and young people’s education. The revolutionary development of information and communication technologies in the contemporary knowledge society has offered so far unseen opportunities for the active gathering of information, its processing, conservation and dissemination within the frames of an unconventional information process. On the basis of the classical theory of information, a new so-called informing science wedges its way, whose main activity is not just the management of the processes of sending and receiving of information messages, but also their interpretation and their effective application in practice. The processing of massive amounts of information, their conservation and saving for the future generations brings to the fore new technological solutions related to their digitalization. The organization of the structuring and the access to this digitized information have appeared as natural prerequisites for the creation and operative introduction of new libraries, so-called digital libraries, into practice. These types of libraries have found their own natural path of development and along with traditional tried and tested forms of patron services, digital libraries represent a new form of socialization of the available general and specialized information.

This paper treats problems related to the education processes for knowledge acquisition of Bulgarian cultural heritage through the great capacity and capabilities of contemporary digital libraries within the frames of specialized university information environment. The basic components of the phenomenon INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT are reviewed and the features of their immanent attributes are studied. The emphasis is placed on the IFLA/UNESCO Memorandum of 2010 on digital libraries and their specific capabilities are presented within several university R&D projects. The conclusion offers a new structural form of organization of the university research process called SUMMER KNOWLEDGE ACADEMY. This academy is a natural continuation of the traditional summer practices and the so-called SUMMER UNIVERSITY of students and PhD candidates of the State University of Library Studies and Information Technologies (SULSIT), Sofia, Bulgaria.

Keywords:

Information environment, cultural heritage, socialization, digital library.