Abstract:

The transition towards a society of knowledge assigns to the education a prosperous function essential for its development. Countries that recognize its role and prioritize it in their policies and strategic plans are experiencing rapid growth and achieving a high standard. The changes in the Bulgarian higher education take place in two main directions - administrative-normative and social-cultural.

The altered nature of the labor market nowadays reflects in more complex requirements for skills and knowledge of employees, as well in the permanent necessity of constant update and improvement of those same skills, through additional training and further education.
These reforms in the higher education require rethinking of the whole educational model. Today, a new concept of content and methodology of the learning process is applied, based on the mandatory elements of global and national paradigms of knowledge and competencies, but also on interdisciplinarity, innovation and flexibility to expand the horizons of future professionals.

This report argues the idea of analyzing the necessity of bibliotherapy education in the university environment and provides an opportunity for improvement of the quality of training of the additional and higher education of the helping professions. Bibliotherapy could be successfully used in the professional activity of the helping professions ‒ social workers, educators and teachers, psychologists, as well as library specialists and including it in their training is crucial. Therefore, a detailed research of the curricula of key helping professions in some leading Bulgarian universities have been made and analysed, which highlighted a several main conclusions.

Keywords:

bibliotherapy, university environment, library specialists, Bulgaria, University of Library Studies and Information Technologies