Abstract:

According to the modern interpretations, the concept of information society is defined as a society in which the creation and use of information are key to prosperity activities, and information is recognized as one of the most important resources. The new information and communication technologies are being established as basic, and the information environment is taking its rightful place along with the social and educational ones. Knowledge, as one of the aids to economic activity in the past, became the main and leading in the process of development of modern society.

Libraries are one of the key elements of the modern information environment and the single global information space. An inalienable requirement and condition for building an information society is the right to equal and democratic access to information. The operational and quality provision of information requires modernization of the processes for collection, processing and provision of information and developed information infrastructure. The new information technologies provide new, additional opportunities for libraries to initiate different, current directions of development and to increase their social status and role. One of the newest forms of providing access to information and knowledge is mobile digital libraries and mobile learning.

This scientific paper presents the results of a survey on mobile digital libraries and mobile learning, conducted among librarians from about 1000 libraries of different profile and size in Bulgaria – national, regional and community centres. The research was conducted in connection with the implementation of a research project entitled “Information portal for mobile learning and mobile access to library services and resources”. The main goal of the project is to achieve new scientific knowledge, combined and presented in a common information Internet portal, through which to reveal and summarize the positive changes through a systematic study of the issues related to mobile learning and mobile access to library services and resources.

The main goal of the research presented in this paper is to study and analyse the extent to which mobile forms of access to knowledge and information are included in Bulgarian libraries, what is the attitude of library professionals to these information approaches, as well as how well informed they are and whether they support international policies for mobile access to education and library services and resources.

In order to achieve these goals, a questionnaire with three main panels has been developed:
• PART 1. Mobile digital libraries and mobile readers’ service.
• PART 2. Mobile learning and lifelong learning.
• PART 3. Policies for mobile information services and mobile learning.

The research methodology includes an online form of a structured questionnaire, which is distributed through the official emails of over 1000 library specialists. The study was conducted in the period June – July 2021, and the empirical data was entered and processed with the statistical software IBM SPSS Statistics 21.

The obtained results emphasize the important role of the application of new technologies in educational and information provision today, emphasize the essential role of a single information Internet portal to unite information on these issues, and last but not least to increase interest in the spread of mobile forms for information and training at both national and international level.

Keywords:

Mobile digital libraries, mobile learning, mobile technologies, research project.