On the Quality of Maintenance of Digital Collections in Libraries

Improving the quality of library services, based on the use of library collections of different typological and departmental affiliation, has been a task to be solved by the professional community for many decades. Mass digitization of collections and creation of electronic libraries allow to create unique information resources, the quality of which from the point of view of their content is the subject of modern librarianship research. The article explores the issues of formation of digital collections created as a result of planned digitization of traditional collections. The basic criteria for assessing their content — thematic completeness, type-species diversity, relevance (updatability) — are analyzed. It is noted that the rational completeness of the collection subject matter can be ensured through the use of the principle of selectivity, involvement of highly qualified experts at all stages of work on the formation of digital collections — from the selection of publications for digitization to permanent supervision. The need to create mechanisms for assessing the quality of digital collections, both on the basis of automated monitoring of the demand for resources and on the ground of feedback from users (surveys, questionnaires of the target audience) has been identified.