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Period: to
Economic Crisis in Transition
The country experienced hyperinflation and large production decline. Official GDP collapsed by almost half from 1990 to 1994, and slow decline continued throughout the decade. Economic growth would not begin until 2000. The same could be seen in Russia as the economy was forced to experience a rapid adjustment period where corruption was rampant. -
Period: to
Russian Interference
Starting with economic interference and slowly escalating to military and political interference, Russia has influenced its former satellite's' government throughout the post-Soviet era. -
Fall of the Soviet Union
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Ukraine endured a period of corruption and economic stagnation as they adapted to independence, leaving its libraries without necessary funds to engage in the newly available international opportunities or to even function on a basic level. -
Foundation of the Ukrainian Library Association
ULA promotes the formation of societal understanding in the library's role as a factor of democracy development, civil society, science, culture, continuous education of the population, their information and technological enlightenment, and the center of culture and information. -
Law on Libraries and Librarianship
According to this Law libraries are divided according to:
their significance (territorial belonging);
content (universal, branch, inter-branch);
specialization (public, special, specialized).
This law declared that funding for libraries excluding the national library and its affiliates are to be administered by state and local governments. -
Manifesto on the Democratization of Libraries
The document enforced the democratic origins of a library that should be secured by the nation through proper funding, implementing new technologies, encouraging sponsorship, international co-operation between libraries, and securing conditions for training library personnel. -
Establishment of the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine
The national library consists of approximately 15 million items, making it the largest library in the Ukraine. It was initially founded in 1918 but not modernized until the end of the Soviet period. -
Code of Ethics of a Librarian
At a ULA conference, the organization published the national Code of Librarian Ethics which reflected the democratization of the society, emphasizing the librarian’s role as an unbiased “middle man” whose most important task is to provide patrons with a diversity of unbiased information sources. -
Establishment of EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) program
In Ukraine, EIFL has supported national and institutional open access awareness raising and advocacy workshops which resulted in the launch of open access journals, open access repositories and open access policies. EIFL also advocated for revisions to the national copyright law to enable libraries to better meet the needs of their end users. This organization supports 60 Ukrainian libraries