Departments

The “General Reading Room” Department includes:

CHILDREN’S DEPARTMENT

It has a home lending section and a reading room. It registers and serves readers up to 14 years of age. It maintains a systematic and title catalogue, thematic index, and an index of illustrators of children’s books, among others. The collection currently includes around 45,000 volumes. It maintains two databases: bibliographic descriptions of parts of newspapers, magazines, books, and reviews, and a reader index.

Teen Zone 

A special Teen Zone is also available. It is suitable for adolescent readers and offers a calm environment for studying, reading books, comics, magazines, manga, and board games. It provides Wi-Fi access and access to the “Ucha.se” platform, suitable for all students. The Teen Zone organizes trainings, seminars, meetings, and interactive games for teenagers.

LOCAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT

The Local Studies Department is one of the richest documentary archives on the historical past, culture, development, and contemporary state of the Vratsa region. It collects, preserves, and provides access to books, periodicals, and other local history materials. It maintains catalogues and indexes revealing the uniqueness of its collection, including bibliographic descriptions of newspaper and magazine articles, personal records, chronicles, photographic catalogues, and catalogues of small-format publications. It holds valuable collections of rare and old printed editions, field recordings of authentic folklore from the Vratsa region, and collections “Hristo Botev” and “Notable People of Vratsa”. The library has been recognized as a local studies center for Northwestern Bulgaria since 1966. Today, publishing remains a priority, including bibliographic publications and the preparation of volumes in the series “Native Region” and “Heritage”. It is the initiator and organizer of the annual local studies conferences “The Past of the Native Region – A Message to the Future”.

It maintains the Digital Library of the Regional Library and searches and promotes valuable recordings, documents, and photographs related to the history, culture, natural landmarks, lifestyle, and traditions of all 123 settlements in the Vratsa region through the project “Map of Time – Digital Archive of the Vratsa Region, 20th Century” – kartanavremeto-vratsa.org.

ARTS DEPARTMENT

The department collects, preserves, and distributes printed and non-printed library materials. It has a home lending service, reading room, and local storage for valuable items and audio materials. It collects literature on art theory and history, albums with reproductions, and graphic materials. Music scores include solfeggio materials, instrument methods, and musical compositions. The phonotheque offers vinyl records, audio and video cassettes, magnetic tapes, CDs, and DVDs. The department maintains a rich reference system and three databases covering music scores, non-traditional media, and press excerpts.

BRANCH – “DABNIKA” RESIDENTIAL AREA

Reference, Bibliographic and Information Department

The department also offers virtual user services via the internet – requests for information on a given topic. A request form can be downloaded from here (link). You will receive a prepared answer or a reference to a source from which you can obtain the required information. We accept questions every working day from Monday to Friday during library working hours.

The department provides:

• Oral reference services related to the content of the collections and functions of the department, as well as questions covering all fields of knowledge.
• Factographic information is retrieved from documentary sources available in the collection and from electronic resources accessible on the Internet.
• Information searches on the Internet, including electronic newspapers, journals, and books, scientific, technical, and business information, data on official organizations and their regulations, as well as inquiries about the status and work of the European Union and other international organizations.
• Bibliographic consultations for publications in Bulgarian and foreign editions for preparing bibliographic lists for essays, coursework, and theses.
• Virtual reference services – responses to various information requests via email regarding bibliographic lists on topics related to education for both pupils and students.
• Lectures on library and bibliographic literacy are delivered, demonstrating the advantages of working with traditional and non-traditional information carriers and showing the efficiency of searching databases maintained by the department, accompanied by printouts.
• Information tracking of user queries and topics.
• Through subscription, the department receives automated databases of the Current National Bibliography: Series 1 – Bulgarian Books, Series 5 – Chronicle of Articles from Bulgarian Magazines and Collections, Series 6 – Chronicle of Articles from Bulgarian Newspapers.
• The “Regulatory Documents” database, entirely based on “State Gazette” records, provides information on laws, regulations, and ordinances issued by various ministries, most often related to taxation, healthcare, and social security, as well as official documents concerning Bulgaria’s relations with the European Union, pre-accession programs, memorandums, and agreements.
• The department also maintains the following standalone databases: “European Union”,
• containing bibliographic descriptions of books, newspaper and journal articles, and collections in Bulgarian and other languages on European integration; “Factographic Card Index”, and “Illustrations and Photographic Materials Index”.
• The department creates and maintains the “Articles” database within the “Automated Library” module, where parts of newspapers, magazines, and collections are analytically indexed by subject across all fields of knowledge.
• For service support, the department holds a large number of theses, abstracts, coursework, and diploma papers, collected and processed through information searches or donated by users, in Bulgarian, Russian, and English.

The range of information products is expanding due to:

• the number of databases in the “Hristo Botev” Regional Library – Vratsa
• the possibility of using internal (service) databases in information services;
• full use of paid online databases;
• expanding Internet resources used in information services practice.

The use of these resources improves the quality of information products in the following ways:

• all automated databases provide extensive multi-aspect search capabilities; the use of subject headings, thesauri, etc., increases the relevance of retrieved information;
• the automated databases currently contain over 48,500 records, which are actively used in responding to user inquiries.

Users of the department include pupils from all secondary schools in the city, as well as students and lecturers from higher education institutions such as the University of National and World Economy, the Medical University, the Pedagogical College of Veliko Tarnovo University, and the International Slavic Institute with branches in Vratsa.

Information Technology Department

It performs system administration and maintenance of computer equipment, the local network, and system and application software in the library. It carries out service and administrative tasks in the databases maintained by the departments. It provides expert consulting assistance to library staff in working with computer software and hardware. It supports library specialists in serving and advising users on issues related to information technology. It participates in the development and implementation of projects under programs funded by the European Union and national and international foundations.

DIRECTORATE

Director – Silvia Pavlova

Manages, organizes, and coordinates the activities of all units within the library. Maintains public relations.