Digital transformation of the library at the People's Security Academy to meet the requirements of building an electronic Academy

Major General Nguyen Van Thiet - Deputy Director of the People's Security Academy said that in recent years, the Academy has been proactive, interested, and promoted digital transformation and building an innovative ecosystem at the Academy, including digital transformation in library work. Over the past nearly 80 years, along with the growth and development of the Academy, the Library has also developed rapidly, contributing an important part to the Academy's teaching and scientific research work.

Major General Nguyen Van Thiet - Deputy Director of the People's Security Academy said that, along with the fourth industrial revolution (4.0), digital transformation is and will have a rapid and multifaceted impact on social life. This is an inevitable trend that helps promote economic and social development and create new values. The People's Security Academy (Academy) is one of the country's major university, postgraduate training and scientific research centers, a key university education institution of the Public Security sector and is striving to develop into a key national university education institution.

In order to improve the quality of training and scientific research, contributing to building a truly clean, strong, disciplined, elite and modern People's Public Security force to meet the requirements and tasks in the new situation, the Party Committee and the Board of Directors of the Academy have focused on leading and directing the implementation of many synchronous and comprehensive solutions such as innovating programs, content and teaching methods; building a team of cadres and lecturers; especially investing in the budget, strengthening modern technical equipment and technology towards building an "Electronic Academy" according to the policies of the Party, the State and the Ministry of Public Security , meeting the requirements of modern higher education institutions in the period of integration and development of science and technology.

Major General Nguyen Van Thiet - Deputy Director of the People's Security Academy

Faced with that context, the Academy Library is also significantly affected by digital transformation, requiring the Library to constantly innovate and improve its operations to contribute to improving the quality of training and scientific research of the Academy. Under the leadership and direction of the Party Committee and the Board of Directors of the Academy, scientific information activities in general and library work in particular are regularly paid attention to, actively promoting the application of new developments in science and technology to professional work, building electronic libraries and smart digital libraries. Thanks to that attention and direction, the library work of the Academy has initially achieved the following results:

The Academy has issued many documents and plans to digitally transform all aspects of work, including library work.

The Academy attaches great importance to the implementation and dissemination of legal documents related to library work such as: Library Law 2019; Cyber ​​Security Law 2018; Digital Transformation Program of the Library Industry to 2025, with a vision to 2030... and documents, plans, and directives of the Ministry of Public Security on library development. The Academy has issued many documents and regulations to create a legal corridor for digital transformation activities in library work.

The Academy has established a Digital Transformation Steering Committee to direct the implementation of policies, strategies, programs, plans, tasks, projects, mechanisms, policies and solutions to promote digital transformation of the Academy. Every month, the Digital Transformation Steering Committee holds regular meetings to evaluate the results achieved and propose directions for digital transformation of all aspects of the Academy's work, including library work.

Increase investment in construction, facilities, and information technology infrastructure.

Up to now, the facilities and information infrastructure have been invested and built by the Ministry of Public Security and the Academy, basically meeting the immediate goals and tasks in the digital transformation of the Academy library. In addition to the system of reading rooms and document lending rooms in use, the Academy is currently investing in building a central library with 7 floors, each floor is more than 1000 m2; at the same time, the goal is to develop a modern library to effectively meet the research, education and training of police officers in the new situation.

In 2024, the Academy built a centralized digitization room and produced electronic learning materials (under the management and operation of the Library Management Department), contributing to promoting the digitization of documents and records of units in the Academy; building electronic lectures to serve teaching and scientific research. The Academy has organized research and built Library Management Software with many modules such as supplementing, cataloging, borrowing and returning management, statistics and reporting... which has helped to manage the library effectively and modernize. In addition, the Academy has also built and put into use Digital Library Software with nearly 850,000 pages of documents and many modern features, initially meeting the needs of readers to research documents.

On human resources serving digital transformation in library work.

The library staff, or in other words, the library's human resources, is one of the important factors that make up the library, the subject of library activities. Currently, the total number of staff directly working in the library is 21 comrades, including 09 masters (03 security masters, 04 library masters, 01 information technology master, 01 Chinese language master); 12 bachelors (03 information technology, 03 library and other fields).

It can be said that, along with the process of building and developing the Academy, the staff working in the library has always been interested in and supplemented by the Academy from many sources, with relatively high university and post-graduate degrees (100% have university degrees), this is a factor that contributes to ensuring that all aspects of the unit's work are maintained and operated effectively, including serving readers at the library.

Major General Nguyen Van Thiet said that facing the requirements of digital transformation in all areas of work, including library work, towards developing and building smart libraries, there are also some difficulties and challenges, specifically:

Currently, the Academy is promoting digitalization in all activities including management, education and training. In particular, it is building and implementing the project "Strategy for developing the People's Security Academy until 2030 to meet the requirements of training a revolutionary, regular, elite and modern People's Public Security force", with 10 component projects, including Component Project No. 3 "Building a scientific information system and library work at the People's Security Academy until 2030 to meet the requirements of training a revolutionary, regular, elite and modern People's Public Security force", in which the core is to develop information sources and scientific documents, digitized into an information database system serving library work in scientific research and education and training.

In particular, the construction and implementation of project number 3 has posed challenges and requirements for the Academy and library staff to digitize current documents and digitize existing documents (in the past); especially, it is necessary to synchronize the digitization of library management with the management of the entire Academy, and connect with training facilities in the Public Security sector.

The goal by 2030 is to automate library operations; strengthen measures to secure information and data; link with information centers, especially library information centers of universities around the world; enhance information response capabilities, and provide many information and document exploitation services for information users who are staff and students.

According to Major General Nguyen Van Thiet, in order to meet the requirements of digital transformation in library work and build smart libraries, one requirement is to improve the quality of human resources serving library work.

Accordingly, the Academy's library staff must regularly improve and enhance their professional qualifications: Must have professional qualifications in library services and modern libraries in the current digital age, in which library staff must be good at library management; must be information experts, designers, information and document supplementers, and search and guide information for users; Must have computer skills, in which each library activity sets out different specific requirements, but all staff of a modern library must have basic computer skills, be able to meet the requirements of digitizing documents and operating information and data security; guide and supervise information users to protect information confidentiality; for staff working in digital information system administration, operating library software, ensuring information and data security... require a high level of computer skills; Must be fluent in foreign languages, in which most of the information exchange, linkage and connection with library information centers of universities in the region and internationally are mostly in English.

Digital transformation of the library at the People's Security Academy to meet the requirements of building an electronic Academy

Major General Nguyen Van Thiet said that in order to successfully convert libraries into digital libraries to meet the requirements of building an e-Academy, it is necessary to apply many different solutions. Specifically:

Firstly , continue to improve and develop digital infrastructure. Proactively propose investment in purchasing modern information technology equipment such as servers, workstations, backup devices, network devices; specialized automatic document digitization devices; library security devices such as firewall security devices, security gates, barcode readers, magnetic stripe readers; RFID chips, automatic document borrowing and returning machines, etc. Promote the application of new technologies in the library sector, towards converting to Smart Libraries.

Second , enhance digital resources. Actively collect internal documents such as textbooks and teaching materials; focus on digitizing documents published by the Academy from 2010 and earlier. Digitize and convert all types of traditional learning materials into digital form. Effectively exploit the Centralized Digitization Room and produce electronic learning materials. In the immediate future, it is necessary to promote the collection of electronic lectures from teaching units to enhance digital resources for the Library.

Third , continue to upgrade and improve the Library Management Software, Digital Resource Management Software and centralized resource search. In particular, increase the provision of online services, support for learning and research on the Academy's internal network, and move towards the wide area network of the Ministry of Public Security, the Internet, mobile devices... (except for services within the scope of state secrets) for users anytime, anywhere.

Fourth , attach importance to human resource development. Organize training and retraining, update knowledge, library operation skills and knowledge of digital transformation in libraries for 100% of library staff. The current library environment has transformed from traditional to modern, the role of librarians has also changed, being both an information and knowledge administrator and at the same time a disseminator, providing services, especially digital services, online search services, providing access and exploitation of document sources to readers.

Therefore, librarians must regularly improve their professional qualifications, foreign language and IT skills; and have the ability to master new and modern technical equipment and technology to carry out the digital transformation process.

"It can be said that in recent years, the Academy has been proactive, interested, and promoted digital transformation and built an innovative ecosystem at the Academy, including digital transformation in library work. Over the past nearly 80 years, along with the growth and development of the Academy, the Library has also developed rapidly, contributing an important part to the training and scientific research of the Academy.

In the coming time, library work needs to actively and proactively implement the digital transformation plan, effectively exploit the achievements of digital technology advances to create breakthroughs in professional and technical work, build smart libraries, meet the requirements of building e-Academies, and actively contribute to building the People's Public Security force in the new situation," said Major General Nguyen Van Thiet./.

Source: https://bvhttdl.gov.vn/chuyen-doi-so-thu-vien-tai-hoc-vien-an-ninh-nhan-dan-dap-ung-yeu-cau-xay-dung-hoc-vien-dien-tu-20251010100850065.htm