Theoretical, methodological and historical background of fundamentalization of the bibliotherpeutic studies

Today, the library therapy is a promising library service that librarians can offer in the market. Its efficiency depends significantly on the level of library therapy studies. The history of bibliotherapy in Russia and worldwide is reviewed in brief; approaches to bibliotherapy classification and understanding of bibliotherapy as a discipline at the interface of medicine and librarianship are discussed. The most important stages in the development of bibliotherapy as a scientific discipline are presented. Against the historical retrospective, the main areas of modern bibliotherapy are analyzed. The history of the discipline demonstrates that the bibliotherapeutic studies have been within the methodological framework of library science, cultural studies, psychology, and pedagogy. The vectors of bibliotherapeutic process and the goals of applying bibliotherapy are described. The study and determination of the bibliotherapeutic potential of the book is one of the important problems associated with reading for psychotherapeutic purposes. The author emphasizes that the bibliotherapy effectiveness is determined by several factors, i.e. the professional competitiveness of librarian and quality of bibliotherapeutic service with these two working in synergy.