DRUŠTVENA ULOGA NARODNIH KNJIŽNICA U SUVREMENIM DRUŠTVIMA: INFORMIRANOST KNJIŽNIČARA O INTERKULTURALIZMU I INTERKULTURNOSTI.

Goal. The paper is based on a research of cultural differences in modern multicultural society. The goal of the research was to investigate public libraries' role and potential in promotion of intercultural values in the Croatian plural society. Methodology. The part of the research presented in this paper was conducted by a survey. The total of 177 responses were obtained through the online survey from the librarians with bachelor's or master's degrees employed in Croatian public libraries. The results were analyzed using the descriptive and inferential statistics method. The main research question was: What are the public libraries' potentials for promoting intercultural values, with the research hypothesis that the existing potentials are not sufficiently used. Results. The research results show the awareness and sensitivity of the librarian community to the cultural needs of the Croatian citizens. It is also evident that libraries are places for realisation of these needs. Public libraries recognise their role as an important stakeholder in multicultural society and see the promotion of multicultural and intercultural values as one of the key roles of public librarianship. Nevertheless, the results show that these potentials are far from being fully exploited. Originality. The previous researches in Croatia have perceived the public libraries' role in context of multiculturalism mostly as places that provide minority collections and organize activities for the minorities. In addition, these researches have not differentiated between multicultural and intercultural services and activities. Therefore, the significant contribution of this paper lies in setting the scope for the critical evaluation of the theoretical and methodological approaches for future research on intercultural topics in Croatian librarianship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]