Active living in a contemporary society requires constant knowledge update. Learning can take place not only in the formal educational system, but everywhere including Library (McNicol, 2002, Simons, Young, Gibson, 2000, Merkys, Juceviciene, Tautkeviciene, 2005). Educational environment is a dimension at the level of institution. It is developed by the educator referring to some educational aim, relevant content and methods that facilitate learning. Learning environment is a dimension at the personal level. It is an individually identified (according to individual learning goals, skills, needs, interests and experience) from the educational environment (Juceviciene et al, 2010).

Environment of the library, being rich in information and knowledge, becomes a potential learning environment for every member of the society. The library has a potential to enable each person to individualize his/her learning environment, especially when a library allows for a special attention towards creating an educational environment in it (Merkys, Juceviciene, Tautkeviciene, 2005). The exceptional feature of the library is its community life style and the ability to diminish social gap between the people who possess the information and those who lack the information. The library can perform this function while developing information literacy and creating attractive, facing consumers’ needs educational environments. Library provides environments to persons belonging to different society strata, different age groups and not necessarily involved in formal education (McNicol, 2002). The library is the ultimate place for independent lifelong learning, where persons have the opportunity to make discoveries and retrieve information that is potentially life changing (Cooke, 2010) as well as developer of flexible educational and learning environments (Merkys, Juceviciene, Tautkeviciene, 2005, Cooke, 2010). In this sense, the library is a venue for progressive education, where the learner takes an active role in learning and the librarian is more of an information coach or guide (Gold, 2005; Cooke, 2010). Librarians are evolving and changing roles from information provider to learning facilitator (Cooke, 2010).

Still there appears a discrepancy between the expected library role and possibilities to perform these roles in practice. In order to enable to library to create effective learning environments, library staff should posses the necessary competencies (Julien & Genuis, 2011). Therefore the research question is raised: what competencies are necessary for the librarians in order to create educational environment in the library?

The aim of this presentation is to reveal the librarians’ competencies empowering the creation educational environments in the library. The objectives of the paper are to develop the structure of the librarians competency required for the creation educational environment at the library; to reveal the sub-competencies considered as essential for the educational role of librarians in the creation of educational environments at the library.

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