Libraries are actively involved in the processes of achieving the goals of state cultural policy, especially their role increases in the period of information confrontation, distortion of historical truth in modern political conditions, in countering the rehabilitation of Nazism. The year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941—1945. The Russian State Library carefully preserves the memory of the heroes’ brave deeds, reveals the pages of military history, makes available objective sources about the Great Patriotic War, promotes the historical truth about the tragic events of wartime. The purpose of the article is to highlight the activities of the Russian State Library in this direction. Various projects of the Russian State Library are aimed at the formation of patriotism, a sense of pride in the history of Russia and understanding of the processes that are currently taking place during the special military operation.

Events timed to the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War are presented. On April 22—24, 2025 the International Research and Practical Conference “Rumyantsev Readings — 2025” was held, one of its key topics was “Libraries and Preservation of Historical Memory. To the 80th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War”. Within the framework of the conference a special session of libraries of the CIS countries “Pages of the Feat of Peoples” was organized. On May 14—15, 2025, the All-Russian Scientific and Practical Conference “Preserving Historical Memory of the Great Patriotic War: The Role of Libraries” was held. Other scientific events are also held: lectures, film screenings, etc.

The following exhibition projects of the Russian State Library are presented in the form of an overview: “History of the Great Patriotic War in the Book Memory of Russia: To the 80th Anniversary of Victory”, “Territory of Memory and Glory of Women’s Feat”, “On the Way to the Great Victory: Legislation of the Great Patriotic War Period”, “Maps of Victory”, “Symbols of War and Victory: Visual Art Publications of the Great Patriotic War”, “Living Memory of Generations” and others.

For the anniversary of the Great Victory the publishing house of the Russian State Library “Pashkov Dom” prepared and published the books: “Pages of Victory: Leninka in 1941—1945: Chronicle. Documents. Memories”, “Saur-Mogila: From Legend to Feat”, “The Songs Brought About by War and Victory: From the Collections of the Russian State Library”, the second edition of L.I. Fursenko’s index of literature “Publishing, Librarianship and Bibliography During the Great Patriotic War (1941—1945)” and others. A special section “Library of Victory” has been opened in the National Electronic Library, which contains collections of books, periodicals and documents about the Great Patriotic War.

The various projects of the Russian State Library reveal rare archival and printed materials, give an opportunity to better understand and evaluate the contribution of our country’s citizens to the Victory, the scale and consequences of the war that changed the course of world history.

The symposium “I Come from a Heroic Generation” was held on January 30, 2025 at the St. Petersburg State Institute of Culture (SPbGIK). The event was timed to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941—1945 and the 100th anniversary of the outstanding scholar-librarian and methodologist, talented teacher of higher education, front-line worker Anatoly Nikolaevich Vaneev (1925—2019). At the solemn opening of the anniversary event there was a demonstration of films dedicated to A.N. Vaneev. The film “A.N. Vaneev. The Beginning of the Way” was made by the Kirov State Universal Regional Scientific Library named after A.I. Herzen, the film “Defender of the Fatherland. Librarian. Pedagogue” — by the Department of Library Science and Theory of Reading of SPbGIK. The welcome speech was delivered by Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Rector of SPbGIK A.S. Turgaev and Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Professor, Dean of the Library and Information Faculty of SPbGIK V.V. Brezhneva.

A special issue of the professional journal “Librarianship” (No. 2, 2025) was prepared for A.N. Vaneev’s jubilee, which included a part of the reports of the symposium participants and several works by A.N. Vaneev related to the programme of the symposium. There was a presentation of the biobibliographical index compiled by N.V. Ponomareva and published for the 100th anniversary of A.N. Vaneev with the support of the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The first section of the scientific part of the symposium was “Library Studies: Modern Science and Practice in the Context of A.N. Vaneev’s Scientific Heritage”. The reports were divided into thematic blocks concerning the biography of the scientist, the methodological concept of library and information activity, touched upon historical librarianship in his works, as well as his contribution to the methodology of library science, reading promotion and research activities of libraries.

The second section of the symposium contained a theoretical discussion “Object and Subject of Library Science: Towards the Formation of the Methodological Paradigm of Russian Library Science of the 21st Century” based on the report of S.A. Basov, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Vice-President of the St. Petersburg Library Society. He argued his point of view on the object and subject of library science, proposing to consider the first as a library social institute, the second as cognition of regularities of structure, functioning and development of a library social institute; formation of a system of knowledge about the structure, functioning and development of a library social institute.

At the end of the forum the grandson of the scientist — A.S. Vaneev, the participant of the special military operation, battles on liberation of Artemovsk (Bakhmut), made a speech with words of gratitude. A.S. Vaneev, like his grandfather, a participant of the Great Patriotic War of 1941—1945, was awarded the medal “For Bravery”.

Since the 1970s, library science has realized itself as a full-fledged scientific discipline with a developed methodological apparatus. The attention to such basic attributes of scientific status as object and subject is sharply increased. In the 1970s — 1980s on the pages of library periodicals there are discussions about the object and subject of library science. In the scientific community two main ideas about the object of library science are formed: the communicative system “book — library — reader” and the system object “library consisting of four elements”. They are fixed in the academic literature as a palliative solution to the problem. The author critically analyses the established ideas about the object/subject of library science on the basis of the concept of “three worlds” of cognizable objective reality by S.N. Egorov and the concept of methodological knowledge by E.G. Yudin: “the object of research in the methodological sense means not just an external reality, but a reality that is specifically identified and delineated in its boundaries by science”; “the object of study, the research task, the system of methodological tools and the sequence of their application in their totality create a special object of study”. The scientific category, chosen with the help of the institutional approach, allows to holistically reflect the “library cross-section” of society’s life activity, which is the concept of a “library social institution”. The definitions of the object and subject of library science are given. Conclusions are made about the importance of the institutional approach to the formation of the methodological paradigm of library science, its positive impact on library practice. The definition of the library branch is presented, the necessity of forming a private scientific discipline “Library Jurisprudence” is shown.

Systemic activities for the preservation of library collections are one of the most important directions of the state cultural policy. As part of the implementation of the “National Programme for the Preservation of Library Collections of the Russian Federation 2001—2010” and the “All-Russian Programme for the Preservation of Library Collections. Second Stage. 2011—2020”, the key points of organizing conservation activities both on a nationwide scale and at the level of individual libraries were outlined.

The effectiveness of measures to preserve library documents is primarily determined by the availability of an up-to-date, objective and comprehensive assessment of the state of the document collections. To solve this problem, starting in 2020, the staff of the Russian State Library is conducting an All-Russian monitoring of the state of preservation of library collections, which necessitates the development of a set of methodological techniques for collecting and evaluating information about the condition of documents. Based on the results of the analysis of national and foreign research practices, a methodology for assessing the physical condition of library documents using a multi-stage stratified sampling method was proposed. The main idea of the presented methodology is based on the fact that in the process of stratification of the library stock, a set of functionally isolated and relatively homogeneous groups of documents is allocated, from which samples are formed for their examination.

Accordingly, the specifics of using methodological and technological techniques within the framework of this methodology are determined by the need to assess the physical condition of big volumes of documents in the shortest possible time in libraries with different volumes and structures of funds, different types, levels, etc.

The testing of the multi-stage stratified sampling methodology in the collections of a number of regional and federal libraries has confirmed the possibility of using it as a way to obtain operational information to develop strategies for preserving document collections both at the level of a particular library and at the level of the country as a whole.

Changes in the process of scientific discovery lead to many (ideally all) stages of research work becoming visible to the public. It becomes possible to use the same data extensively and repeatedly, compare different approaches, produce unified solutions and accelerate the development of new research methods. Open Science encourages the use of both scientific and “extra-scientific” social networks to accelerate and enhance communication, and offers a system of alternative measurements for scientific research (“altmetric”), which provides additional ways of assessing scientific performance. However, with its many advantages, open science is often perceived in a fragmented way due to lack of resources, education, support, the position of research funding organisations or personal prejudices. In Russia, there is a need for activities to promote it, including not only the dissemination of information about open science and its initiatives, but also the transformation and interpretation of such information through the prism of specific communities. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of the work of the Open Science Research Department of the State Public Scientific and Technical Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in promoting open science, including educational and methodological activities (professional development courses and programmes, thematic webinars), public talks, as well as the creation of specialized sections of the web platform “Library for Open Science” and thematic reviews.

The International Library and Philosophical School (ILPS) was first organized in 2004 in Kaliningrad, where I. Kant lived and worked. The legacy of the great philosopher became its theoretical basis. In 2024, when the world scientific community was widely celebrating the 300th anniversary of I. Kant’s birth, the 20th Anniversary Session of the ILPS was held.

The conceptual idea of the ILPS is to contribute to the scientific search for answers to questions concerning the prospects of libraries in the new socio-cultural paradigm of society development, formed under the influence of global digitalization, as well as to the understanding of the role of information, books and reading in the modern world as socio-cultural phenomena and important channels of social communications in general. The interdisciplinary approach is realized by combining the efforts of philosophers, culturologists, sociologists, psychologists, scientists, ecologists, librarians, book historians, specialists in the field of social informatics and communication studies from different countries.

For 20 years of work, the attention of the ILPS participants has been focused on analyzing the modern information space: its genesis, structure and properties, development trends, information socio-cultural interaction in modern society and the role of libraries in this process, as well as the phenomenon of information in the context of historical development of society. A range of broader problems has been covered: meaning-genetic theory of culture, historical continuity of cultures, cultural and social anthropology, etc.

Important topics of the ILPS scientific programme also included research of the ontological status of the book in the historical and cultural aspect, analysis of philosophical and cultural models of personal social identity and theoretical foundations of cultural and information competence as basic markers of members of modern society, the role of books and reading in their formation.

On the ILPS platforms the following topical philosophical aspects of library science were discussed: social and functional metamorphism as a regularity of historical development of libraries, interpretation of the concept “library” in the modern system of social and human sciences, cognitive function of the library and its role in knowledge management, ontological bases of realization of the memorial function of the modern library in the context of preservation of documentary heritage in the digital age, etc.

Over 200 specialists and scientists from various branches of knowledge delivered reports, lectures, presentations and master-classes, which made a significant contribution to the development of research potential of library and information sciences, enriched them in conceptual, epistemological, methodological and heuristic aspects. The ILPS has stimulated interdisciplinary scientific research in the humanities and technology, contributed to the expansion of their problem field.

The possibilities of practical application of methods for assessing the satisfaction of library users in developed countries committed to the development of customer-centered economy are shown. The study of user satisfaction is a key element of strategic library management. It allows to adjust the range of services, to make changes in the acquisition policy, to shift priorities in advertising library services, to personalize library and bibliographic services. A comparative analysis of domestic and some foreign publications is presented with the identification of methods used in libraries of different countries. Customer focus of any service, including personalization of library service, should be based on a data-centered approach to management, so a detailed analysis of the links in the system “library” is necessary for librarians to make informed decisions. The subject of the study was to investigate practical methods of assessing user satisfaction with library services in developed countries. This material is of interest to those libraries that strive for personalized service to their users and proactive satisfaction of their information needs. The following methods were applied: content analysis of documents to characterize the degree of study of the issue and use in the activities of libraries; comparative analysis to identify the effectiveness of the analyzed services in library and information activities.

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