There is provided an unbiased analysis of the role of libraries in the success of the Social Democratic party in part of dissemination of its ideas among the broad masses of population. In the Soviet literature there was an unduly apologetic attitude towards the party libraries; in the post-Soviet years the opinions have divided: the part of library scientists continued to hold the dogmatic views, the other part radically denied anything positive in the Leninist concept of librarianship, the third part called for a considered evaluation of Lenin’s legacy in librarianship. Outreach efforts of Bolsheviks were carried out primarily through the legal and illegal party libraries that serve as supporting bases of their activities. In pre-revolutionary years there was established a network of such libraries, covering the whole country; there was launched production, reproduction and systematic distribution of promotional literature on party libraries. After the October Revolution (1917), this network, being legalized, formed the basis for operational creation of the network of public libraries in Soviet Russia, and then in the Soviet Union.

The article is devoted to the analysis of two major conceptual visions of the process of rise and development of the national librarianship in the 11th — 17th centuries. In the 19th — early 20th century in the Church history there formed the bibliological concept of the history of librarianship. It is based on the idea of library as an ordered large book collection, which in the initial stage had ensured collecting and storage of books and in the next stage — their use. In the mid-twentieth century in the domestic library science there started to form the social-cultural concept of the history of librarianship in Russia. Its main provisions were formulated by M.I. Slukhovsky in the 1960-ies. The concept is based on the idea of library as a cultural institution created to ensure public needs (religious, educational, scientific, leisure, etc.) through the acquisition of specialized book collection in a form of library stock and technology for its public use. There is introduced the concept of “protolibrary” — book collection aimed to satisfy social needs, however using the technology of book publishing, and occupying an intermediate position between the book collection and library.

The article presents the brief characteristics of the contemporary environment that determines the conditions and directions of the work with the depository stock and its specialized segment — the collection of literature of the restricted distribution — in the State Public Scientific-Technological Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SPSTL SB RAS), the largest scientific library of Siberia. On the basis of the research results, obtained using general scientific methods (such as comparative-historical or terminological analysis), as well as special ones (content-analysis, questionnaire surveys, etc.), it was revealed that the collection of literature of the restricted distribution, being a specific form of settling contradiction between the legislatively (ideologically, politically) stipulated interdictions for free access to information contained therein, and the memorial function of the scientific library, is an inalienable component of the depository stock of SPSTL SB RAS, involved in all processes of its formation and preservation. The analysis of evolution of the collection life (as well as its separate components) in the largest library of Siberia and the Russian Far East gives an opportunity to specify the structure of its organizational and management system and to determine the extent of Library adaptation to the changed external and internal conditions of its operation, to perform predictive evaluation of the resources to be mobilized in order to ensure its sustainable development in the future.

There are described the main results of the work on creation of the “Union catalogue of Russian books, 1826—1917” as bibliographic repertoire, which lasted from 1976 to 2003. By the end of the 1990-ies, the card database of “Union catalogue” was reconciled with the catalogues of all six libraries-participants. Bibliographers of the Russian State Library carried out the rework and editing of bibliographic records in accordance with the normative documents being in force on that time, formed the data to create additional access points for the future database (names of people who took part in creation of the book, names-personalias, names of institutions and organizations, to which the books are devoted, titles of series). There had been done a tremendous job with use of modern reference and bibliographic sources, viewing of publications (de visu), that allowed to clarify the forms of several hundred names and titles, to reveal many of cryptonyms and pseudonyms, to clarify the modern spelling of names of foreign authors. But revision and editing of the card mass of catalogue remained unfinished. On its basis the Corporation “Electronic archive” created the “Electronic Union catalogue of Russian books of the 19th century”, but due to a number of drawbacks it will not be considered as a full-fledged national bibliographic repertoire. The task on creation of an intrinsic repertoire and bibliographic resource remains relevant. It should be kept by separate chronological periods on the basis on the integrated use of bibliographic records for electronic catalogues of the Russian State Library and National Library of Russia, and electronic and card consolidated catalogues of 1826—1917. The priority work shall cover the period of 1826—1830, which is closely associated with the efforts on formation of the All-Russian Register of book monuments.

The authors determine the specific features of the memoir literature as the historical source; there is given the brief overview of the development stages of the domestic memoir history. Scientific value and practical importance of creating the annotated bibliographic indices of the memoir literature is substantiated. The fundamental system of Russian annotated bibliographic indices of memoir literature (“The History of Soviet Society in Contemporaries’ Memoirs: 1917—1957”, “The History of Pre-revolutionary Russia in Diaries and Memoirs”, “Russia and Russian Emigration in Memoirs and Diaries”, “Soviet Society in Memoirs and Diaries”) is characterized. The analysis of authors, professional experience in creating the annotated bibliographic index of memoir literature “The History of Russia and USSR in Memoirs and Diaries” is given. The authors formulate the main principles, used in the process of memoir selection. The principles, such as the form of publication, the “purity of genre”, the authenticity, scientific credibility, the artistic and historical value, are discussed.

The urgency of the problem is caused by the importance of the efficient use of information resources of libraries in the conditions of emerging information-communication environment and the presence of a large number of texts that include verbal and nonverbal components, composition of heterogeneous semiotic structures. There is substantiated the possibility of transferring different methods of measuring productivity of reading the verbal texts to the research of texts of a new nature. There are analyzed the hardware methods for measuring productivity of reading, basing on the registration of oculogram, myograms in a historical context. There is made conclusion on prospects of future application of eyetrackers for studying the efficiency of reading the texts of new nature. It is noted presence of different terms for this type of texts: creolized, polycode, videoverbal, visual-verbal, lingvovisual, semiotically complicated text. Their real existence in the information-library and educational environment requires the solution of quality-oriented and qualimetric tasks. As an example, there is given the Competition “Immersing in the Creativity of A.S. Pushkin”, organized by the Association of school librarians of the Russian world, where the materials are presented by the creolized texts. There are defined the perspectives for research of productivity of reading for increasing the efficiency of various intellectual and information activities of people in the interests of the future of libraries.

The article is devoted to the graphic design of books of one of the most productive and successful co-operative publishing houses of 1920-ies — “Zemlya i fabrika” (Land and factory) (ZIF). The author examines the circle of artists who collaborated with the publisher (from “miriskussniki” (members of “Mir iskusstva” (World of Art)) to constructivist artists), emphasizes the breadth of stylistic range of the proposed plastic solutions. The advantages and shortcomings of “sensational style” of design are considered at the example of books included in the series “Library of Satire and Humor”. It is also important the experience in publishing the literature for children, although not all the publications of this kind were successful. For the research there were used the editions stored in the holdings of the Russian State Library, and documents from the collection of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI).

The article represents one of the first attempts of bringing together the available materials relating to the history of publication in emigration of “Dark avenues” by I.A. Bunin, having correlated them
with the facts of history of publishing in Russian abroad. The method of the comparative historical analysis used in work helps to reconstruct in sufficient detail the history of publication of the short stories, which became the “business card” of emigrant creative works of I.A. Bunin. The first stories from the book “Dark Avenues” were published in periodicals of the Russian abroad in the late 1930-ies; after the beginning of World War II the New York “New magazine” started to publish new stories of the cycle. In the New York publishing house was published the first edition of “Dark avenues” in a form of collection; however the Parisian edition of 1946 is considered to be the “canonical” one: it is the latest version of the collection, published during the lifetime of Bunin. Proposed retrospective allows to see that the release history of “Dark avenues” has not ended with the death of Bunin, but still continues, already in the Russian literary space — the Russian philologists publish unpublished stories of the so-called “Circle of the ‘Dark avenues’ ”. Materials of this article can be used in preparation for publication of the academic collected works of the writer, requiring taking into consideration of all the existing editions of Bunin’s texts.

There are examined the underexplored libraries of the provincial scientific archival commissions at the example of Kostroma and Vladimir provinces. Appeared in the 1880-ies in the Upper Volga region, these research organizations — provincial scientific archival commissions (GUAC) — had significantly enriched the local book culture and contributed to the further development of librarianship in the region. The local intelligentsia, standing at the origins of the first scientific libraries in the Upper Volga Region, joined around these commissions. Thanks to the work of GUAC there had survived a great number of written historical sources. Such libraries had saved from destruction significant amount of literary monuments on the territory of the Upper Volga region, including unique manuscripts and early printed books, and had preserved historical and scientific publications. There is described the library and educational activities of Kostroma GUAC, started its work in 1885. There is revealed contribution of Vladimir GUAC, which operated since 1898, to the development of librarianship of the Upper Volga region. On the basis of the published works of commissions and archival materials there is shown the role of these libraries on preservation of the book monuments, valuable scientific editions and documents on the history of Kostroma and Vladimir land. Some of the materials from the libraries of Kostroma and Vladimir provincial scientific archival commissions nowadays are preserved in the collections of the State Archives of Kostroma and Vladimir regions.

There is considered the preparatory work of the Council of the Society for promotion of rural free libraries-reading rooms in the Tomsk province on promotion among the rural population of the idea of benefit of libraries. There is described in details the opening of the first libraries of the Society for promotion — in Sudzhensk and Novo-Kuskovo of the Tomsk district of the Tomsk province. For the first time there is restored in detail the age and educational structure of their readers, who were mainly the students of the local village schools and those who attended these institutions in that time. There are shown the main indices of the first months of libraries’ operation and circulation of books by departments. There is given the comparative characteristics of the readers’ interests. Fiction literature was of the greatest demand in both libraries: fiction books were taken by more than half of the visitors of libraries. Books of spiritual and moral content, as well as on history and geography were also of interest to the rural readers. For the first time it was calculated the readability — the number of books, which took to read one visitor during the certain period of time as a whole, as well as per one month on average. On the basis of several years reports of the Council of the Society for promotion there is traced the further fate of these libraries and revealed quantitative indicators of their work. Basing on study of the reading circle of the villagers, there is made conclusion on the insufficient extent and depth of penetration of modernization processes in Siberian village.

The actual problems of the advanced training, retraining and continuous education for staff of Library and Information Science specialists in the Republic of Cameroon have been examined. Some suggestions for future improvements coming from advanced foreign experience have been proposed. The author exposes a series of contradictions characterizing the system for re-education and re-qualification of librarians in the Republic of Cameroon. The absence of an integral vocational training system with basic standards in defining the functions and significance of librarianship has been indicated. This current analysis solicits senior librarians in the Republic of Cameroon to specialize in different branches of their training. Considering the current situation, the author designates the future directorate of strategic development and continuous training in the country to undertake cardinal systematic transformations in this domain. Having made an analysis of foreign experience, the author indicates the need for training library staff with several levels of specialization, using progressive training teaching models, an opportunity that will create a specialized research centre in the domain of librarianship in the Republic of Cameroon. Priority tasks with guaranteed judicial standards in librarianship in the country have been defined. The author indicates the need for the creation of a practical and scientific professional publishing house that will publish documents focused on development of the various branches/orientations of information, library scientific and practical books, as well as documents that are conceptual and methodical in nature. Furthermore, the author suggests the creation of a unique network for continuous education at the national level.

Taking into consideration the numerous difficulties faced by the publishers of children’s books in emigration, its study seems to be almost impossible. However, in 1920-ies in Czechoslovakia there are created institutions, enabling recording and distribution of new Russian children’s books. The article describes the activities of leading and smaller publishers of Russian Abroad in the context of general cultural and educational processes in the environment of the Russian Diaspora in Czechoslovakia in the period of 1917—1939: release of new editions, recording and distribution of books for children in Russian. Special attention is paid to the interaction of publishers with the educational organizations, to the choice of authors of books. There are noted the genre-thematic features of the publications (textbooks, non-fiction, classics for training of the reading skills in Russian language, fairy tales). There is examined the position of children’s literature in overall literary process of Russian emigration of 1920-ies, its assessment by literary criticism, educators and publishers, and, in particular, the leading role of the critics department of the Prague pedagogical magazine “Russian school abroad” in the formation of status of children’s literature of Russian Abroad.

The article is devoted to the topical problem of interaction of the electronic library systems (ELS) with electronic information-educational environment (EIEE) of higher education institutions belonging to the cultural sector. Among the most significant drawbacks of electronic library systems identified on the basis of the analysis carried out in the Universities of culture, are: sufficiently high cost of connection to the systems and a poor quality of specialized content that does not allow to significantly increase the share of publications in electronic form in the process of acquisition of educational literature. Based on the model idea and organizational conditions of interaction between ELS and EIEE of Universities of culture proposed earlier, there are presented the results of practical experiment, conducted during in 2015—2016. The results of the research largely confirmed the proposed model and set of conditions aimed at the effective solution of the actual problem, which resulted in the substantial increase of the share of disciplines supplied with educational publications in electronic form in the total volume of disciplines. Herewith, the total expenditure of educational organization for acquisition of literature did not increase — it redistributed in the direction of greater availability of publications in electronic form.

There is substantiated the necessity to change the section “60.5 Sociology” in the schedules of the domestic Library bibliographical classification, due to the development of sociological knowledge in the recent decades. Based on the analysis of causes, forms and the nature of changes of sociological knowledge, there is proposed a new version of schedules. Comparative analysis of the previous and proposed versions of the LBC schedules, the analysis of a large mass of the latest literature on sociology allows to point out the increasing multi-paradigmality, interdisciplinarity and historicity of the sociological knowledge. It poses a number of problems to the classifiers on the reflection of these features in the LBC schedules and distributing the literature by sectors of socio-humanitarian knowledge. Some examples of solutions to these problems are proposed in this work.

There is established the task to reveal the totality of current names (personalized and nonpersonalized) of the Russian public libraries localized in the urban space. The process of selection of new name or decision to abandon the old name are interpreted from the point of view of the reflection in it of the contemporary social consciousness, influence of the authorities, relevant to the reading public, as well  as for the libraries as a form of search of the best survival strategy adequate to the needs of time. There is made the conclusion on the presence of two trends in the current library naming practice. Within the first one (prevailing at the moment) — the priority is to follow the tradition, the desire to focus on the specific value-historic vertical. Another trend of selecting the name is associated with the skills of creation of image in the urban environment and the desire to occupy its own niche in the space of intellectual and leisure services.

The problems of formation of the United electronic knowledge area of Russia, reforming of the system of legal deposit of documents, and development of the National Electronic Library were discussed at the 7th All-Russian scientific and practical conference “Library Collections in the Digital Age: Traditional and Electronic Resources, Acquisition and Use”, held at the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg on March 27 — April 1, 2017. Formation of library collections in the digital age is undergoing significant changes under the influence of information technologies. The library and publishing communities have entered a new stage of partnership, based on integration of their efforts to organize electronic resources for improving users’ services. Offers of publishers and owners on information products become more focused on the capabilities and needs of target user groups. This approach has a significant impact on the use of information technologies and their adaptation to the library objectives.

The article discusses the Meeting of the Editorial Board and Editorial Council of “Bibliotekovedenie” (Library and Information Science) Journal, which was held on 30 April, 2017 at the Russian State Library. There are described the main scientometric indicators of the Journal, presented the statistics, collected over the last two years, structured by various directions of work of periodical, and the interim results of the activities. There is provided the detailed information on changing the journal format and its causes, proposed the data on adoption of the journal Ethics and outlined the prospects for further development of the periodical.