How the modern academic libraries developed. Review of the book by N. E. Kalenov “Library for Natural Science: Fragments of history in documents and persons”

Abstract

The authors review the book by Prof. N. E. Kalenov, Dr. Sc. in Engineering, who discusses the recent half-century period of computerization and informatization of the Russia’s largest science libraries as the case study of the Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Kalenov’s professional experience illustrates how the modern academic libraries’ have been developing. He includes a lot of scanned documents following the factual vector of advancing library information technologies in Russia, complemented with the his personal comments. This combination of rigorous presentation and subjective attitude makes the book so fascinating. It will be of interest to librarians, historians of science and technologies, and programmers.