The Eighth World Professional Forum «The Book. Culture. Education. Innovations» («Gelendzhik-2024») was held on June 9–15, 2024. The forum subject scope comprised the issues of developing and using artificial intelligence in library services, staffing and practical training of library professionals, scientometrics and bibliometrics, patent information, e-libraries, electronic archives and online resources, library educational projects in Russia, developing digital environment and other vital problems of the library, information, scientific, educational and cultural communities. The authors review the following events: Twenty Ninth International Conference «Libraries and information resources in the modern world of science, culture, education and business», 2024 theme «Libraries inthe modern digital environment: New forms of cooperation and user services»; Scientific Educational Symposium «Building and development of the modern digital environment for education and science»; B. Lensky Seventh Industrial Conference «Book publishing and the libraries: Vectors of interaction»; Eighth Museum Assembly «Preserving traditions, implementing innovations»; Seventh General Conference of the National Library Association «Libraries of the Future; Fifth Conference «Green libraries – libraries of the future»; Fifth Scientific Conference «Scientometrics, bibliometrics, open data and publications in science»;  etc. The conclusions on the Forum are made.

Today, the government pays special attention to science and science popularization. This includes legal regulation, in particular, and makes the focus of the humanities scholars. However, the issues of the origins of science education of the community, including via the librarianship, are understudied. The goal of this study is to reveal and analyze the legislative acts on non-formal education regulations adopted in 1725–1917. The study focused on the documents comprising definitions related to the science popularization in its modern sense. In Part 2, the author discusses the results of content analysis of the legal documents regulating publishing, censorship regulation, and efforts of scientific societies and people’s universities, and their libraries. The author concludes that no system approach was applied to the government regulation of science popularization.

The library of Avtograd Cultural Center in the city of Tolyatti, Samara Region, Russian Federation, traces its history from the trade-union library at Volga auto plant. The goal of the study is to examine library transformations and further digitalization of library and bibliographic processes and to analyze the functionality of automated library management system designed by the library’s specialists with due regard to the latest trends. The author compares the historical events that influenced the trade union libraries in Volga Federal Ditrict, their development and current status. On one hand, Avtograd Library’s transformation looks like the natural historical process influenced by exterior factors, on the other hand, against the historical background, it is rather the exception among other trade-union libraries.

The author expresses her hope that studying the digital evolution of Tolyatti auto plant library will enrich the historiography through discovering new sources of the Avtograd Library’s history never published before.

The authors examine the two focus areas of the Central Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, namely, information support of scientific research and scientific communication. They are inseparably connected with the library’s history. The library has been always focused on supporting scientific research and research teams. At the present stage, this support is actualized through collection development and acquisition of traditional information resources, online access and databases, through onsite and offsite library services. The services of the library are characterized. Library automation and digitalization are in the focus of the library specialists. The authors discuss the library's research activities, in particular, in the field archeography and bibliometrics. They also analyze the structure of the Belarusian Encyclopedia website. The methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, and generalization are applied. The library is the hub of information and knowledge, professional and interpersonal communication, and preservation of scientific and cultural heritage. The library balances the traditions and innovations, which facilitates the progress, unites the generations of scientists, and supports interaction of scholar schools. The findings of the study will be useful for libraries and library educational institutions.

The authors discuss the experience of the scientific library of the basic university of Omsk region, i. e. Omsk State Technical University, in support of research and innovations. The main directions of the library's work are examined: information services, consulting and methodological support for users, information delivery and analytics. Based on the analysis of the situation and understanding of the university’s development trajectory, the need for anticipatory information support is substantiated. To obtain relevant analysis and forecast data, OmSTU library applies digital technologies and statistical bibliometrical tools, methods of bibliometric statistics, comparative analysis of publication activity, and network analysis of scientific publications. The authors share the positive experience of the library's interaction with related university departments, in particular they discuss the innovative service of knowledge-based software based on the network analysis of publications. Through developing and improving its organizational structure, the library integrates gradually into the university’s strategy and secures its status of the relevant and demanded entity in the world of information and knowledge.

In the recent years, since the introduction into the market of generative artificial development (AI) tools, the discussions of copyright as related to AIgenerated works have aroused more questions than answers. The creative activity, the humans’ exclusive province before, has been now changing. The problems of AI-generated works have become the concern of the creative industries, education, library acquisitions, etc. At the same time, the conflict has blazed up around using copyrighted works for educating AI systems. During the recent two years, in many countries the legislators have been striving to regularize the challenging area and to find solutions. The authors review the latest initiatives, recommendations, active lawsuits though the lens of AI users and developers and the copyright owners. Within the range of AI-related issues, the authors focus on the dual problem: on one hand, on how to deal with copyrighted works used as the source to train AI tools, and, on the other hand, on who owns the rights to the contents generated with these tools. The authors’ arguments and recommendations may be useful for elaborating the approach to defining of the status of AI-generated works in various areas, including librarianship.

The author reviews the history and current state of library and information support for the system of teaching mathematics to the blind students. The comprehensive multimodal approach is applied to develop of mathematical document collection intended for blind schoolchildren and students, as well as for specialists working with this category of learners. The techniques of increasing the efficiency of perception of the contents by readers with different sensory limitations is discussed. Several publishing and exhibition projects of the Russian State Library for the Blind are launched to popularize mathematical knowledge among blind schoolchildren and to support learning process through the access to multi-format publications. The need for further interdisciplinary research in the field of information support of the learning processes and professional selfrealization of blind scientists is substantiated. Examples of practical implementation of inclusive partnership projects of the Russian State Library for the Blind with educational institutions aimed at popularization of science are given. The author shares the experience of partner science popularization projects between Russian State Library for the blind and educational institutions.

The authors substantiate the need for electronic catalogs that significantly simplify users’ access to relevant information. They formulate the difficulties of this process. The mentioned problems become especially acute for the libraries with a long history and large collections when they start conversion to the digital. The authors discuss the possibilities of bibliographic search expansion through scanning paper catalog cards. The ways to convert paper cards into digital format are described.

As part of the study, the advantages and disadvantages of each method for acquiring e-catalog were analyzed, and different technical tools were reviewed to find the most efficient solution for developing e-catalogs. Based on the analysis, through additional training and with the neural networks, the algorithm in the Python language was implemented, which allows to perform preprocessing tasks, to localize the necessary areas, to recognize text and, most importantly, to convert the scanned text into RUSMARC format fields and subfields. This algorithm accelerates retroconversion of bibliographic data as compared to the manual entry.