The author discusses the findings of the survey of scientific studies and research at the regional central libraries. The survey was held by the National Library of Russia under the government order of the RF Ministry of Culture. The purpose is to identify the organizational forms of scientific flows and their key vectors for further elaboration and adjusting measures to update the organizational mechanisms and increase efficiency of research work of the libraries.

Russia’s national libraries (National Library of Russia, Russian State Library, B. Yeltsin’s Presidential Library), as well as the federal libraries subordinate to the RF Ministry of Culture are engaged in research activities. Russian National Public Library for Science and Technology (RNPLS&T) and academic libraries. e. g. State Public Scientific and Technological Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences Siberian Branch, Library of the Academy of Sciences, and RAS Library for Natural Sciences, contribute to this work, too.

The scientific workflow of RF regional central libraries is still underestimated while these libraries act as research, methodological and coordination centers and constitute the strategic factors for the network of Russia’s public libraries. To assess research activities and to facilitate the use of the research findings, the National Library of Russia conducted the survey to identify the key organizational forms and vectors of research activities of the libraries based on the responses of research administrators of the RF central regional libraries. The author discusses the approaches to study scientific workflows applied in the recent decades and the libraries’ scientific and methodological goals as provided by the “Strategy for Librarianship Development in the Russian Federation for the period up to 2030”. The survey findings evidence on the significant scientific potential and contribution of the RF regional central libraries to the sector development and actualization of cultural heritage, as well as on the need for the support of and methodological guidelines for scientific workflows of regional central libraries to be provided by the federal methodological centers.

The author examines the issues of administering the library sector on the territory of the Russian Federation during the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) with the focus on the role of the People’s Education Commissariat (Narkompros) in reorganizing the sector of librarianship. The author analyzes the status of libraries during the early war years: the system of library services and library staffing were deteriorating, the libraries were unreasonably closing. The problems of library collections evacuation are accentuated. Narkompros’ leading role in reorganizing librarianship during the war, stabilizing the library network, solving the tasks of war, defense and economy, is emphasized. Narkompros supported the library services in hospitals and contributed to stabilizing the national system of librarianship administration, and leaded the revival of the libraries destroyed by the nazis. The author concludes that the libraries’ war experience of the libraries can be used today.

For over 20 years the libraries’ ecological activities has been discussed within the framework of the specialized section “Ecological information and ecological culture” at “Crimea” World Forum. In 2018, the section was transformed into the conference on the current problems of ecological education. Since 2024 it is called “The green libraries – the libraries of the future”. Since 2020, the biennial online conference “Libraries and ecological education: Theory and practice” is held under the aegis of the Forum. The online conference is to engage more library specialists into ecological education. In 2024, the international online conference was held for the third time. The author reviews the conference professional events and summarizes in brief the papers presented at the conference, and discusses the participants’ practical experience and methodological solutions for ecological education and promotion of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Book Siberia International Festival is held in Siberia since 2014. Since 2017, it coincides with the scientific forum “Region of readers: The books in the life of the contemporaries” which comprises the business and professional program. At the forum plenary meetings, the professionals interested in reading promotion spoke and made their presentations. The reviews and information materials on book fairs and festivals make the tradition of academic periodicals promoting best practices among the professionals. Reading is an important social practice supported and promoted by the library community, public figures in culture and education, as well as by the state agencies. To analyze the projects implemented in Novosibirsk region, Republic of Kazakhstan and People’s Republic of China, the sociocultural approach is applied: it enables to reflect the joint efforts of the governments, professional communities, art and public organizations, ITcompanies, book publishers, and bookselling organizations. The authors focus in particular on Kazakhstan’s national project “The nation of readers”. The PISA method is used to assess the project effectiveness. The PISA study results evidence on the importance of family reading in educating readers in cooperation with the libraries and educational institutions.

Evolving open science information infrastructure increases the number of diverse open access resources (OAR) and improves their functionality. This trend also facilitates new ways for scientific information and data search and analysis, scientometrical studies and science forecasting. Tracking science vectors is determined by the high rates of scientific and technological progress and the need to foresee the possible development scenarios in science and to define its priority vectors based on the processing metadata of scientific articles, data sets, patents, and other documents. The open access resources and search systems comprising information on hundred millions of documents in the open sources, provide the widest range of metadata of research results (often wider in typology than well-established license resources) and can make the basis for revealing the trends in science and their further visualization.

To develop the approach to defining the trends in science based on the quantitative analysis of OAR data processed with visualization tools, the following problems were solved: 1) the term “trend” was analyzed; 2) patterns of patent and publication activities were specified to define the trends in science (OpenAlex, Lens, BASE, etc.); 3) the methods to identify the trends were selected (thematic mapping on the basis of key concepts and the most often used keywords, trend extrapolation, etc.); and 4) trend analysis and visualization tools were examined (Google Trends, VOSviewer, Excel, etc.). The author suggests that the information products comprising the findings of trend identification and visualization analysis with the reference to user information queries, make a promising vector for the scientific libraries.

The authors accomplished the bibliographic study of the reminiscences on the Great Patriotic War, published within the chronological framework of two qualitatively different historical stages of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. The bibliographic review of memoirs on the history of the volunteer movement in the Don region enables to problematize the value of memoirs as the source for studying the motives, actions and social practices of volunteers during the Soviet period. The relevance and novelty of the study are determined by the extensive gaps in the regional historiography and the absence of contemporary bibliographic review of this topic in the regional dimension. The materials used are the memoirs and reminiscences on the events of 1941–1945, published in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, which authors are the veterans of Rostov region volunteer troops. The memoirs of the veterans of the Fifth Don Cossack Guards Cavalry Corps’, that took over Don region volunteer Cossack units, make the core of the bibliography. The collections of Don State Public Library provided the basic materials for the study.

Based on the comparative analysis of memoirs and reminiscences by Rostov region volunteers, the authors conclude that there are significant qualitative differences in the content of these types of sources about the Great Patriotic War. The authors argue that personal publications of the Soviet post-war period offer some limited information value due to the political, ideological and censorship restrictions of the era. The memoirs and reminiscences of this period emphasize the leading role of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1941–1945 and heroic patriotic themes, while overlooking diverse stories of everyday front life, experiences and feelings of soldiers, etc. On the contrary, the memoirs and reminiscences published in the post-Soviet period are free from ideological and censorship restrictions and look much more enlightening. While they are still calling for the careful critical analysis, they are extremely important for the historical reconstruction of everyday military life, thoughts, opinions, and the psychology of Soviet soldiers, in particular the Don volunteers.