Traditionally, the annual analytical paper opens the World Professional “Crimea” Forum. The author introduces the concept of digitalization and defines its key differences from informatization. He emphasizes that digital transformation facilitates digital economics being characterized by the advance of the Internet, resources digitization, mobile communications, digital technologies, primarily in finances and economics, and merging online and offline services. He quotes statistical data on the digital economics in various countries. In the Russian Federation, the digital economy develops intensively and embraces industries, banking, healthcare, government, and, in particular, libraries and archives. The principal international documents to facilitate global digitalization are analyzed. In Russia, the fundamental documents are adopted with the reference to the global practice of digital transformations. The author formulates the trends in the digitalization that make direct impact on the librarianship and information industry; he also specifies the goals for the libraries in the digital epoch. The latest changes in the world book market are discussed along with its statistics. The focus is made on the open access and copyright issues. The author concludes that the libraries of the future make the inherent part of the global information infrastructure.

The processes of globalization and the challenges of post-industrial civilization expand the boundaries of research in the social and human sciences significantly and dictate the need for close interdisciplinary cooperation in exploring the ways for adapting traditional sociocultural phenomena to the new conditions of the developing information society. The shift in emphasis from studying traditional booklore from the historical aspects to new book culture is increasingly attracting the attention of researcher in the humanities who are trying to comprehend the current state and predict the vectors for the book culture development in the dynamically changing information environment.

Over the past quarter of the century, changes in research approaches are obvious: from offering definitions for the “book culture” concept to understanding the multidimensional nature of this phenomenon and the need for interdisciplinary cooperation in the studies. Intensive discussions in academic periodicals demonstrate the diversity of ideas, concepts and research approaches [1].

The author analyzes the findings of recent book culture studies from the standpoint of various scientific schools and approaches, provides examples of precise interpretations of philosophical, cultural, documentary aspects of the books’ functioning within the system of culture. The necessity for identifying mutually acceptable guidelines for interdisciplinary cooperation and updating the methodology for studying the books, booklore and book culture is substantiated.

The Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences possesses unique collections of the national and foreign science literature. It acts as a federal STI authority in the natural and engineering sciences. Therefore, one of the Library’s key functions is delivering materials (originals and fragment copies) from its collection to other libraries within the ILL system. The RAS Library for Natural Sciences heads the country’s largest centralized library system (CLS) embracing 49 affiliates of research organizations in Moscow region. The CLS collections, including those of the Central Library, make the single distributed collection to provide services to ILL subscribers. The peculiar feature of the Library’s ILL services is that it delivers materials to its subscribers (the CLS libraries) not only from the CLS collections alone but also from other Moscow and Russian major library collections. The authors describe the computerized system designed at the Russian Academy of Sciences Library for Natural Sciences and characterize the used ILL technology. The structure of the information base comprises ‘Clients’ and ‘Orders’ units. Order dispatching and cash settlements with subscribers are provided by the system’s management unit; the retrieval and statistical tasks are also accomplished. The user unit supports order generation based on union e-catalogs. Specific features of order generation based on various Internet-catalogs, i. e. journals, books and periodicals, image catalogs of national and foreign books, are examined.

Popularization of science, promotion of research results, recognition and positive attitude to the brand of a scientific organization and individual researchers have been the subject of increased attention from research institutes and universities in recent years. They are one of the most important points of national science policy in Russia. Analysis of the effectiveness of the PR policy of organizations becomes a key task in these circumstances. The article provides an analysis of news stories in the mass media based on the results of scientific research of the institutions of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In the course of the study, key requirements for a news report on a scientific publication were determined and the most common errors when presenting results of research as newsworthy events were identified and listed. This study proposes a number of metrics for measuring the effectiveness of scientific organizations activities in the mass media. The calculated metrics make it possible to assess the overall level of organization activity in promoting research results in the media, the effectiveness of this activity from the point of view of the interest of the media to relevant news stories, the completeness of media coverage of research papers and active authors of the institution. The analysis of the media activity of research institutes of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences has shown their growing interest in popularizing and promoting the brands of institutions, individual scientists and scientific results.

In the analyzed book, the cause of the emergence and support of the phenomenon of bibliophilia is installs. The idea is that the effect of book selection belongs to the sphere of irrational, but thanks to its characteristic property libraries are enriched with the most valuable cultural heritage of different times. The main content of the publication is to assess the information about the contribution to the book culture of famous bibliophiles XIX-early XX centurynot only indicated in the subtitle of the book. Pavel K. Simoni carefully examined the Izbornik Svyatoslav (1076), a Word about Igor's regiment, monuments of old Russian folklore. In the history of book culture returned significant strokes from the biography of Dmitry V. Ulyaninsky, which allowed to recreate an objective description of his life. A lot of information about the life and work of Nikolai N. Orlov during prison and exile, as well as in the post-rehabilitation period. The value of this information is increased by the fact that Nikolai N. Orlov is known not only as a bibliophile, the author of dozens of publications in the professional press, but also as the Director of the Moscow higher technical school. Nikolai E. Bauman (now MSTU im. Nikolai E. Bauman). In General, the publication is evaluated as a good and in form and content.

On the occasion of the 80-th anniversary of Yury Grikhanov, prominent Russian library scientist, the author reviews his biography and his career from being junior librarian at Lenin State Library’s Central Book Exchange Collection up to the Library’s Deputy Director for Research. The author emphasizes that the works and studies accomplished by Yury Grikhanov have made the foundation for many important government documents mapping out advance of the national librarianship, e. g. «Regulations for organizing the depositary preservation of the country’s book collections» (1974) и «Regulations of the Librarianship in the USSR» (1984). The main keystones are discussed: his work for the Ministry of Culture as a Deputy Head of the Libraries Department (since 1991); approval, in 1992, as an academic supervisor of the federal laws development group that determined the strategy and policies for the libraries for many years («On librarianship» and «On the mandatory copies»). Yu. Grikhanov’s legislative experience was capitalized on when the following documents were being prepared: «The concept of developing the library services for Moscow City population for the period up to the year 2015» and the Law «On the library and information services for Moscow City population». The author focuses on the high expertise and remarkable personal qualities of the celebrant.