The Central Scientific Agricultural Library’s system of the agrarian science information support is examined. The Library strives to make the content available online to the maximum. Most of its information services are offered both in conventional and online formats. For the recent 26 years the Library’s products have been being generated in digital formats and are accessible via the Library’s www-site in a varying degree. The www-site serves as a billboard promoting the Library’s events and activities, as well as the reading environment for the users retrieving information. The system of agrarian researcher awareness-building includes alert informing, current informing, and selective dissemination of information. The main information source is the CSAL collection comprising above 3 millions of depository items. On this basis of information products are generated: bibliographic, abstract and full-text databases, bibliographic and abstract publications, and electronic libraries. The key information product is the AGROS database comprising information on books and articles in 42 languages of the world of the total volume of over 1.95 million records. The database provides efficient identifying and subject-specific search owing to target- developed information retrieval languages: the information retrieval thesaurus in agriculture and foods, RUSMARC format. The authors conclude that agrarian science information support comprises diverse information products; well-developed awareness-building system enables to receive information in print and digital formats, online or in the Library’s physical premises, independently or through librarian’s assistance.

The necessity for studies and sharing the experience of Russian academic university libraries in collection development is substantiated. The main trends for the collection development in the 21-st century are revealed and examined as the case study of Novosibirsk State University Library.NovosibirskUniversityis among the nation’s leading research universities. The authors specify the trends of modernization, globalization, collection development with digital publications, and the increasing share of the latter in the Library’s acquisitions and, correspondingly, in the collection, on the whole. They also emphasize the relations and mutual dependence of these and other trends within the collection development process. The factors of successful collection development at the Library are recommended to be implemented by other libraries. High professional competences of collection development specialists and other librarians, the wide range of the collection development sources and their stability, and university administration’s special care of the library collections are specified among these factors. The authors conclude that Novosibirsk State University Library has accumulated great experience in collection development in the circumstances of information society, advance of information technologies, expanding globalization, university integration into the global education, science and research environment. This experience can be shared with many other university libraries.

The author talks about research related to the efficiency and quality of the OPAC’s, which was conducted inNovosibirskfor a quarter of a century, in the State Public Scientific and Technical Library of the Siberian Branch of theRussianAcademyof Sciences. Galina Anatolyevna Skaruk concluded that the prestige of the library was connected with the reader's satisfaction with the search. The first study showed: the reader does not find the necessary literature unassisted. Search is a reader function. But the “untrained reader” cannot be an effective user of OPAC. We need a certain level of information culture. The possibilities of the OPAC’s linguistic tools in the thematic search are used slightly. They need to be combined into a system, applied in a complex. The complex included: the language of bibliographic description (in particular, the title), classification systems – Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) and Library Bibliographic Classification (LBC), State Rubricator of Scientific and Technical Information and verbal languages (subject headings, keywords). It became clear that the composition of the complex should not be formed by chance, but be determined by the parameters of the library (such as the contingent of its readers, the composition of the collections, the service system). With the help of questioning and other sociological methods, it was comprehensively studied: what does the reader in OPAC look for, what is the mechanism of interaction of the reader with OPAC. Considered the search situation, analyzed in detail the search behavior of readers.

A number of theoretical problems were solved. The basic concepts are clarified: efficiency, quality, criteria of completeness, correctness, operativeness are defined. For the first time introduced the concept of comfort search. In many publications, the methodology of conducting research was described in detail, questionnaires were attached, and the technology of content and statistic processing was explained. Dozens of publications by Galina Anatolyevna Skaruk (1969–2019) tell us about the research conducted. Their study enables libraries to conduct similar scientific work in their conditions. It is clear that we can expand the horizons of research. Studying the quality and effectiveness of OPAC in every library will increase the circulation of collections, the level of service to readers, and ultimately enhance the prestige of the library. Therefore, together with the article devoted to G. A. Skaruk, who died early, a list of her scientific works is published.

In the last few years, scientific mobility phenomenon has attracted greater attention of some researchers working in different subject areas due to the increased significance of migration of scientists in the new context of computerization, globalization of science, and an increase in the number of cross- and multidisciplinary studies. This paper briefly describes the main stages of scientific mobility in the 20^th and 21^st centuries closely related to different types of mobility including the concepts of brain drain and brain gain, brain circulation, and new types of brain networking and synchronous mobility. We also summarized and typed the main approaches developed by researchers when studying scientific mobility. Particular focus was on the subject for studies on mobility with main clusters covering motivations and driving forces, the impact of mobility on research output, pathways of research migration, connections between scientific mobility and research collaborations, and development of approaches to study scientific mobility. It was revealed that most common methods include analysis of curriculum vitae, interviewing and questionnaire surveys, and scientometric methods. Finally, we addressed currently unsolved problems when studying scientific mobility.

In recent times marked by the offensive and largescale advancement of computer technol-ogy numerous libraries, scientific and educational centers in the world are creating their own extensive databases of literary and bibliographic texts. Facing such databases the close reading method designed to work with specific texts would seem to lose its meaning. The Italian sociolo-gist and literary critic Franco Moretti became the main critic of the close reading. He presented his ideas in the book «Distant Reading». This book can be viewed as a program to update the methodology of studying world literature. Moretti believes that the world literature should be studied not by looking at the details, but by examining it from a long distance: studying hudreds and thousands of texts. He suggest to use the Digital Humanities (DH) methods, i.e. to ap-ply digital (computer) methods in the humanities. To show the reasons for the survival of certain types of texts, Moretti compares literary processes with biological ones and draws an anology between natural selection and reader selection. Moretti’s predecessor, who first used quantitative methods in literary studies and saw common ground between literary and biological processes, was the author of the fundamental monograph “Methodology of an exact study of literature” B. I. Yarkho (18891942).

Moretti’s book “Distant Reading” shatters stereotypes of the bibliographic environment. It is directed no to the study of close (slow) reading, but to the study of the entire world docmentary flow. This approach opens the way to the use of quantitative methods in the study of world bibliography. A new research strategy “exact study of bibliography” will be formed as part of digital and automated text processing.

The possibility is examined for providing open data in pursuance of the goals and objectives of sustainable development set up in the UNESCO Science Report: Towards 2030. Organization of science research work implies managing vast data arrays, availability of scientific information and its reliability in the aspect of increase of researchers and volumes of scientific publications. Focus is also made on finding sources of reliable scientific information. The role of the libraries as a source of bibliographic information, organizing the system of support of scientific research is emphasized. The possibilities for providing open data and online access to information resources are considered. The directions of the information space development in the perspective of collective management of rights are underlined. The framework and possibilities for providing access to scientific information are specified. However, the remote user authorization technologies and IP-address range access capabilities limit the openness of information resources. The author emphasizes that the terms of use of documents differentiated by right holders depend on the strategy of data management. She also argues that educational and scientific programs should include training in using of information resources.

The structure of the network of public libraries inChina, their place in the unified library system of the country are discussed: their material, technical, resource and service potential is characterized as the basis for building a knowledge-based economy inChinaby 2050. The content of the first in the history of Chinese librarianship the national legislative act on libraries – Chinese People’s Republic Law on Public Libraries, which came into effect in January 2018, is disclosed. The role of the Central National Library of China as a scientific and methodological center for managing public libraries is identified, and the main directions of its scientific and methodological activities are described; in particular, building the legislative corps for the Chinese library system, standardization of information services and technologies; corporate cataloguing, implementation of innovative (network, mobile, virtual) services, aspirations for innovative experiments, the acquisition of practical skills in working with high-tech equipment, building the organizational foundations for acquiring Chinese National Digital Library and National Digital Children’s Library; preservation and conservation of library collections, including their digitization, and participation in various forms of professional development.

Library axiology is interpreted as a section of the philosophy of the bibliosphere. The subject of library axiology is the value relationship and values of library activities. The monograph by G. M. Vikhreva "Value foundations of Russian libraries" [in Russian] is reviewed. Vikhreva examines the following problems: the axiological model of the library, libraries in the context of postmodernist society and globalization, the levels of the value foundations of library activities. The traditions of enlightenment are pursued in the value-orientated activities of Russian libraries. The reviewer argues that in the axiological hierarchy, the vertex value is the national idea expressing elements that must be unconditionally protected and preserved. Awareness of the national idea is just as important for society as it is important for an individual to understand the meaning of his/her life. False national ideas are dangerous because they disorient the state, society and individuals. To comprehend interrelationships between library axiology and axiology of culture, one has to go beyond the library when comprehending the value foundations of library activities and refer to the theoretical baggage of bibliosophy. The monograph by G. M. Vikhreva deserves the attention of library community, since it offers scientific novelty and relevance as a new vector of the library science.

Professor Yury Grigoryev (1899–1973) is a prominent Soviet Library scientist; he made a valuable contribution into the studies of library collections and general studies of book culture. The author reviews just one episode in Grigoryev’s biography, i. e. the publication of his practical aid for librarians “Exhibition activities in libraries” (1931). The same 1931 year, N. T. Tol­kachev, post-graduate student of the Library Studies Institute, published the slashing review “The bourgeois librarianship disguised as Marxist”. Instead of objective academic criticism, he descended upon the author with the hard political blames using Josef Stalin’s concept of class struggle exacerbation during the USSR’s advancing towards socialism. Yury Stolyarovr includes this review in his paper in full, with his own notes and remarks. He argues that the above reviewer was incompetent in the issues he criticized. This publication characterizes the environment of the Big Terror political implacability. The author emphasizes that our contemporary librarians have to know what the moral and psychological conditions for even most prominent librarians of the past were.