The paper reviews some international online library and information professional publications including the websites of library associations, academic research charities and foundations and research groups. The paper is divided into the following sections: pandemics and open science, coronavirus and library materials and spaces, new impetus for digitization, copyright – latest news. These topics have not been predefined but taken shape as a result of analytical work and research in the body of professional publications. Analysis of leading library experts’ discussions in social networks has also helped to reveal current trends in library and information infra-structure development. COVID-19 pandemics brought about significant changes to the life and projects of the whole library and information space. A major step to open science has been taken when academic journal publishers, leading universities, research charities have taken responsibility to work in a collaborative manner and share coronavirus infection research data and results speedily and freely. Transition to digital collections in library holdings has accelerated, collections of e-books are growing, and the effect of prior digitization projects has manifested itself. The importance of libraries as a trustworthy source of information does not fade; caution is needed when using information from preprints published on preprint servers; the increasing need of informing digital materials users of attached copyright is highlighted.

The paper presents a vision of the problem of changing modern libraries and defining their mission under the influence of the requirements of the emerging in-formation society. The main provisions of legislative acts in the field of culture, education, and librarianship in recent years allow us to assert that the mission of libraries is humanistic. However, the purpose of libraries is very vague in these documents. This leads to a discussion in the environment of the library community. Increasingly, there is a shift in library activity towards over-activation of cultural and leisure activities or digitalization. College libraries usually focus on the introduction of computer and telecommunication technologies, networking between libraries, the replenishment of electronic resources for information support of science and education, with-out paying due attention to the promotion and education process, which is humanistic in nature and is a part of education.
It is emphasized that the radical transformation of libraries' activities proposed by V. K. Stepanov will lead to their disappearance. For further successful development of libraries, it is necessary to modernize, modernize, based on the understanding of the humanistic mission of the library. The list of priority measures that will help to increase the role of libraries in society and implement their humanistic mission is given.

The author examines library services based on augmented reality technology. The concept of augmented reality comprises various instruments and approaches to their application. The author demonstrates the significance of and prospects for using modern augmented reality technologies to popularize and visualize scientific knowledge accumulated over many years in the library's open archive collections. The scope of practical applications of augmented reality interfaces in the areas of library services and knowledge management systems or
Big Data is hard to overestimate. However, the depth of theoretical research in the area indicates the dynamic development and the scale of further research and development in the field of library services and knowledge management systems or Big Data. The author examines the augmented reality instruments as part of ALS IRBIS64+.

Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites on the Web and a common source of information for many users. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia was not conceived as a source of original information, but as a gateway to secondary sources: according to Wikipedia’s guidelines, facts must be backed up by reliable sources that reflect the full spectrum of views on the topic. Although citations lie at the heart of Wikipedia, little is known about how users interact with them. To close this gap, we built client-side instrumentation for logging all interactions with links leading from English Wikipedia articles to cited references during one month, and conducted the first analysis of readers’ interactions with citations. We find that overall engagement with citations is low: about one in 300 page views results in a reference click (0,29% overall; 0,56% on desktop; 0,13% on mobile). Matched observational studies of the factors associated with reference clicking reveal that clicks occur more frequently on shorter pages and on pages of lower quality, suggesting that references are consulted more commonly when Wikipedia itself does not contain the information sought by the user. Moreover, we observe that recent content, open access sources, and references about life events (births, deaths, marriages, etc.) are particularly popular. Taken together, our findings deepen our understanding of Wikipedia’s role in a global information economy where reliability is ever less certain, and source attribution ever more vital.

The task of creating an open access repository for social sciences in the framework of the development of the information system of the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences (INION RAS) is formulated. The repository is to acquire and store he programs of workshops, webinars, conference and symposia as well as the presentations and paper abstracts. The findings of the study of open materials science events loaded to the websites of RAS scientific institutions of social and humanitarian profile as potential sources of information for the Repository are cited. For 2019–2020, over 1,2 thousand events held by more than 100 academic institutions were selected. Distribution by the number of events, their categories and status, topics, and type of available materials is given. The data supports the Pareto principle: 20% institutions hold up to 70% events. Thirteen scientific event types are specified, with 5 most popular of them accounting for 90% events with the leading disciplines of history, economics and literary studies. The available materials are unified and their 16 types are specified. Distribution by the number of events, their categories and status, topics, and type of available materials is given. The possibility for using these materials in various information and library services, building e-libraries and union bibliographic databases, and current and advanced selective information awareness services, is discussed.

Problems of search organization in open archive system are specified and analyzed. The experience of thematic search in digital resources is generalized. The approaches to organizing open archive search interface oriented toward untrained and trained users are characterized. The pros and cons of single search window are discussed. Vectors to improve search instruments and performance are defined. The rubricator version to support thematic search adaptation is proposed. The choice of UDC as the rubricator foundation is substantiated provided that its correspondence with the State Rubricator of Scitech information and Library Bibliographic Classification is set up. The fragment of the suggested rubricator is given as an example. The main purpose of the analysis is to summarize on the problems related to thematic search and to propose approaches to design optimum close-knit rubricator, and to identify its application possibilities.

The authors discuss Internet-based contests aimed to reveal high-grade (approved by experts) scientific publications and graduates’ qualifying papers. Such contests are to facilitate science and education. They are held on the federal level or regionally, within an individual discipline or university. Contest performance and objectivity depend significantly on expert board to assess the entries. The modern Inter-net technologies enable to submit digital versions of printed publication and to involve experts of geographically remote regions. This approach is introduced by Direct-Media Publishers that has been the organizer and co-founder of a number of contests of students’, post-graduates’ and scientists’ papers. In 2019, a specialized computer-aided system was designed based on the expert acquisition system operating efficiently at the RAS Library for Natural Sciences. In the expert acquisition system, publications’ information value is assessed by their abstracts with a simple point system. In the contest system, experts shall be submitted to full texts to be assessed in the more complicated way. The system has to be tuned individually to each contest. The system is described in full detail. It supports acquiring and maintaining databases of experts and entries, expertise functionality (study of entries and assessing process), results analysis with marks awarded. The experts database comprises brief information on experts while the entries database comprises publication metadata which enables to identify and classify them within the classification adopted for a contest. The system was tested within 2019 “Science Foundation” and «BeFirst» contests.

The author responds to the article by Elena I. Kozlova and Valentina A. Tsvetkova "Terminological aspects in the processes of standardization of library and information activities" (published in the journal "Scientific and technical libraries", № 3, 2020) devoted to the draft state standard of basic terms and definitions of library and information activities. The author objects to their interpretation of mathematical induction method in formal logic, by which they justify the attempt to standardize the concept of "library and information activities". Through this method, the opposite result would be achieved; redundancy or even artificiality of the proposed phrase is demonstrated consequentially. The author argues that, within the framework of the Federal Law "On librarianship", the term "library and information activity" as proposed for federal standardization along with the term "information and library activity" as it appears in the current standard, are both wrongful. The author also criticizes other theoretical and methodological provisions proposed by the state standard writers.
The author suggests to improve the system of standards for information, library and publishing (SIBID) by segregating the competence areas of information, library and publishing activities, without mixing them in any proportion or combination. SIBID must comprise the concepts of "library" and "publishing", since these terms are embedded in the name of the system and, therefore, they make the original reference points. The terminology set must be based on the key terms of laws and other national regulatory and legal acts, though the definitions of these terms may differ, and even radically differ, from those fixed in legal acts where they convey juridical conceptions while the standard is to regulate their professional, scientific, and practical meaning, which indeed completely corresponds to the legal interpretation. The author introduces the following approach to these general terms: since the library system is essentially of document and communicative character, the key concepts of the system shall form its foundation: library, librarianship, document, library collection, reader (user), reader (user) group, material and technical resources of library, library re-source studies, library model, library collection model, and other general terms within the discipline.

Review of the monograph: Vakhrushev M. V. Open access: History, current status and way to open science / M. V. Vakhrushev, M. V. Goncharov, I. I. Zasursky, A. I. Zemskov, K. A. Kolosov, I. I. Mikhailenko, N. D. Trishchenko, Ya. L. Shrayberg; under general and scientific editorship of Yakov L. Shrayberg. – St. Petersburg : Lan, 2020. – 168 p. – ISBN 978-5-8114-5034-3.
The contents of the monograph are discussed; its significance is critically evaluated as a creative work and science product of RNPLS&T’s team.

For the first time, the findings of the integrated study of the history of the Military Scientific Library of the Mikhailovskaya Military Artillery Academy are presented. The study covers its development since 1820 when it was founded as the library of the Artillery School up to the period of 1863-1917 when it became the specialized library of the Mikhail Artillery Academy and School. Printed catalogs of books of the Military Scientific Library of the Academy and School 1871 and 1895 are characterized. For the first time, other library’s catalogs are analyzed to be introduced into scientific use. The author characterizes and compares book catalogs of other universal military scientific libraries (those of General Staff, General Staff Nikolaevskaya Academy) with the catalogs of Mikhailovskaya Academy Military Scientific Library) and concludes that the latter has acquired the most complete book collection on artillery in the country. The collection matches science potential of this educational institution. Many prominent researchers well-known in Russia and abroad have taught at the Academy and the School. Their works are available not only from the Academy and School Library, but also can be found in the book collections of many libraries subordinate to the Military Ministry.
This study is to expand the idea of military scientific libraries of the country, the knowledge of their history, collection development principles. Its findings will be useful to librarians of military educational institutions and academic libraries in the aspect of materials selection and efficient collection development.

The author reviews the key events and projects held and discussed within the framework of the ISO/TC46/SC4 plenary meeting. The meeting was held as part of the 47th annual ISO/TC46 meeting week held in London 2020. The subject scope of ISO/TC46 covers a wide range of issues related to document management, indexing and abstracting services, and information science. Due to COVID19 pandemic, all the meetings were moved to online. The committee’s annual meeting was held in this format for the first time. The subcommittees and working groups discussed issues related to international standardization and ongoing projects in this area. The author discusses in detail the presentations by the participants in the plenary meeting ISO/TC46/SC4, held on May 12, 2020. The ISO/TC46/SC4 subcommittee conducts a number of projects to ensure the technical compatibility of library information systems with information science standards in related fields, which are developed by other ISO Technical Committees, as well as other authoritative organizations, i.e. DCMI and W3C. At ISO/TC46/SC4 plenary meeting, the working groups’ chairs reported on the state of the art in corresponding projects of international standards, plans for future were discussed. Subcommittee’s internal activities as well as issues of cooperation with other organizations were also covered.