The article highlights the experience of libraries working with older generation users in certain foreign countries faced with the modern demographic problem - the aging of the population: Germany, Canada and Australia. The modern forms of work of libraries of these countries with the elderly, which are of interest to Russian libraries, are identified and characterized. Difficulties in the work of foreign libraries with the older generation during the COVID-19 pandemic are separately noted. The authors come to the conclusion, that despite the differences in location, size, departmental affiliation, quantity and quality of the fund, and so on, many libraries in developed countries face the same problem - the increasing number of elderly readers and reconstruct their work in accordance with the new demographic and socio-cultural situation, which requires libraries to develop special services to save the cultural capital of older generations.