In the context of a decline in publishing circulation, there is a need to activate existing methods and ways to correct negative trends. Traditional in overcoming the crisis is the introduction of progressive forms and methods of book trade, but the development of business processes on online platforms leveled the importance of bookselling enterprises and led to a reduction in the bookselling network. However, the online book trade at this stage has not reached the required level of monetization and did not live up to expectations of management. The purpose of this material is to comprehend the publishing brand as a holistic concept, which includes not just a complex of such elements as the author’s name, title of the work, genre, but as a combination of the brand of the author’s name (author’s brand), the brand of the title of the work (brand naming), the brand of the genre of the work. Among the tasks to identify the problem of the impact of a branded publishing product on the consumer of fiction, children’s literature; definition of a publishing brand as a marketing strategy tool for a modern publishing house. The article discusses the role of the publishing brand in the market business model, the main elements of the publishing brand, the degree of influence on consumer activity, as well as the impact of digital technologies on the creation of a cross-media product on Internet platforms.

In recent years, the number of research on regional book culture has increased. This trend can be traced in Buryatia, where, on the contrary to the consistency of surveys carried on during the Soviet period, they are scattered today. The lack of the holistic idea of the main directions to study Buryatia book culture in different historical periods dictates the need to summarize information on the research carried out, to determine the degree of development of the scientific problem. The purpose of the article is to analyze published sources reflecting various aspects of the development of Buryatia book culture. As a result, a historiographic analysis of scientific works devoted to the history and modern state of book publishing, book distribution, printing industry, republican periodicals was carried out, the research activities of the Department of Library and Information Resources of VSGIK in this direction were described. Summing up the results of many years of work on the study of the topic made it possible to identify gaps and determine the prospects for its further development.

The journal “Bulletin of Knowledge“ (1903–1918) was popular in various readership groups, aspiring to self-education. The purpose of the article is to determine the role of the communicative strategy of the editor–publisher of the journal V. V. Bitner for the creation of the community of “Bulletin of the Cognoscenti”, which was a “community of interpreters” (according to S. Fish), within the framework of the history of reading. The sources for the analysis were a set of journals stored in the Sverdlovsk Regional Universal Scientific Library named after V. G. Belinsky (Yekaterinburg), editorial articles, letters from readers, memoirs of V. V. Bitner and his contemporaries. Changes in the volume of the journal’s headings help to trace the history of the creation of a of readers community. The journal had sections to answer subscribers’ questions, as well as headings to publish letters to find friends, requests for help, and discussions of topical contemporary issues. “Discussion branches” of separate topics, continued sometimes for a year or more. Members of the readers’ community also interacted in real life. Their “disvirtualization” took place thanks to the organization of lectures, excursions and congresses of subscribers. The titles of the headings, examples of readers’ letters and the assessment of contemporaries indicate the uniqueness of this educational project. The portrait of V. V. Bitner by I. E. Repin, commissioned by subscribers for the tenth anniversary of the journal, can serve as an evidence of respect and admiration of the editorpublisher work. The commercial success of the “Bulletin of Knowledge” allowed V. V. Bitner to implement other publishing projects.

The purpose of the article is to reconstruct the reading and writing practices of the Siberian Old Believers of the 18th century and determine the place of Old Russian texts in their reading repertoire. Methods of textology and codicology are used. The article considers one of collections copied in the Siberian Old Believer environment at the end of 18th century – Old Believer collection B–777 from the Tomsk State University Research Library. On the basis of scriber’s records the conclusion is made about the place where collection was created: it is Altay and the south of Western Siberia. The composition of the collection is analyzed, the main groups of texts included in it are listed. It is proved that the collection belongs to the well–known “library in one binding” model, which allows reconstructing the reading circle of its scriber, as well as the owner. It is shown that along with later texts, texts of Old Russian tradition are also presented. It is concluded that the texts of Old Russian tradition were not always reproduced in the later Old Believers communities as a result of a continuous handwritten tradition, and were sometimes copied from books of the Cyrillic print. The creative nature of the reader’s practices of the collection owner, who significantly revised the text of Cyril of Turov, is substantiated.

The social significance of book publishing is determined by the large role of print media in personal education, in the dissemination of knowledge and ideas. Therefore, the study of this sociocultural phenomenon is an important area of modern scientific research. The purpose of this article is to make a quantitative analysis of book publishing in Barnaul in the pre-revolutionary period. The quantitative indicators of book publishing in Barnaul town per year and in general for the pre-revolutionary period were calculated. The results obtained showed that from the XIX century to 1917 at least 210 titles were issued in Barnaul, with the exception of periodic ones. The most productive were 1899 and 1900, when 13 titles were issued in each. Printing houses that worked in the town in the pre-revolutionary period were identified. The share of each of them was determined by the number of titles printed in it. Thelargest part – 44.8 % – was published in the Main Directorate of the Altai Mining District. The publishing repertoire and the author’s corps were outlined. The latter was represented mainly by persons who worked in Altai District. Many authors were the members of the Society of lovers of Altai exploration. The main group of publishers was formed by local societies, that’s why their office documentation was a noticeable part of printed materials and determined the publishing repertoire of Barnaul printing houses.

The issue of spreading scientific knowledge is relevant at the present stage of development of society. The library, as the most accessible cultural institution, is able to ensure the dissemination of this knowledge in all social strata of the population. The purpose of the article is to study the intensity and forms of events of scientific, popular science and educational content of federal, republican, regional and regional Russian libraries, reflected on official websites. The article deals with information about the popular scientific activities of the leading Russian libraries. The ongoing projects and mass events of scientific, popular science and educational content are described. Content analysis has become the main method of collecting information. The study was performed at the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. The site analysis showed that libraries, as cultural institutions, hold a sufficient number of various mass events in the form of lectures, master classes, intellectual games, quizzes, but the scientific or popular science content of these events is not always confirmed. Basing on two stages of the study the following conclusions were made: science promotion activities were present in an average of 33 % of the libraries surveyed. The most popular form of such events was a lecture with the participation of a guest lecturer. Most of the activities were aimed at young people.

The purpose of the article is to study the written sources appeared as a result of activities of the Buryat-Mongolian State Institute of Culture - the successor of the Buryat-Mongolian scientific committee and kept now in the Centre of Oriental manuscripts and xylographs of the Institute for Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The article highlights the history of the Institute of Culture as the main research center for the study of the Buryat-Mongolian Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic in the 1930s, archival documents characterizing the history of the creation of the library and library collections, publishing activities and information about unpublished works, for example about the manuscript version of the bibliography, including 602 entries. Through the integrated use of content analysis methods for text arrays in archival sources and the reconstruction of separate events in chronological order, the main directions of the Institute’s activities have been determined. In spite of the complicated period in the history of the country the process of collecting books in Tibetan, Mongolian and in Old Slavonic was not stopped. During 7 years of functioning, the Institute was able to develop its scientific potential, form an extensive source base on the history, folklore and ethnography of the Buryat people, and successfully solve the issues of language construction. Archival materials presented by various documents: articles, monographs, drafts, field materials, both published and unpublished, are of great scientific importance and are of interest to historians of science, folklorists, and ethnologists.

The article is a response to the article by V. K. Stepanov “A great reduction in quantity of libraries: particular management errors or a general perspective for the field (analysis of the experience of the Moscow region)”, published in the previous issue of Bibliosphere. Three main theoretical and methodological contradictions that reduce the reliability of the results obtained by the author and the validity of the recommendations proposed by him for regional librarianship are identified and analyzed.

The first of them concerns the departure from the principle of historicism, as well as the complexity of the consideration of the phenomenon under study, and as a result the social nature of librarianship is presented incorrectly by the author of the article. It is noted that the basic social function determining the vector of domestic library construction was the function of educating a Soviet person, his ideological, cultural, scientific and technical enlightenment through the guidance of book reading in a specially selected library fund. Intermediary functions were associated with the shortcomings of book publishing in the field of leisure literature and played a secondary role. Thus, automation and computerization of book publishing and bookselling affect librarianship only indirectly, since the material nature of book publishing does not affect the cultural and educational functions of libraries.

The second contradiction is related to the correctness of the analysis and interpretation of statistical data reflecting the process of library development in the Moscow region. The analysis of statistics shows that the negative dynamics in regional library construction is caused by the process of reduction of settlements, its natural decline and aging of the population. The increase in the number of users of municipal libraries indicates that the reduction in the number of libraries does not lead to a decrease in the level of library services of the population.

The third contradiction concerns following the principle of scientific objectivity of research. The author noted only negative trends, leaving regional library construction programs aimed at the development of model libraries outside the scope of his analysis.

The concept of Open science comes into conflict with the established practice of commercializing the results of research and development work. Commercialization of scientific achievements is both a way to attract funding and a deterrent to intensify the exchange of knowledge and the pace of innovation, especially in basic research. The principles of Open science, providing the ability to widely use and reuse the same data, comparing different approaches and accelerating the development of new research methods, make patenting applied developments much more difficult due to leveling the novelty of inventions in publications and open research data. The purpose of the article is to suggest the possibilities for scientific library to participate in the processes of production, exchange and dissemination of information and knowledge within the framework of the movement of science from the binary system “corporate science vs open science” to hybrid mechanisms of work. Such participation is based on the existing practices of the Centers for Legal and Technical Information and the efforts of scientific library to create an open scientific infrastructure. It involves the expansion of ongoing practices, taking into account the proposed by hybrid science differentiation of Open access to fundamental research and patenting applied developments. Thus, these opportunities are necessary for further modeling the place of scientific library in the ecosystem of open science.

Due to the limited access to the Web of Science and Scopus, scientific libraries are forced to look for alternative sources of bibliometric information. There has appeared the need to revise the methods and tools for conducting scientometric research and assessing scientific activity in general. Specialists’ attention to the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) has especially increased, which now most fully reflects the Russian document flow on scientific publications and has the analytical capabilities necessary to work with bibliometric indicators. In the Central Scientific Library of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (UB RAS), the methodology for scientometric analysis of the publication activity of scientific organizations of UB RAS has been reoriented to RSCI. The purpose of the study is to analyze the publication activity of a UB RAS scientific organization and test the RSCI tools for solving scientometric problems according to the developed methodology. The study revealed the need to revise the analysis criteria and methods of obtaining data according to the RSCI architecture. Conclusions are drawn on the effectiveness of RSCI tools for the purposes of the methodology, the correctness of the data obtained, and actions are proposed to improve the functionality of the system.