The problem of studying private book collections of the Siberian peoples is the most urgent in understanding the cultural diversity of Russia. In this context, the book culture of East Siberia Buddhists is of interest. The article objective is to analyze the book repertoire of Buddhists private libraries. Analysis of this repertoire allows us to reconstruct not only its structure but the level of book culture among local Buddhists in the XIX-XX centuries as well. The material for reconstruction is a collection of small-format Tibetan-language publications (SFTP) from the collections of the Center for Oriental Manuscripts and Xylographs of the Institute of Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. This collection is an aggregation of numerous private libraries (PLs), widely distributed among the Buddhists of Transbaikalia and Prebaikalia. Books from the PLs are related to different areas of Buddhist knowledge: religious doctrine, philosophy, philology, astrology, medicine. The largest fields are religious doctrine and philosophy. The research results show that due to the texts of «Diamond Sutra» and Pramanavartika, it is possible to reconstruct not only the repertoire of Buddhists PLs in East Siberia, but elements of everyday Buddhist culture. In this culture, religious-doctrinal texts were involved in the daily ritual activity of laypersons, and philosophical texts in the system of monastic education. The texts ratio of Pramanavartika (5 copies) and «Diamond Sutra» (48 copies) available in SFTP is about 10%. This parameter can indicate both the approximate correlation of religious-doctrinal books to philosophical ones in this collection, and the real ratio of monks and laity number in the pre-revolutionary period in Buryatia. Thus, it can be argued that the «pocket» religious and philosophical libraries of Buddhists (each bundle of the studies collection) is the most interesting source of various scientific information on the book realities of Buddhist culture in East Siberia.

The article reviews attributed owners’ signs of Belarusian libraries (public, private and specialized) on pages of the monthly magazine «Vestnik Evropy» (1866-1918) (issued in the XIX - early XX centuries). The analysis of the magazine circulation at the territory of modern Belarus provides copious data for the further research in the field of bibliology, historiography and art history.

This paper is devoted to studying manuscript «Wang U Dzhin Yuan or the True Source of All Creatures or the Book on the True Source of All Creatures». The manuscript is a Russian translation of the text «萬物 真 原» (On the true origin of all things), a Christianian catechism written in Chinese language in the first part of XVII century by an Italian Jesuit missionary Julio Alleni. The translation was carried out in 1791 by Alexei Agafonov, a student of the Russian Orthodox Mission in Beijing. This article is based on a comparative analysis of the Russian translation and the original Chinese text. In the course of the work it was found that both versions of this text have a number of differences, such as the absence in the Russian translation of some chapters available in the Chinese text, and vice versa. At present, this translation exists only in one copy, and is stored in the Research Department of Manuscripts of the Library of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. The manuscript is not mentioned in any catalog or work on the history of Russian Sinology.

The reading study allows determining the level of development and scales of intellectual-spiritual demands and practical needs of the population. The main segments of a reading circle, common for Siberian and Far Eastern residents in the late XX - early XXI centuries, are art, educational, industrial, scientific, local history, practically useful literature and periodicals. They perform the following functions: information, educational, leisure, relaxation, educational, communicative ones, persons’ socialization, broadcast of social experience and main systems of the values developed in the society at this stage of its development. Popular genres of fiction were entertaining: detective stories, love and historical novels, adventures, fantasy. Entertaining and information publications were the most demanded in the periodicals. It was marked demands for social-political and economic literature, books on housekeeping, popular psychology, traditional medicine, truck farming, children care. The content and ratio of the main segments of reading was defined first of all by reader’ age and occupation. Motives and frequency of regional inhabitants appealing to this or that literature are the basis for separation of reading segments.

The article is devoted to the 90^th anniversary of N. S. Kartashov’s birth and exposes his contribution into the theory and methodology of library science. The heritage of N. S. Kartashov, who has been a great scientist, tutor and library work organizer, is multi-faceted. It reveals the specific features of his scientific research: fundamentality, depth of investigation; practice orientation; accessibility of results; credibility and logics of argumentation; high level of methodological approach to research. The methodological problematics final expression has been presented in his textbook «Comparative Librarianship». The author has worked out a conception of a new trend in the library science, which is based on using a comparative librarianship method. Depicting the essence of comparative librarianship N. S. Kartashov states that it represents an independent branch of library knowledge having its own aims, tasks and specific subject. The branch tasks are revealed as the following: «It analyzes the state, main tendencies and laws of the library theory and practice development in different countries, regions and globally primarily in a comparative aspect; uncovers the ratio of global tendencies, and national and regional specificity; identifies positive and negative aspects of the international librarianship experience, forms and means of mutual library culture enrichment, and determines at last the borders and limits of foreign experience transition to national ground [12, p. 5]». N. S. Kartashov has worked out all attributes of the new direction: object, subject, principles, functions and methods. He has suggested the structure of the comparative librarianship method, procedure of research based on it, the system of criteria and indices of comparison; described the instruments which may be used in the investigation. In his book «Regional Librarianship» the author shows that a great scale and size of the country, variety of regions in natural, geographical, resource, social, economical, demographical aspects demand elaborating special strategies of regional development in all fields, and in particular in librarianship. Regional environment influences the process of forming information needs, the number and structure of readers, composition of collections and their usage, library resources development and organizing the public library services. N. S. Kartashov has substantiated a row of new categories: «local library system», «integrated library system», «territorial organization of librarianship», «territorial structure of librarianship», «library space», «regional library program» etc.

To improve the library education in the Republic of Cameroon, the author analyzes current pedagogical technologies, which are considered as a kind of social technologies, and included various aspects and levels. In the absence of a generally accepted classification of educational technologies, nevertheless, five main groups are revealed by a type of training: contextual, problematic, project, game, interactive ones. The paper shows technologies used for each kind, as well as the possibility of using different groups of pedagogical technologies in the library staff training in the Republic of Cameroon. A separate group of education technologies is distance learning such as multimedia technologies, electronic textbooks, teleconferences and webinars. The author emphasizes that the movement forward the innovative culture development, forming pedagogical skills and professional and personal competencies of library workers in Cameroon today is associated with innovative educational technologies. They open up new opportunities for the manifestation of creative initiative both teachers and students, give a chance to see a unique collective result, which together stimulates the process of professional training.

The article examines the attempts of the Library of Congress of USA to establish contacts for book exchange with the Tuvan People's Republic. This fact took place in the second half of the 30s in the XX century. However, the Tuvan side, as evidenced by the analysis of well-known archival documents, did not provide any answers. Such attitude of the Tuvan People's Republic authority is explained by a number of reasons. One of them was a geopolitical situation both at the global and regional levels. Complicated circumstances were observed in the Tuvan People's Republic by that time, under which conditions it was not appropriate to react to «imperialist states» appeals, in particular, on book exchange at the international level.

The Library of Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) (a division of Pushchino Research Center RAS) has implemented several large-scaled projects in the light of preparing to celebrate the anniversary of the Institute of Protein Research RAS. Among them is a bibliometric analysis of publication activity of all researchers of the Institute including the information on the publications number, international cooperation, highly cited publications, distribution of papers by quartiles of the publishers with providing this information at the library website. Due to the interest shown in invention activities, we have analyzed the patents' thematic areas of the Institute. Another aspect of the study was to set up a portal on scientific schools of the Institute of Protein Research, which highlights the scientific area and schools significance, the leaders' part in every school, scientific papers of schools and its fellows, awards and honours, defended theses, bibliometric analysis of publications. The next research direction was to create a data base on the former researchers who live abroad in order to invite research scientists-compatriots to establish scientific-professional contacts.

The article gives a brief overview of research on the problems of preparing union catalogs; it shows that the creation of the national union catalogs’ system is a strategic direction for the library and information science development in Russia. The paper characterizes Database (DB) «Siberian and Far Eastern book. XVIII century - 1930: a union catalog» as an integral part of the Russian national bibliography created by the Department of Scientific Bibliography of the State Public Scientific Technological Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Providing information on the availability of publications in the collections of book depositories, the DB opens access to the collections of libraries and archives of Siberia and the Far East for a wide range of researchers-historians. Union catalogs of Siberian and the Far Eastern books as a part of the Russian retrospective national bibliography contribute to preserving the cultural and intellectual heritage of the country, making it accessible to modern and future users. The article demonstrates possibilities of DB using as a research tool, and a historical source. The authors present the analysis results of the DB documentary flow, some comparative results of studying book business development in Asian Russia in preand post-revolutionary periods.

The quality of electronic catalogs is a guarantee of the library collections effective use. However, an adequate methodology for assessing the quality of an electronic catalog (EC) is not available today. It is necessary to introduce a new system of quality analysis. At the research first stage the terminological analysis of the EC notion has been carried out, which reveals the absence of a universal clear definition that allows highlighting an electronic catalog in a series of other similar objects. The author traces main approaches to the definitions formation. These approaches determining allowed us to begin refining the specific characteristics of the electronic catalog based on the professional literature analysis for 1990-2017. The author concludes: the modern EC is a complex multicomponent object, which various components require different criteria and methods of quality analysis. The composition of EC components as quality assessment objects and main evaluating indicators for each component are determined: bibliographical databases (including fullness, data identity and relevance, efficiency, completeness of documents’ identifying characteristics, compliance with the bibliographic description rules, entire and depth of document content reflection, stability of indexing); lexicographic databases (including the information search language (ISL) vocabulary completeness and detail, data identity and relevance, correct wording and alignment of the access points, the compliance with requirements of data presentation formats, ISL grammar tools composition and functionality); factographic data (information completeness and accuracy on the availability and location of publication copies, their movement); database management system and information processing s y st em (functional suitability, accessibility, ease of use, application reliability and security, efficiency, mobility); search system (ISL functionality, ease of navigation in the catalog, efficiency of search techniques and algorithms, relevance criteria, completeness and ease of understanding of search instructions, maintaining the system to help users); user interface (completeness of tasks solved by the system, compliance with human capabilities, visibility and functionality of formats, user-friendly modes of operation with the interface, user feedback, comfort, compliance with aesthetic requirements); system for ensuring the reliability of information storage .

This article is devoted to analysis of the technologies effectiveness to promote library resources. The first part explores using web analytics and its tools in the library. The study of existing approaches to choose web metrics allows identifying the following key metrics to assess the effectiveness of the library web site operation: (1) attendance metrics; (2) the metrics of involvement and loyalty; (3) social metrics. The techniques effectiveness direct evaluation is proposed to promote library resources based on the analysis of: (1) measurable targeted actions by users on the site; (2) transitions to the library site by external links from search engines; (3) sites with high density of clicks and conversion of site landing pages; (4) existing segments of users and their activity. This paper provides perspectives showing what ways this emerging area of study can help in understanding and improving the perception of products and services on websites of libraries.

The article deals with socio-cultural dominants of the library partnerships. The interpretation is based on the quantitative and content analysis of database records «Librarianship and bibliography», which supported currently by the Center for Studying Problems of Libraries Development in the Information Society of the Russian State Library. 266 items were selected based on searching the words «partnership», «cooperation» and all their derived forms in the records relating to Russia taking into account their fixation in headings and abstract texts. The author attempts to trace the dynamics of reflecting the libraries partnership experience in publications (monographs, articles in professional press, conference proceedings, manuals and textbooks) for 2010-2015 taking into account the status of partnerships (international, regional, urban, rural ones), related strategic objectives, tactical means of achieving them, the importance of choosing a particular partner in terms of the final result of cooperation, the partnership place. The ration of activities to promote reading and cultural activities in modern Russian libraries considers in the partnership frames. The author came to the following conclusions: the chronological distribution of the data detects the trend of growing attention to the topic of partnerships in 2010-2015; in spite of the diversity of the concrete wordings, main targets are: cultural, promote reading, enhance the role of libraries in society, the positioning of «own» territory (region, city, district, etc.). Their employees think that the key to the libraries relevance are less associated with the reading process. In searching the means to adapt libraries to the information society conditions, which are guides in the information world, library professionals are increasingly turning to the popularization of domestic tourism, the creation of the mental orientation system relevant to the local population, participation in local cultural events. «Small motherland» is perceived as the most important marker of identity, and the libraries partnership with other cultural institutions and public associations as an effective demonstration of the libraries’ capabilities in the society cultural mobilization.

The article presents a scientometric analysis of the development of the carbon nanotechnology (NT) direction for 2000-2015 with the participation of 30 most active countries. It shows shifting the world research center to the Asian region, both on volume and quality indicators. Using the concept of a national research portfolio gives deep characteristics of different countries behavior in the course of scientific rivalry. Due to the strong skewness of the citation distributions, preference is given to the percentile-based indicators, such as: the contribution of a country to the world top-10% (top-1%) of the most highly cited publications, the share of such publications in the country's total output, the highly cited papers index, etc. Relying on them, the author fully discloses the scientific «offensive» of the «newcomer» countries on the «incumbents» ones (e.g. China on the USA, South Korea on Germany, Iran on Russia), the phenomenon of Singapore as an effective producer of highly cited publications on the carbon nanostructures, and international co-authorship in the top-1% segment of the most cited articles. Russia's positions are studied in detail, the main domestic research participants are established, and based on bibliometric criteria the center of scientific excellence in the field of graphene is identified. The paper characterizes the supporting role of a number of national science foundations in the NT carbon direction development using data of WoS. The author used the Science Citation Index Expanded database for the initial bibliographic sampling; information of science foundations of Russia and the USA, as well as patent organizations of Russia (Rospatent) and the world (WIPO) for additional comparison.

The article contains the research results of the Central Scientific Library of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (CSL UB RAS) to determine the publication activity of chemical profile institutions of UB RAS based on information retrieval system SciFinder of Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS). The indicators take into account publications number, their citation rates and impact factors of journals (from the database Journal Citation Reports). The authors reveal basic research topics, scientific journals, which published the research results of scholars working at the chemical profile institutions of UB RAS more often. The article presents the results of studying citation of inventions of UB RAS’ scientific organizations in the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) (Scientific Electronic Library eLIBRARY.RU) and SciFinder (CAS). The obtained indicators allow authors to evaluate the dynamics of scientific productivity of UB RAS’ institutions.

Today, effective quality management is a factor in organizing the institution ensuring its market success in a competitive information and library market. New approaches appeared to increase the organization effectiveness. The introduction of a Balanced Scorecard (BS) is an approach that based on a causal relationship between strategic objectives reflecting their parameters and the factors for obtaining the planned results. The BS provides a new approach to the strategic management of institutions of any size, different spheres of ownership and activities. Analysis of BS implementation in an organization with an existing quality management system (QMS) allows asserting them should be used as complementary approaches. Based on the results of this study, the specialists of the Republican Medical Library and Information Center (RMLIC) of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Tatarstan carried out preparatory work to implement their own system. We started with customer demands satisfaction by products and services, monitoring and measuring this satisfaction. The main argument for making this decision is that the information obtained after monitoring and measuring customer satisfaction will serve as the basis to determine the strategic reference points (mission, values, vision) of the library and information center. Satisfaction indirect indicators have been taken into account; a method of brainstorming is used to systematize the judgments on the quality of provided products and services: library, bibliographic, information services and information-library products to health professionals (selective dissemination of information, differentiated servicing of managers), information and legal services. The results obtained and the conclusions drawn will be used to improve the quality management system of RMLIC and the activities of the Center as a whole. They should be applied in other libraries implementing a quality management system