The scientific heritage of M. S. Bazykin is small, but still of considerable interest for book art researchers. In particular, he contributed much to study, description and promotion of a book sign as a phenomenon. His works on the book plates are written with a clear understanding of very special problems of this type of graphics. The scholar considers bookplate as a sort of an allegorical portrait of the owner giving an idea of his personality, profession, circle of interests, aesthetic preferences, composition and nature of his library. A bookplate should have succinct and laconic expressiveness, as well as ought to fit easily into the book artistic structure. In accordance with these requirements the art critic evaluated works by I. N. Pavlov, A. I. Kravchenko, M. V. Matorin, N. V. Puzyrevskiy, and other artists, demonstrating a broad spectrum of aesthetic views, delving into the essence of a creative method of each author. In his reviews touching the book graphics, M. S. Bazykin paid a special attention to details of their design, demonstrating his evident preference of strict and severe designer solutions. He was annoyed by ostentatious luxury of certain editions motivated by neither their content, nor readers′ target audience. At the same time he was interested and almost always favourable towards art editions realized in the provinces. Important and significant judgments, concerning prominent publishers and printers, designers and polygraphists of those years should be found in his still unpublished texts stored in the Russian state archive of Literature and Art (RGALI). For instance, in his reports Bazykin analyzes causes of disastrous situation with newly released art books, considering except for design merits and shortcoming various other factors of economical, sociological and management characters. In his papers the scientist poses a fundamentally important question: who of contemporary book designers can be considered as a real book artist, equally competent in both technical and aesthetic aspects. Strictly speaking, besides rare exceptions, such universal «artists-designers» didn′t exist for that moment, but it were them, whom Bazykin pinned his hopes on radical renewal of image of Russian book with. Undoubtedly, should his talent develop under favorable conditions, he might have easily become one of the most respected and competent scholars of book art. However, he managed to do quite a lot even in the short time period allotted to him.

The article presents the results of a complex analysis of dedicatory inscriptions on books gifted to Tomsk science fiction and fantasy writer Viktor Kolupaev by his colleagues. It is a great problem to estimate the informative value of inscriptions, while approaches to their research are disjointed, so the purpose of Kolupaev's inscripton corpus specification is the synthesis of various objective and subjective data, which are differently interpreted by bibliologists, historians of literature, sociologists and linguists. The study has shown that the authors' dedicatory inscriptions are the most informative for modeling an «almost real» recipient's image, inscriptor's rhetorical image, and a system of social relations in the writing community.

The article represents the history of creation and development of a typographical office and book and geographical shop to sale editions of the General Staff at the Military Printing House. It analyzes «Military Printing House Regulations» highly approved on December 30, 1860 and the «Military Printing House Regulations» put into operation by the order on the Defense Ministry No. 28 on February 10, 1895, concerning activity of the typographical office and Book and Geographical Shop to sale editions of General Staff at Printing House. The paper considers Rules of work of Book and Geographical Shop for the General Staff editions sale. It reveals features of books perchase in it by various categories of customers.

The complex process of forming the information society is accompanied by new challenges, demands, public demands, dictating the need to revise the established ideas about the place, role and functions of participants of information communications. Socio-cultural transformations of the early XXI century foreground the problem of book and other mass media partnership in a changing information environment. Formed in the XIX-XX centuries «relative» relations undergo revision in the competition for readers (information consumers). New channels and means of information transmission displace the traditional media in the information services market and create new conditions affecting the public consciousness. Scientific discussions on these issues facilitate an exchange of views and reflection on new approaches to the analysis of emerging contradictions.

The article determines the role of biographical research in strengthening the scientific status of library-information science. The results of biographical research allows understanding the role and mission of the library science in frameworks of the world scientific view; determining its interrelations and cooperation with different disciplines; showing the historical dynamics in research topics, scientific ideals and standards, main mechanisms for obtaining new knowledge and possibilities for its application in practical activity in the library-information sphere. Biographical research permit to highlight the contribution of individual researchers and practitioners in developing the library-information science in different historical periods. Biographical researches are encouraged by national library associations and library schools as an instrument, which helps to predict future trends in the library-information science and practice and to overcome risks in their development at the national level. The main obstacles in carrying out biographical research are the following: the information science dynamics, the lack of financial resources and professional support, electivity of the library history course in library higher schools curricula, quantitative methodology non-possession, mistrust to results of biographical research. Interdisciplinary synthesis based on overcoming disciplinary boundaries allows applying the integral potentiality of different disciplines successfully. It is essentially the main instrument for planning research, identifying main problems and sub-problems, constructing and evaluating hypothesis and sources, designing databases, processing results, developing theoretical frameworks. The interdisciplinary synthesis helps to control main study phases of biographical research, particularly analysis and interpretation of data. It predetermines the necessity of using complementary scientific methods relevant to an investigating problem. The interdisciplinary and methodological synthesis should be considered as the basic factors for obtaining objectivity, validity and reliability of biographical research results.

Training the local history specialists in libraries is an urgent problem of our time. The required core competencies for local history staff training are partially laid down in the educational and professional standards. The study objective is a comprehensive analysis of educational institutions that provide training, retraining and advanced training the library specialists. The research includes three stages: 1. Sites analysis of universities training according the direction «Library-information activities» (2016). The results have been presented earlier. 2. Sites analysis of secondary professional educational institutions training on the specialty «Library Science». 3. The analysis of institutions and organizations involved in retraining and advanced training staff for the library local history. The results of sites analysis of secondary professional institutions have revealed 15 institutions, which curricula include the disciplines of local history problematics. The analysis of database «Institutions of Library Education» generated by SPSTL SB RAS made it possible to determine the main list of organizations engaged in retraining and raising the professional skill level of library specialists. It was determined that information on the professional development of local history specialists is not available on official websites of educational organizations. The paper reveals the following significant problems in training the local history specialists: curricula closeness of secondary professional and higher educational institutions in providing the information on local history studies; lack of comprehensive information on institutions involved in direct retraining and professional development of such specialist; weak response of educational organizations of library education and structures of additional vocational education to the modern requirements of library practice in their training. The authors has concluded that it is necessary to coordinate the work between educational institutions, libraries and professional association - RLA.

The article reviews results of the surveying scientists employees of scientific centers of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences - to study their information behavior. It reveals researchers’ preferences, peculiarities of their work with heterogeneous information and ways of its obtaining depending on a certain factor (status, age, area of knowledge, nature of activity, geographical location). The authors conclude on the need to renovate the information support system for research and development, and outline the strategy basic principles of developing the academic libraries scientific-information activities. The paper presents three-element model of information support for scientific research by the academic library.

A part of international congresses programs are professional visits (trips). Foreign publications pay a special attention to professional trips, which considers them as an instrument of cultural diplomacy. In Russia there are a few examples of organizing professional (or study) trips for students. Publications dedicated to this theme are usually of descriptive character. The experience of St. Petersburg State Institute of Culture, as well as other Russian and non-Russian universities, confirms that educational trips should be regarded as a form of independent study activity. This article attempts to determine how the tasks of study trips for students of library departments correlate with competences of the educational standard. The paper considers the experience of organizing independent student work at the Library and Information Sciences Department of St. Petersburg State Institute of Culture within the framework of educational trips to other countries. It highlights the trips objectives in the context of library and information science education as the following: establishing and developing professional and interpersonal contacts between foreign and Russian educational organizations and libraries; involving students in intercultural communication; getting professional knowledge by visits to institutions, informational conversations, excursions to organizations and institutions of professional interest; exchanging professional knowledge in the field of librarianship and the experience in library practice; meetings with foreign students, scholars and specialists; acquainting with the economic, political and cultural life of foreign countries. By providing information about educational trips «The role of the book in Gutenberg’s homeland (Germany)» and «Baltic libraries as centers of science, culture, and education (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania)», the author demonstrates how these tasks are correlated with the competencies required by the Russian educational standard of higher education «51.03.06. Library and information activities (bachelor's level)»; outlines the stages of study trips followed by a description of the professional tasks and competencies required by the federal state educational standard of higher education mentioned above. Thus, students develop competencies through independent work. The article sums that study trips as a form of independent activity accomplish professional tasks required by the Russian educational standard of higher education, such as research and methodological work, information and analytical work, management.

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 analyzes bibliometric issues of information-documentary flow on the information literacy in Azerbaijan, and assess its current position. It investigates statistically articles, books, theses and official documents in various languages on the relevant topic. As a result of analysis carried on various parameters, it reveals that in the information era the problem of information literacy, which is urgent today, is not satisfied in the Azerbaijani scientific space. The author identifies only 101 sources on the information literacy problem for 12 years, which is few in contrast to other countries. The main research objective is to direct young scientist’s attention to solve this problem and to search the information literacy formation and development in various fields of science in Azerbaijan. The paper also informs about scientific institutes, scientists and specialists, researchers studying the problem of bibliometry and information literacy in Azerbaijan.

The main directions of the International Conference «STI 2017: Open indicators: innovation, participation and actor-based STI indicators» (Paris, 6-8 September 2017) were the following according to the author's opinion: survey of geographical features, patterns of the science development and a choice of adequate indicators to evaluate these features and patterns; as well as development of new methods for data processing, sharing, analysis and use to assess science and technology. As the conference was held in the format of 4 parallel sessions being carried on simultaneously, the author was compelled to choose the presentations closest to his interests, namely, presentations on scientometrics and related issues. Such a choice was not subjective, because the author being an employee of the Belarusian National Technical University Scientific Library, is engaged in evaluating research activity of scientific organizations and universities (which have long been regarded as an objective of research libraries by serious library specialists of Belarus and Ukraine), as well as of scientific periodicals, and therefore is most interested in information about indicators of research activity of scientific organizations and universities and, especially, about indicators of value and quality of academic periodicals. The presentations that the author has managed to listen to and the discussions that he participated in, transferred via this mini-review seem to be helpful in further bibliometric studies conducted in the Belarusian National Technical University Scientific Library and to be of an interest to the readers of the journal.

The paper includes speeches of the participants of discussion platform «Independent book publishing: realities, prospects for the future»: theorists and practitioners of books-publishers - writers, poets, editors, kulturträgers, bibliologists. This article describes different points of view on the problems and prospects of developing the independent book publishing in various Russian regions and in the world. It emphasis on the history of the independent book publishing in Russia and Germany, new opportunities emergence for independent authors’ expressions: online publications, electronic publications, etc. Particular attention is paid to discussing the definitions, what is meant by «independent publishing», «self-publication», «self-edition», «self-printing», «self-editor», «kulturträge», «zine culture». The central topic of discussion was the problem of determining the quality of literature, self-promoting publications and distribution of professionals’ published books: bookselling network, social media, activity profitability, etc. Participants attempted to identify the place of Siberian independent publishers in the all-Russian and international publishing space, prospects for further development of independent book publishing in Siberia.