The article is dedicated to the problem of evolution of Polish history book in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. The author studied manuscripts and old-printed books of most famous Polish historians – Jan Długosz, Mathias Mechovius, Martin Kromer, Marcin and Joachim Bielski, Maciej Stryjkowski, Alexander Guagnini – written at the time in Latin and Polish.

The article provides information on the private libraries of famous persons in Siberia and the Far East, who were not directly related to books by the nature of their activities.

The article presents the history of library activities in Harbin which were closely connected with the railway construction in Manchuria. The author analyzes book funds and activity of various types of libraries: those that belonged to the Railway Administration, public organizations, private persons, etc. Special attention is paid to the bibliographic indexes.

The main types of libraries in Tambov province in the XVIII – the first half of the XIX century are considered: public and private libraries, libraries of educational institutions, orthodox libraries and others. Multiaspect analysis of their activities is given: material resources, structure of funds, readers, staff, service conditions and forms.

The article describes the organization of library services in the Tambov province in 1920-s. Highlighted are the key directions of library services and. The conception of the reorganization of library service system is presented.

This article presents the results of a citation analysis of references included in Russian publications on biology, environmental sciences and ecology during the 2002–2011 period. The Russian flow of documentation reflected in the «Web of Science» was analyzed. The article provides data obtained by the authors on the «half-life» of publications for the fields studied. Citation peaks showing the maximum amount of cited literature for the period studied are revealed.

The results of scientific research conducted by the Central Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus based on the use of the «Web of Science» and «Scopus» databases, the degree of reflection of the Belarus authors’ articles, as well as the publications supported by various foundations, citation data, etc., and their use for evaluating scientific activity and the quality of scientific information resources access to which is provide by the Central Science Library of the National Academy of Sciences.

The methodological problems of scientific theory are considered. The notion of a scientific theory is analyzed. The principles of classification of scientific theories including internalist, externalist and system theories are revealed.

The critical analysis of the modern theories in library science is given, the influence of the social sciences, the Humanities and information technologies on the library science formation as the inter-discipline brunch of scientific theories is investigated.

The main problems of home bibliography are analyzed.