The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into publication practices from the perspective of academics working within four disciplinary communities: biosciences, astronomy/physics, education and history. The paper explores the ways in which these multiple overlapping communities intersect with the journal landscape and the implications for the adoption and use of new players in the scholarly communication system, particularly open-access mega-journals (OAMJs). OAMJs (e. g. PLOS ONE and Scientific Reports) are large, broad scope, open-access journals that base editorial decisions solely on the technical/scientific soundness of the article. Design/methodology/approach: focus groups with active researchers in these fields were held in five UK Higher Education Institutions across Great Britain, and were complemented by interviews with pro-vicechancellors for research at each institution. Findings: а strong finding to emerge from the data is the notion of researchers belonging to multiple overlapping communities, with some inherent tensions in meeting the requirements for these different audiences. Researcher perceptions of evaluation mechanisms were found to play a major role in attitudes towards OAMJs, and interviews with the pro-vice-chancellors for research indicate that there is a difference between researchers’ perceptions and the values embedded in institutional frameworks. Originality/value: This is the first purely qualitative study relating to researcher perspectives on OAMJs. The findings of the paper will be of interest to publishers, policy-makers, research managers and academics.

The article considers the practice of creating open spaces in public libraries of foreign countries. Open space is a social phenomenon with a value load. The author emphasizes the role of open spaces in integrating social practices of the local community members, forming the territorial population identity, common values and cultural meanings. The paper highlights that it is necessary to use a wide range of traditional and virtual technologies in open spaces, as well as to strengthen cooperation with other social organizations. The role of open spaces is to socialize different demographic groups living at the same territory, to create conditions for their successful adaptation to the dynamically changing world and the socio-cultural potential reproduction. Open spaces create new opportunities for solving one of the most difficult task: they stimulate social activity of the local community members and form their cultural values. Thus, open spaces contribute to organizing interaction between different social groups living at the territory and strengthening the society sustainable structure.

Sociological research “Human resources of public libraries: modern requirements for professional activity and opportunities for its implementation” was carried out by the Far Eastern State Scientific Library. It was made on the base public libraries in Khabarovsk region within the framework of the partnership and cooperation agreement with the National Library of Belarus. A comparative analysis of the results of the survey of employees in both libraries allowed to identify the characteristic features of personnel problems of public libraries of the Khabarovsk region, to assess the existing the library system of training, to show the level of professional selfassessment of employees, their willingness to accept new knowledge, to determine the professional competence that the managers and ordinary employees of libraries that would like to improve. Despite the geographical remoteness of the Khabarovsk region and Belarus, the peculiarities of social and historical development of the territories, the differences in the structure and density of municipal libraries network, the number of staff, the analysis of the results of the survey of library specialists showed the presence of common personnel problems in the library industry, regardless of the region and its social and economic well-being: the aging of the main staff in libraries, the shortage of specialized human resources and a significant number of specialists in related fields in library industry.

The article discusses international relations between the Buryat-Mongolian Scientific Committee (Buruckom) and Committee of Sciences of Mongolia (Mongolian Scientific Institute (Monuchcom or Sudar bichgiin khyreelen). They were the first research institutions in Mongolia and Buryatia and formed the bases of the modern Academy of Sciences of Mongolia, and the Institute for Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IMBTS SB RAS). It is actual and quite important to study the formation history of these research institutions in general, and research departments, in particular, libraries playing a great role in the history of modern science development, in relation to their upcoming 100th anniversaries. Such researches fill in the gaps in the countries’ historical past, draw attention to national cultural traditions and are connected with the problems of preserving written historical and cultural monuments. The authors used archival documents kept in the Center of Oriental Manuscripts and Xylographs of IMBTS SB RAS to highlight the history of forming and developing the collections of Buruchkom’s Manuscript Department and Monuchkom’s Research Library. They are the correspondence of the Buryat-Mongolian Scientific Committee leaders with Monuchcom scholars, datsan councils, khoshun executive committees and lamas on the issues of xylographing Buddhist treaties and supplementing library funds stored in the archive of the Center for Oriental manuscripts and xylographies of IMBT SB RAS.

This paper is about research of the manuscript “Book Sishu or Shang Lunyu, of Chinese confucianistic law. Translated by Jacob Volkov”. This manuscript is a first Russian translation of confucianistic “Analects”, made in the XVIIIth century. Reason of research was in learning of specifics of this translation. This research is based on comparative analyse of Volkovs translation with original version of “Analects”, compiled by Zhu Xi. It was explain, that there a lot of differences between Volkovs translation and original variant of “Analects”. There is a large possibility that J. Volkov translated “Analects” from unknown and, perhaps, lost version of this text.

The article considers theoretical issues of digitalization in libraries, characterizes modern forms and methods of providing library and information services, ways of communication between libraries and users. It reveals qualitatively new opportunities of library and information service due to spreading digital technologies and robotics in libraries. Cases of successful implementation of library and information services digitization projects demonstrate the library readiness to move to a new level of development. The author concludes that despite the fact that digitalization significantly increases services efficiency, effects positively on their quality and, consequently, attracts new users to libraries, library information services also include processes that are impossible without human participation with qualities such as the ability to anticipation, emotional experience, intuitive forecasting. Therefore, it is necessary to be aware of the boundaries and professional needs when using digital technologies in library and information services.

The value-semantic paradigm of the library science’ knowledge undergoes constant changes understandable only in the context of its evolution. It is due to a number of factors, namely: transformation of the scientific knowledge system as a whole; changes of this cognitive construction levels; necessity to solve practical tasks connected with libraries’ adaptation to constant changes in the society; intellectual upgrading of the industrial sphere, etc. The article objective is to prove that value-semantic structure of the modern library science’ knowledge must be based on principles confirming their evolutionary fitness in the context of modern historical reality. The authors conclude that changing social reality, followed by the library one, makes the professional community to form a new system of methodological approaches and notions, and the task of the society spiritual-moral evolution predetermines creating an adequate disciplinary matrix.

In the article the information on a systematic review as a form of analytical production is collected, analyzed and systematized. Characteristics of its main specific features and common ones with that of an analytical review are given, its short history is described. There is an original definition of a systematic review as an analytical product, with a volume of a large scientific article prepared on the basis of the results of a special scientific study, carried out according to special methods and designed to make the right clinical or social decision. The method of its preparing consisting of seven stages is described in detail, and the role of the library staff in each of them is defined. All presented data prove that a library employee can not only act as an organizer, but also as a member of a research group for preparing up-todate systematic reviews.

Sociological research “Human resources of public libraries: modern requirements for professional activity and opportunities for its implementation” was carried out by the Far Eastern State Scientific Library. It was made on the base public libraries in Khabarovsk region within the framework of the partnership and cooperation agreement with the National Library of Belarus. A comparative analysis of the results of the survey of employees in both libraries allowed to identify the characteristic features of personnel problems of public libraries of the Khabarovsk region, to assess the existing the library system of training, to show the level of professional selfassessment of employees, their willingness to accept new knowledge, to determine the professional competence that the managers and ordinary employees of libraries that would like to improve. Despite the geographical remoteness of the Khabarovsk region and Belarus, the peculiarities of social and historical development of the territories, the differences in the structure and density of municipal libraries network, the number of staff, the analysis of the results of the survey of library specialists showed the presence of common personnel problems in the library industry, regardless of the region and its social and economic well-being: the aging of the main staff in libraries, the shortage of specialized human resources and a significant number of specialists in related fields in library industry.

The article deals with the experience of creating specific electronic literary and local history resources in the libraries of the Russian Federation literary maps as a form of literary local history. They allow modern and visual representation of the literary heritage of the region. The article objective is a systematic description of the experience on creating literary maps in libraries in rural municipalities, the most numerous ones in the Russian Federation. To achieve the research purpose, the author selected the most popular resources via search engines Yandex, Google, Rambler. The study of 12 literary maps of the highest demand on a number of criteria allowed the following conclusion: in most cases, the literary and local history resource of the municipal district has a geographic map, which indicates the preference of visual navigation in geographic space; all resources provide information on local writers and poets including photos, bioand bibliographic data; resources contain news feed; more than half of the literary maps contains bibliographic information on local literary publications; all special sites on literary and local history resources contain full-text literary collections; half of the resources contains information on literary awards and competitions. The study has shown that the library community of municipal districts is working on creating literary maps and looking for the best way to preserve and provide literary and local history information. The revealed problems are typical for the majority of unprofessionally designed sites (redundancy and incompleteness of information, unformalized texts, lack of internal links, settlement on free hostings and, as a result, lots of aggressive advertising, etc.).