Reading is an important cultural practice. The relevance of its studying is connected not only with ideas about the intellectual life of society, but politics, economics, and the increasingly complex social structure and emancipation of the individual as well. In Western humanities, studies devoted to the historical aspects of reading practices have become very popular since the 1930s. Despite the fact that in Russia this topic appeared in the scientific field earlier – in the late 19th century, the history of reading in Russia has not been written so far, except for some works. The aim of the article is to introduce the sourceological potential of journal publications of the second half of the 18th – early 19th centuries. Literary writers, critics, book publishers recorded the reading practices of their contemporaries, commented on their reading circle and popular authors, gave their recommendations on what to read and how to react to what they read. The periodicals, along with literary criticism and the expansion of the readership during this period, testify to the emergence of literature as a social institution in Russia. The selected texts are divided into two periods. In the first period between the 1750s–1790s, in publications devoted to reading, authors criticized readers for their choice of novels and spoke from the position of educators. In the second period during the 1800s–1830s, the writing community, which was going through a stage of professionalization, asked questions: who reads them and for what purpose. A detailed analysis of the texts demonstrates the informational potential of periodicals for studying the history of reading in Russia.

The article is devoted to inserts/attachments to books in personal library. Thay are one of the forms of reading practices of library owners. The personality of E. S. Shurygin as a non-standard owner has had an important role in this study. Most of the inserts were found in his poetry books. In addition to thematic inserts, there was a group of biographical inserts. In general, we can talk about inserts/ attachments as a sign system with cultural codes of the personality of its owner – an intellectual of the sixties. E. S. Shurygin’s late passion for esotericism and Buddhism brought the existence of his personal library and its functioning to another level.

The goal of the article is to analyze such student outreach program as “Loud readings” to identify the frequency of their organization, the range of authors and topics. The study based on the educational institutions reports of the State Labor Reserves System. Archival materials refer to “Loud readings” in vocational schools in the Sverdlovsk region in 1951 are introduced into scientific circulation. This type of library service was considered in Soviet times as an effective tool for forming the worldview and cultural values of future representatives of the working class who owned a profession and had a certain level of culture and education. “Loud readings” considered as an important component of student leisure time during extracurricular activities. This program contributed to the total regulation of a teenager’s life, clearly defining employment in his leisure time in favor of mass and collective. On the other hand, it also had a positive impact in terms of increasing the level of education and ideological literacy and literary taste of future workers.

This article explores the history of scientific and practical conferences dedicated to children’s book at the Nizhny Tagil State Social and Pedagogical Institute. The aim of the article is to reveal the specifics of interdisciplinary research of children’s book in the process of conferences; to study the possibilities of the conference as a form of mediation between representatives of professional communities studying children’s book (scientists, representatives of various humanitarian disciplines) and practitioners (teachers, librarians). The main results: analysis of history of scientific and practical conferences devoted to children’s book, which were held at the Nizhny Tagil State Social Pedagogical Institute in 2008–2019; identification of the themes and issues of the conferences, the forms of participant’s work (reports, round tables, master classes, exhibitions, etc.); justification for the role of scientific and practical conference devoted to children’s book as a form of mediation between professional communities of writers, critics and researchers of children’s literature, teachers, librarians.

The article is a reflection on Varvara Preter’s (Chumakova) book In the Center of the Cyclone, which reveals the possibilities of instrumentalizing M. McLuhan’s theory to study contemporary media realities. The format of “reflections on the book” is used to trace non-obvious but relevant and heuristic connections and contexts. One of them is the work of P. Sorokin, which anticipates M. McLuhan’s initial position on the universality of media. In the logic of V. Preter’s book, the effects of oblivion, characteristic of the circulation of scientific knowledge, appear as a reaction to information overload. The idea of information aggregation as a form of creativity, which actualizes the authorship of “secondary” genres, is discussed as a productive one.

This study was conducted to examine the impact of events and projects at the Wuhan Children’s Library to promote reading and attract children to the library. The study discusses the important role of children’s library in encouraging children’s zest for reading. The purpose of the study was to investigate how the concept of “Books Are Designed for Reading” allows the Wuhan Children’s Library to engage proactively with readers by finding books for readers or by meeting readers to actively promote books. Based on the application-oriented concept and children’s reading needs, the Wuhan Children’s Library carried out a dynamic integrated model of book collection. It was found that besides improving the systems of library book collections and reader services, there are some initiatives introducing the library, promoting books, helping more readers to discover and to enjoy the library and to love reading. The voluntary service system allows the Wuhan Children’s Library to provide the latest publications through cooperation with writers and publishers. Various focused reading promotional activities resulted in large numbers of readers who rely on and are fond of the library. This analysis is expected to be useful for any library in the formulation of library development programs and planning of new children’s library development schemes for young users.

Sources of personal origin traditionally serve as a basis for studying readers of the second half of the 19th century. However, among them are rare texts in which reading is the main content of the records. The publication of fragments from the reading diary of the Vologda resident A. Y. Yushina, which she kept in 1875-1876 while preparing to enter the Higher Women’s Courses, fills this gap. The diary fixed the difficult work for reviewing of fiction and journalistic works, as well as the doubts of a young reader from a provincial town in her own ability to ‘properly’ understand what she read. The main purpose of keeping the diary was self-education and educating herself along the lines of the ‘new type’ of people to whom most of the entries are dedicated. Since the diary was seized during the investigation of the case of the participants in the Kazan demonstration of 1876, it contains comments, written in Yushina’s own words, on the origin of the fragments identified by the prosecutor of the Moscow Court Chamber as evidence of the ‘political unreliability’ of its owner. Thus, we are dealing with a unique document that allows us to penetrate into the reading world of a representative of the generation of the 1870s. The fact that the reader later comprehended her own notes, even if forced by the investigator, adds value to it.

Book review: Nazarov M. M. Media: Audience trends. A man in the modern  Russian media environment. Moscow: LENAND, 2023. 256 p.