In modern conditions, the role of the library as an information center that stores and transfers human knowledge, spiritual values ​​recorded on various media is extremely important.

Library - an information institution that has an organized fund of replicated documents and provides them for temporary use to individuals and legal entities, as well as providing other library services.

By purpose, all libraries are divided into:

• - universal,
• - special.

Universal libraries are libraries that have funds in all branches of knowledge and satisfy the information needs of all groups and categories of the population.

Special libraries are libraries that have funds in one or more related fields of knowledge and are designed to meet the scientific, industrial, and educational needs of the readers of these libraries.

Most of the universal libraries are under the jurisdiction of public authorities and are divided into:

national libraries;

(public) libraries.

The Russian State Library and the Russian National Library, which are among the largest libraries in the world, occupy a key position among the country's libraries. They have huge funds replenished from various sources, primarily on the basis of a mandatory free federal copy of documents.

The legal deposit includes the following types of documents:

• - editions (text, musical, cartographic, visual editions);
• - publications for the blind and visually impaired;
• - official documents - documents adopted by legislative, executive and judicial authorities;
• - audiovisual production - film, video, phono, photo production and its combinations;
• - electronic editions - computer programs and databases;
• - unpublished documents - documents containing the results of research, development and technological work (dissertations, research reports, deposited scientific works, etc.);
• - patent documents - descriptions for patents and applications for industrial property objects.

The Russian State Library (RSL) is the largest library in Europe and the second largest in the world after the US Library of Congress. The library was founded in 1862, it was based on a collection of books, manuscripts, archaeological and ethnographic materials of the State Chancellor Count Rumyantsev. Within the walls of the Russian State Library there is a unique collection of domestic and foreign documents in 367 languages ​​of the world; the volume of its fund exceeds 43 million storage units.

There are specialized collections of maps, notes, sound recordings, rare books, dissertations, newspapers and other types of publications. An electronic catalog with free online access has been created and is constantly updated. The library takes an active part in projects for the preservation and access to digital heritage - texts, databases, sound recordings, films, images. In recent years, part of the funds has been digitized, and a full-text collection of domestic candidate and doctoral dissertations has been created.

The Russian National Library (RNL) was founded by order of Catherine II in 1795 as the Imperial Public Library. Since 1810, by decree of Alexander I, it receives a mandatory free copy. In 1932, the Library was named after M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. The Russian National Library received its modern name in 1992. In terms of the size of its collection, the Russian National Library ranks second among the libraries of the Russian Federation after the Russian State Library. The funds of the Russian National Library number more than 36 million items. storage of domestic and foreign documents. These are books and brochures, magazines, newspapers, normative and technical literature, handwritten materials, art publications. Among the most valuable collections and unique publications are the Ostromir Gospel (1056-1057), the Laurentian Chronicle (1377), the most complete collection of the Vedomosti newspaper (1703-1727), the Free Russian Press collection ”, “Rossica”, which includes foreign publications about Russia until 1917, Voltaire’s personal library (7 thousand), ancient Russian letters and acts, collections of ancient Slavic, Byzantine, Arabic, Hebrew, manuscripts. Electronic catalogs are available to users on the RNL website.

National libraries are Presidential Library named after B.N. Yeltsin, Russian State Library, Russian National Library, which meet the universal information needs of society. These national libraries, like other national libraries of the world, perform, first of all, the function of forming a fund of domestic documents, the main principles of which are the exhaustive completeness of acquisition and the eternity of its storage.

The Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library is one of the three national libraries of the Russian Federation. It is located in the former building of the Senate and the Synod on Senate Square in St. Petersburg. The library was opened on May 27, 2009 by the President of Russia D.A. Medvedev. The Presidential Library is conceived as an electronic library. To replenish its funds, a unique center for digitization and processing of especially valuable early printed books and manuscripts has been created, which has no analogues in the world, controlled by a specially developed software package. The funds of the Electronic Reading Room include more than 150 thousand items and consist of electronic copies of the rarest historical documents and books, as well as little-known archival materials that were previously closed to a wide range of readers. The portal of the Presidential Library currently presents 75 collections of electronic documents, one of which is a collection of rare publications of various historical and cultural significance, and the rest are grouped according to the thematic principle. Two collections are devoted to exhibitions of book treasures and archival documents from the Russian State Historical Archive and the Russian State Library. Each collection has a brief description. Among the most significant collections are the History of the Russian Orthodox Church, Politics and Power, History of Education in Russia, etc.

Public (public) libraries are a library that provides the opportunity to use its fund and services to legal entities, regardless of their organizational and legal forms and forms of ownership, and to citizens without restrictions on the level of education, specialty, attitude to religion.

In public libraries, citizens have the right to:

• - become users of libraries upon presentation of documents proving their identity;
• - receive full information about the composition of library collections free of charge through the catalog system and other forms of library information;
• - receive free consulting assistance in the search and selection of sources of information;
• - free of charge to receive for temporary use any document from library collections;
• - use other types of services, including paid services, the list of which is determined by the rules for using the library.

The Central City Public Library named after V.V. Mayakovsky - opened in 1868 as a library of the famous publisher A.A. Cherkesov. The name of VV Mayakovsky was given in 1953 in connection with the 60th anniversary of the poet. Currently, the library serves more than 90 thousand readers, has a universal fund of more than 1.7 million books, music, records, audio and video cassettes, CD and DVD publications, more than a thousand titles of periodicals in Russian and foreign languages. In the last decade, the library has been actively creating and acquiring electronic resources. The electronic catalog of the library can be used both in the library premises and via the Internet. The library is trying to maximize its funds for visitors. Editions of the last ten years, the latest most popular literature - is in the public domain. The library conducts social and cultural activities of various forms and content. Book fairs, exhibitions, competitions, meetings of various clubs, literary and musical concerts are held within its walls, museum expositions are organized. Every day, the library hosts three or four events for various groups of the city's population.