Information and document space in education, science and culture in the contemporary context of society digitalization. (The annual paper presented at the Fifth World Professional Forum “Crimea-2019”)

Traditionally, the annual analytical paper opens the World Professional “Crimea” Forum. The author introduces the concept of digitalization and defines its key differences from informatization. He emphasizes that digital transformation facilitates digital economics being characterized by the advance of the Internet, resources digitization, mobile communications, digital technologies, primarily in finances and economics, and merging online and offline services. He quotes statistical data on the digital economics in various countries. In the Russian Federation, the digital economy develops intensively and embraces industries, banking, healthcare, government, and, in particular, libraries and archives. The principal international documents to facilitate global digitalization are analyzed. In Russia, the fundamental documents are adopted with the reference to the global practice of digital transformations. The author formulates the trends in the digitalization that make direct impact on the librarianship and information industry; he also specifies the goals for the libraries in the digital epoch. The latest changes in the world book market are discussed along with its statistics. The focus is made on the open access and copyright issues. The author concludes that the libraries of the future make the inherent part of the global information infrastructure.