About the benefits of a toxic article by D. A. Eliashevich “Book studies: life after death”

Head of the Department of Medialogy and Literature of St. Petersburg State Institute of Culture D. A. Eliashevich (Russia) published a profound article “Book Studies: life after death”, which examines the causes of the dеcay of book studies. About a third of his work is devoted to the denial of the importance of documentology for the book study training of students and, moreover, documentology as a scientific field and subject of teaching. The author also makes claims against the author of these lines, who was declared by D. A. Eliashevich to be the creator of this discipline. The published article develops the topic of the reasons of book science decline, while at the same time revealing the baselessness of attacks on documentology. We support a positive assessment of the works of modern authors: A. V. Markova, M. V. Rats, and K. N. Kostiuk. It is considered to be a fair rebuke to modern book critics who conduct researches without taking into account foreign book criticism. The author of the article defends the constructive idea that the most promising way of developing book studies is not confrontation, but cooperation with more general disciplines: philosophy, anthropology, documentology, medialogy, cultural studies, and communication studies.