Abstract: This article reviews the transformation of book culture in the context of activity of modern libraries, as well as the impact of government cultural policy upon this phenomenon. Special attention is given to the changes in the activity of libraries within the framework of national project “Culture” and model standard of the activity of public libraries. In The author underlines the transformation of the phenomenon of library, and the result of these processes reflected in blurring the distinctions between the upmarket and mass, and turning the audience into mass “consumer”. In the course of this research, the author applies functional analysis, dialectical method, and comparative analysis for consideration of the functions of modern library in relation to the historically first forms of their activity. The novelty consists in systemic and nonlinear analysis of the process of transformation of libraries, taking into account incoherence of this process. Emphasis is placed on the transformation of library as a cultural phenomenon, its essence, which leads to the vague understanding of the concept of library, and thus, result, loss of its uniqueness and dysfunction as a sociocultural institution.