Revealing the present condition of the literary museums network in Russia, and analyzing peculiar properties of work on a block of articles about the regions for the encyclopedia Literary Museums of Russia

The article discusses the problem of preparing a block of articles about the regions for the encyclopedia Literary Museums of Russia, which is being developed by the Vladimir Dahl Russian State Literary Museum with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. The process of preparation for the work is described: existing studies on this topic are analyzed, their deficiencies are revealed. The author develops and demonstrates the structure of an encyclopedia article about a region, which implies an integrated approach, and highlights its main parts with brief characteristics of their content. The features of work on each part of the article are considered: existing sources are described, and troublesome places are indicated. The article analyzes the sources of statistical data, including the existing system of statistical observation, and identifies their gaps, shortcomings and weaknesses that make it difficult to conduct a complete and comprehensive analysis and don’t allow to fully identify the total number of museums; the decisions taken in this regard are described. It is revealed how the general population of literary museums was formed (museums recorded in the dictionary of the encyclopedia, as well as identified in the course of work). The territorial distribution (present condition) and the main quantitative parameters of museums of this profile by regions of the country are presented, taking into account all possible museums of this profile group by type of owner (state and non-state). The most developed regional networks of literary museums are identified, and a rating of regions is compiled indicating the number of museums; regions where there is no network of literary museums are designated. The total number of museums of this profile is revealed, the data are compared with 2016.