The article is devoted to substantiation from the standpoint of intercommunication as a social practice of the essential advantage of reading paper books and the relevance of book practices of the library service. The methodological tools of the study were based on the methods of hypothesis, included and external observation, extrapolation, survey, comparative and analytical methods, the use of which, along with the formulation of the general idea of the study created the basis for understanding the book as an object that represents the author, characters, and texts and can perform the function not only of an information source, but also of the narrator, and thus of the subject of communication; made it possible to identify common and special features of reading electronic and paper books, to draw conclusions about the priority format for young people reading literary texts, to identify modern scientific approaches to studying the role of books and reading for personal development. Based on the analysis of current professional publications, data on the study of reader behavior conducted in autumn 2018 by the cultural and publishing project “Chitomo” together with the digital publishing house Gutenbergz and the Razumkov Center ("Reading in Ukraine", 2018), the results of a survey of students majoring in 029 “Information, library and archival business”, which was carried out during 14.01.2021–14.02.2021, the relevance of maintaining the practice of reading books in paper format is proved, the formation of the space of communication as a social practice, based on the functioning of the paper book as a subject of communication, has been substantiated. The topic of such communication is both the text printed in the book and the whole set of historical, social and socio-cultural meanings associated with the authors of the books, their publishers and / or former owners. It has been found that e-books, being effective communicators, lose subjectivity, which creates risks for reading-oriented people to weaken communication and socialization skills, and thus – actualizes the need to maintain access to real bookshelves and paper books in the library. space. In the conditions of needs of access to electronic texts, dynamics of social processes, social mobility, the library remains a place that allows preserving and reproducing important for the formation and socialization of personality social practice of interpersonal communication, in particular by creating conditions for real communication with paper books.