The 'Bookshelf' Project: What Yandex Employees Are Reading

What books inspire successful IT companies? How do books support talented developers and managers? How do companies curate their libraries? These questions are explored in a collaborative project by Lifehacker.ru and Mann, Ivanov and Ferber Publishing called 'Bookshelf'.

Today, we visit Russia's largest IT company, Yandex.

Yandex’s library is located in a dedicated space named '7.Gnomes'.

Situated on the seventh floor, all meeting rooms here feature the number 7 in their names, such as '7.Sky' and '7.40'.

Opening the door reveals...

Wow, so many books!

This book haven is managed by the Learning and Development department. Anatoly Mikhailov, the head of the department, shared how the library came together:

"Our team has always been avid readers—it's part of our field's culture. Developers often had books on their desks. We wanted a dedicated space where people could store books, focus on self-development, gain new knowledge, and share insights with each other. That's how the library was born."

The library shares a floor with the marketing department, which is why it houses an enormous corporate letter 'Я'—almost as tall as a person.

"The Rules of a Good Volume" :)

The wonderful Alexandra Rudakova oversees the library's organization and growth.

Alexandra explains how they manage such a vast collection: "Initially, we divided books into two categories: developer books and others. As the collection grew, we organized them by specific topics. You can see the thematic labels on the shelves."

These shelves hold publications about mobile platforms and operating systems.

Alexandra is not a traditional librarian; she manages the library as a whole. An electronic system assists employees in finding and borrowing books, also tracking returns.

"We developed a service that shows exactly where each book is—on the shelf or with an employee. If a book is checked out, you can contact the person who has it and request to borrow it."

All shelves are numbered for easy navigation. The device between the bookcases is part of this system.

This kiosk features a card reader. Each book has an RFID tag. To borrow a book, employees scan the tag, then their badge. The book is then assigned to them for two months.

What happens after two months? Anatoly jokes that overdue books explode like James Bond’s cars. In reality, employees receive email reminders to return or renew the book.

We witnessed a young man returning 'Slide:ology' by Nancy Duarte, considered one of the best guides on creating compelling presentations. All library books are marked with special Yandex stickers.

The intranet service tracks the most popular books among Yandex employees. When asked about the top pick, the answer was 'Introduction to Information Retrieval'—no surprise there! :)

Yandex employees contributed to the Russian translation, including a foreword by Ilya Segalovich. All developers start their journey at Yandex by reading this book.

"When I first joined Yandex, I was given 'Introduction to Information Retrieval'," shares Tatyana Bogdanova, an analytics specialist for Yandex’s advertising technologies and a passionate library reader.

Tatyana’s borrowing history reflects her learning path:

"After 'Introduction to Information Retrieval', I received books about advertising to understand the language features we process. Now that we’ve expanded to Turkey, I’m studying Turkish language textbooks and reference materials."

Sometimes, Tatyana needs rare books. She once searched for 'Natural Language Processing for Python' and another on processing natural Turkish language—both hard to find.

Tatyana explains that resources on Turkish are scarce, as the language requires a unique approach: "Turkish differs from Russian and English. For example, the sentence 'It seems you are one of those we couldn’t Turkify' is just one word."

Here is that word—pronouncing it aloud is a challenge.

Recently, Turkish language books have become more prominent in the library, alongside many others covering different languages.

Search is closely linked with language study and analysis, so Yandex’s library holds many specialized books. For instance, 'New Methods and Algorithms for Automatic Resolution of Third-Person Pronoun References in Russian Texts'.

Or the industry-specific 'English-Russian Dictionary for Programmers'—a heavily used favorite.

How do professional roles intersect with reading choices?

Alexandra monitors literary interests across departments, explaining: "Books on universal skills like personal effectiveness or time management are popular company-wide."

This shelf holds books on project management and leadership. 'Microsoft Secrets' chronicles the famous company’s story (though most employees we spoke with use Macs), 'Tuned In' is a business breakthrough guide, and 'Reframing Organizations' is a seminal work on building effective teams and companies.

The shelf below features business bestsellers. 'Crossing the Chasm' by Geoffrey Moore explains how to bring IT products to mass markets—a favorite in IT firms, notably Parallels. Also here are 'The Manager's Career' by Lee Iacocca (former Ford and Chrysler executive) and 'The Psychology of Deception' by Paul Ekman.

Yandex famously began by indexing the Bible—Arkady Volozh and Ilya Segalovich tested unstructured information retrieval technology on it, tailored for the Russian language.

Thus, the Bible remains a practical reference. Books unrelated to work are kept in a separate cabinet.

"Our library intentionally excludes fiction," Anatoly explains. "We focus on professional literature. For fiction, we have a book-crossing shelf."

You can easily spot this shelf by its green color.

There is a dedicated cabinet for conference materials and another for electronic resources.

Alexandra shares that the company subscribes to electronic libraries and articles, yet no one in Russia’s largest IT corporation is giving up paper books.

For example, developer Valery Khromov accesses electronic materials from ACM and Stackoverflow.com but frequently borrows physical books:

"I order books on subjects not taught at universities. We need this knowledge daily. You can experiment on your own or find answers in books."

Valery leads the reliability and performance team for Yandex’s search engine robot—a vital yet unseen part that processes indexed pages to build the search database, which then generates user search results.

Here is Valery’s personal bookshelf, featuring books on Unix, networking, and testing.

"Most of these are considered 'bibles' in the field. For example, 'TCP/IP Illustrated' is a classic, now in its seventh edition, covering networking comprehensively," Valery says. He has 13 books assigned to him, many used daily. To avoid frequent trips to '7.Gnomes', such essential books are kept at employees’ desks.

Consequently, there are few design books in the central library—designers keep their valuable editions in their own cabinet. Here are some titles that haven’t yet moved to the designers’ shelf.

And, of course, there’s a whole wall dedicated to books on various programming languages and technologies.

Here’s a section on Perl.

According to Alexandra, books from O’Reilly Publishing on programming languages are frequently ordered.

Indeed, the Java shelf also features O’Reilly titles.

Rails and Python books are also present.

And a touch of vintage editions.

Yandex’s library also contains numerous texts on mathematics, statistics, and analytics.

Here is a shelf with industry and scientific journals.

Some journals are less industry-specific, but for Yandex.Music specialists, they are relevant!

We pondered what gifts to bring to the hospitable Yandex team. With such a comprehensive library, it seemed everything was covered. So we brought freshly printed books:

• "Bla Bla Bla" — about expressing ideas clearly;
• "Networking for Introverts" — for those who dislike traditional networking;
• "Disruption" — on winning markets through unexpected strategies;
• "Mastering Presentations" by Alexey Kapterev.

Yet, we still missed the mark! Alexey Kapterev’s presentation book was already on the shelf—but only in English. The team was delighted nonetheless, as the English copies are in high demand.

Leaving the office, we realized what the perfect gift would have been: "The Cyclist’s Bible" would have been a hit at Yandex! =)

*Note: Meta Platforms Inc. and its social networks Facebook and Instagram are banned in the Russian Federation.

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