It is impossible to imagine modern scientific activity without the use of intelligent information
systems. The purpose of intelligent information systems is to aggregate and provide access to electronic
versions of documented scientific and technical information. In the field of scientific and technical
information, it is very important to use an information system that allows you to reliably store and
effectively use a variety of collections of electronic documents (text, visual, sound, video, etc.) localized in
the system itself, as well as available to it through telecommunication networks. Modern scientific
information systems include electronic libraries, scientific project management systems, smart search
engines, scientific information social networks, etc. In this article, we reviewed the most popular and
widely used electronic libraries today, as well as some other scientific information systems. A number of
shortcomings in the organization of classical electronic libraries based on relational databases have been
identified: the relational schema is rigid and its change leads to the need to change a large amount of
program code; on the basis of relational schemas it is impossible to draw any logical conclusions;
description of the content using the code of the system of universal decimal classification of information
and a set of terms has very limited possibilities for assessing the semantic proximity between objects of
the same type and, moreover, of different types; the use of relational schemas significantly limits the
interaction between different electronic libraries. As an alternative model of electronic libraries
organization, ontological models are considered, which are considered more perfect and expressive. They
solve the problems of describing the semantics (meaning) of the content of electronic libraries and
implementing work with them using such knowledge representation models as semantic networks, frames
and ontologies. The analysis of the problems and prospects of intellectual information systems in science
has been carried out.