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Aim/purpose. The aim of the paper is to point out the social impact of public libraries in the crisis situation caused by the COVID-19 disease pandemic in the context of their position within the contemporary concept of smart cities, whose starting point is that information, knowledge, digitalization and technology (intellectual capital) are drivers of the economy and overall social development. Approach/methodology. The benchmarking method is used. The Croatian practice in which libraries are, for the most part, not yet recognized as an integral part of the concept and strategy of smart cities has been compared with the library practice in Singapore, the world leader in libraries' involvement in the national strategy of a smart nation. The analysis of social media posts compares the business strategies used by the Singapore's and Croatian public libraries in public relations during the first wave of the COVID-19 disease pandemic in the first half of 2020. Their goal was to maintain the social impact of libraries after the closure of physical spaces during quarantine (lock-down) in order to continue to perform informational, educational, cultural and social roles and tasks in digital or electronic form. The subject of the comparison is the posting on Twitter from February to September 2020 in the case of libraries in Singapore, and two public libraries in Croatia on Facebook from March to September 2020. The two Croatian libraries operate in the two leading Croatian smart cities - in the category of large Croatian cities it is The Rijeka City Library, and the category of medium-sized Croatian cities it is The Fran Galović Public Library in Koprivnica. The results. The paper results provide new insights into the business operation of libraries in crisis situations in Croatia and abroad with regard to their place in the strategic-developmental and political-management concepts of their countries and communities. Practical implications. An insight into the activities of libraries during the COV-ID-19 disease pandemic is a contribution to the consideration of library practices in a crisis situation on the one hand, and a basis for planning systematic crisis management in Croatian libraries both nationally and locally. Originality/value. This paper, for the first time in Croatian library discourse, analyzes the importance of libraries in a crisis situation, and their position in the economic-developmental and political-management concept of smart cities / smart societies / smart nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]