Instruction and Reference Services for Slavic and East European Studies at the Library of Congress

The author briefly describes the instructional and reference services for Slavic and East European studies provided by the European Reading Room and the European Division at the Library of Congress.     

Digital Reference in Slavic and East European Studies with an Examination of Practice at the University of Illinois and the Library of Congress

SUMMARY

This article presents a survey of digital reference trends in the United States with an emphasis on services for Slavic and East European studies. It is based on the author's experience as a Slavic reference librarian at the University of Illinois (Slavic Reference Service) and the Library of Congress (European Division). Topics include the conflict between print and digital resources, coping with electronic serials, full-text databases and websites, digital communication tools such as e-mail, chat, and web forms, the proliferation of websites from Eastern Europe and the NIS, and opportunities for bibliographic instruction via the web. The article concludes with suggestions for keeping current and ideas for possible reference collaboration among Slavic and East European studies librarians.     

美国国会图书馆中文馆藏与汉学研究资源

论文介绍了美国国会图书馆的使命、其亚洲部中文藏书的开始,并着重介绍了国会馆中文馆藏中的部分精华包括善本、方志、古地图、清代科举试卷、太平天国印书等等.     

The Historical Development of the Bulgarian Collection at the Library of Congress, 1894 to the Present

This article describes the development of the Bulgarian collection at the Library of Congress from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century to the present. It covers international exchanges, approval plans, special purchases, and federal library transfers. In addition to the chronological narrative, there are separate sections for the newspaper, rare book, and émigré collections. The article relates the growth of the Bulgarian collection to overall trends within the Library of Congress and discusses the contributions of key individuals.     

The Winokur-Munblit Collection of Russian Empire Postcards at the Library of Congress: A Brief Overview

The article describes a collection of 21,000 postcards from the Russian Empire acquired in 2011 by the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.     

美国国会图书馆手稿部涉华档案简介

海外涉华私人档案的搜集与整理越来越受到档案学、历史学等学科的重视,尤其是美国涉华私人档案资料,因其整理规范和两国交往密切,备受研究者青睐。美国国会图书馆作为世界上最重要的图书馆之一,其手稿部藏有大量涉华私档,系统地记录了中美关系的发展与变化。这些涉华私档能够与公务档案互证,促进人物史研究不断深入,是研究中美关系史不可或缺的档案资料,具有重要学术价值。     

The Slavic Humanities Index: Current Developments and Future Plans

The author describes the Slavic Humanities Index, a bibliographic database of scholarly and cultural articles on subjects including history; literature; language teaching; linguistics; philosophy; ethnology; performing arts; and cultural, borderland, and regional studies. She discusses its development, its current form and functionality, and plans for the future.     

Recent Developments at the Central and Eastern European Online Library (http://www.ceeol.com/)

The author presents recent facts and figures for the Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL), as well as some statistics on institutional usage displaying Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.     

MINERVA: Archiving Born-Digital Material at the Library of Congress

ABSTRACT

MINERVA (Mapping the Internet Electronic Resources Virtual Archive) is the Library of Congress's largest archive of born-digital materials. The article discusses crawling to find material, selection, copyright considerations, the importance of metadata, cataloging, and the user interface.     

Internships at the Slavic and East European Collection of the Yale University Library

In this article, the author discusses the internship program of the Slavic and East European Collection at Yale University Library, which provides semester-long fellowships to library professionals from Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. The program began in 1993 and is ongoing. The author details its history, including how it has been funded, and discusses what the program includes and the logistics of running it. Participants are listed, along with excerpts from some of their final reports and selected post-fellowship activities.     

Archiving the Russian and East European Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,and Transgender Web, 2013: A Pilot Project

This article focuses on the conceptualization and implementation of a web archiving pilot project of selected Russian and East European lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) websites by the University of California, Berkeley. It introduces the use of the Web Archiving Services (WAS) platform developed by the California Digital Library. While identifying the criteria used to harvest these websites, the paper also describes various complexities associated with the viability of projects related to such complex social and political issues as the Russian and Eastern European LGBT rights movements. The article does not take an ideological stance with respect to legal issues, but rather strives to preserve information for academic research.     

Slavic Approval Plans: What Works and What Doesn't

ABSTRACT

The paper looks at library approval plans for material published in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian countries from the selector's point of view. Reasons why a selector would or would not want one are examined. Success with approval plans requires monitoring receipts, as well as good and ongoing communication among the selector, the acquistions department, and the vendor. A preliminary list of vendors offering approval plans for the countries of the region appears in the appendix.     

Soviet Rock Collection and International Counterculture Archive at the Global Resources Center of the George Washington University Libraries

ABSTRACT

This memoir is my personal story about how I created and came to curate on the International Counterculture Archive collection, which is held in the Global Resources Center of the George Washington University’s (GWU) Gelman library. The first person narrative relates my first encounters with Soviet rock culture and describes how I turned my initial interest into a Ph.D. dissertation on the subculture of Soviet hippies and traditions of Soviet rock music, which subsequently led to my later work as a librarian and curator. I tell the story of my initial encounters with the members of Soviet/Russian rock music subculture and other countercultural personalities and activists during my first trip to Moscow in 1993 to collect samples of Soviet rock music recordings and rock music zines for the European Division of the Library of Congress. During this formative trip I met with a number of counterculture producers and collectors who were instrumental in helping me build the International Counterculture Archive. Upon leaving the Library of Congress, I continued collecting Soviet/Russian countercultural materials on behalf of the Global Resources Center of GWU’s Gelman Library. I talk about the process of creating the Archive at Gelman library, about bureaucratic and financial aspects of this work, and about my many acquisition trips to Moscow, former Soviet republics, and East Central Europe. Much of the narrative centers on my work with Russian collectors and content producers and describes the type of materials that are included in the collection. I also describe how I built the collection of historical Soviet/Russian rock music recordings, focusing on the phenomenon of Soviet/Russian rock music zines and the history of the unique zine collection within the International Counterculture Archive.     

Slavic and East European Collections at the University of Toronto Library: From the Great Fire to the Deep Freeze, 1890−1948

ABSTRACT

This article explores the history of the Slavic and East European collection at the University of Toronto Libraries from the great fire of 1890 to the beginning of the Cold War. The author contextualizes the history in relation to the development of Russian studies at the University, and the creation of a formal program of Slavic studies in 1949. Particular emphasis is placed on gifts and bequests of library material.