98 · Representative Documents: Collection Descriptions
Indiana University Bloomington
Slavic and East European Collection Description
http://www.libraries.iub.edu/index.php?pageId=1001195
Slavic and East European Collection Description
http://www.libraries.iub.edu/index.php?pageId=1001195[7/25/11 5:44:01 PM]
Libraries » Slavic and East European Studies » Slavic and East European Collection Description
Slavic and East European Collection Description
Albanian |Bulgarian |Czech and Slovak |Hungarian |Macedonian |Polish |Romanian |Russian/Soviet |Slovene, Serbian, and
Croatian
Collection Overview
Integrated into the Research Collections of Indiana University's Herman B Wells Library, the general Slavic collection is between
520,000 and 550,000 volumes. Approximately 95% of these are in the humanities and the social sciences. The university started to
build the collection in the 1940's. This was early enough for librarians to purchase large Slavic collections from major book dealers,
such as Perlstein, for modest sums of money. In this way, the library was able to acquire 19th century materials, and complete runs of
academy and other institute publications with some ease.
It should be noted that these figures do not include government publications, thus omitting such works as the FBIS reports and
governmental research reports concerning the areas of Europe and Asia.
If a foot of shelving holds roughly 14 volumes, then the Slavic Collection consists of slightly over 7 miles of shelving.
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The Albanian Collection
The Albanian collection totals just over 1,000 volumes, about 700 of which are in Albanian, and the rest in Western languages and
Russian. There are long runs of the major history and philology journals (Studime Filologjike, 1964-1990 Jeta e Re, 1949-1972
Studime Historike, 1964-1991). It is the smallest of the collections, although it stands up well against the Albanian collections
of other schools, with over 500 volumes in language and literature and almost 300 volumes in Albanian history. With the demise of
exchanges with Albania in 1992, we received only a few Albanian materials from Kosovo during the 1990s. Now we are regularly
purchasing materials directly from Tirana and receiving Albanian materials through the Macedonian exchange program.
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The Bulgarian Collection
The library has maintained a blanket order system for Bulgarian materials with the Bulgarian National Library for the past 25 years,
with a hiatus from 1995-2000. They have done a superb job in building our collection. They have sent us complete runs of all of the
major authors--with no missing volumes, the major publications in history, and reference books. Now, we depend more on the direct
purchase of new monographs. This is a research collection which is underused. The collection of Academy publications goes back to
the 1890's. There are about 19,200 volumes, 16,200 of which are in Bulgarian.
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The Czech and Slovak Collections
The Czech collection supports area study research at a post-graduate level. The Slovak collection, however, is weaker and supports
research in language, literature, and history only. The Czech collection contains long runs of journals (Nase Rec, 1917-1996 Slovo a
Slovesnost, 1935-1996 Lumír, 1851-1940). Sadly, the library missed many of the publications during the exciting 1967 and 1968
period. The purchase of the microfiche "Prague Spring '68: Dailies and Periodicals Covering All Spheres of Social Life" has filled in
much of this gap. For the past 15 years Indiana has had a major exchange with the National Library, (now, mainly for serials) which
has functioned with great efficiency. The combined Czech and Slovak collections have 45,000 volumes (36,000 in Czech) of which
40,300 are in the vernacular languages. While there are a few émigré Slovak materials, considerable efforts have been made to
collect post 1968 Czech émigré books and journals.
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The Hungarian Collection
Contact Information
Libraries &Subjects
Slavic and East European
Studies Home
Slavic and East European
Studies Resources
New Titles in the Collection
Collection Description
Transliteration Tables
Slavic Collection Toolbar
Librarian for Slavic and
East European
Studies: Wookjin Cheun
Location: Herman B Wells
Library E560
Phone: (812) 855-9413
Email wcheun
» Herman B Wells Library
» Lilly Library (Rare books
and manuscripts)
last updated: 11/16/2010
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