library resources in britain for east european studies

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Library Resources in Britain for East European StudiesAuthor(s): Gregory WalkerSource: Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1971), pp. 339-346Published by: EHESSStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20169597 .

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BIBLIOGRAPHIES

GREGORY WALKER

LIBRARY RESOURCES IN BRITAIN

FOR EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES

This contribution is a compressed description of library holdings in the United

Kingdom significant for the study of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It is the by-product of a survey of such holdings made in 1970 by the Slavonic and East European Group of the Standing Conference of National and Univer

sity Libraries (SCONUL) in preparing a comprehensive directory to these collections. For further details of the libraries mentioned below, and particulars of additional institutions, reference should be made to this work, now published as the Directory of libraries and special collections on Eastern Europe and

the USSR.1 It is hoped that the Directory and what follows will help to close one of the gaps still remaining in the published description of library facilities

existing outside Eastern Europe for the study of that area.2

i. G. Walker et al., eds., Directory of libraries and special collections on

Eastern Europe and the USSR, London, Crosby Lockwood, 1971.

2. Among such descriptions, the following are relatively up-to-date:

(a) The Annuaire de l'Institut d'?tudes slaves contains from 1969 a Guide du

slaviste which includes a directory of relevant libraries in France.

(b) Armand (M.), ? Les fonds russes dans les biblioth?ques suisses, ? CMRS, IX,

3-4, 1968 : 437-450

(c) Armand (M.), ? Les fonds russes et les Rossica dans les biblioth?ques Scan

dinaves, ? CMRS, XI, 2, 1970 : 292-318. (Excludes Finland and Iceland.) (d) Gredler (C), "The Slavic collection at Harvard," Harvard Library Bulletin,

16, 1969 : 425-433

(e) Horecky (P. L.), "The Slavic and East European resources and facilities of the Library of Congress," Slavic Review, 23, 1964: 309-327.

(f) Lemercier-Quelquejay (C), ? Les biblioth?ques et les archives de Turquie en tant que sources de documents sur l'histoire de Russie, ? CMRS, V, 1,

1964 : 105-140.

(g) Lemercier-Quelquejay (C), ? Les fonds russes et les Rossica dans les biblio

th?ques et les archives d'Iran, ? CMRS, VII, 2, 1966 : 265-283.

(h) Osteuropa-Institut M?nchen, Studienf?hrer durch die M?nchener Institu tionen der Ost- und S?dosteuropaforschung, M?nchen, Sagner, 1967.

(i) Timberlake (C. E.), "The Slavic department of the Helsinki University Library," Slavic Review, 25, 1966 : 512-522.

Brief descriptions of the East European collections in a number of individ ual British libraries have appeared in the journal Solanus, no. 1 (1966) onwards.



340 GREGORY WALKER

General character of resources

British libraries with holdings on Eastern Europe fall into a wide range of

library types, from the major national and university research libraries to

private collections and local public libraries acquiring material under cooperative schemes. Each type is examined separately below. Geographically, the

largest concentration of material is in London, followed (in approximate

descending order) by Oxford; Boston Spa in Yorkshire; Cambridge; and?

roughly equal in size of stock?Birmingham, Colchester, Glasgow and Leeds.

In terms of broad subject fields, coverage appears to be most satisfactory for Soviet science and technology, for which the National Lending Library for Science and Technology (NLL) at Boston Spa and the National Reference Library

for Science and Invention (NRLSI) in London maintain between them what is

probably the most comprehensive acquisition programme in Europe. There

is also considerable strength in material for current East European, and

particularly Soviet, social, political and economic studies, notably at the British

Library of Political and Economic Science, the British Museum Library and the

Royal Institute of International Affairs (all in London); the university libraries of Birmingham, Essex (at Colchester) and Glasgow; the Bodleian Library and St. Antony's College library at Oxford; the library of the University College of Swansea and the NLL again (for periodicals only). Literary, philological and historical material, as the backbone of Slavonic studies in Britain since their

inception, is represented in nearly half the university libraries in the country, with the emphasis again on Russia and Russian. Many of these collections are

relatively small, but a few are of considerable size and richness: the British

Museum Library; the Bodleian Library (for history); the Taylor Institution, Oxford (for literature); the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London; the London Library; and Cambridge and Leeds university libraries.

Other libraries have achieved substantial holdings dealing with a particular

country or area. Poland is especially well catered for by private institutions, as are, to a lesser degree, Belorussia and the Ukraine. Some academic libraries

have also specialised in this way, such as Bradford (Jugoslavia), Lancaster

(Czechoslovakia) and the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge. Other

specialisations are noted selectively below.

It should be stressed here that by no means all the libraries mentioned below

possess large research collections which will support advanced studies in depth. All of them do, however, make a significant contribution to the total national

holdings in a given field. Collections concerning relations between Britain and

Eastern Europe cannot unfortunately be adequately described here, since so

much of their strength lies in separate archive and manuscript collections which

were not investigated by the SCONUL survey or included in the Directory1. All institutions are situated in London unless otherwise stated.

National libraries

The British Museum Library's collections relating to Eastern Europe are

the largest in the country, covering the entire span of the humanities and social

i. For an outline of relevant records from central government sources only, see: Guide to the contents of the Public Record Office, London, HMSO, 1963-68, 3 vols.



BIBLIOGRAPHIE 34I

sciences in all East European languages. Acquisition has been intensive since

the second half of the 19th century, and particular efforts have been made in

the last ten years to fill gaps (some the result of war damage), often by material

in microform. The library receives a copy of every work published in the

United Kingdom under the copyright deposit legislation. One notable special collection is the L?szl? Waltherr Collection of 18th- and 19th-century Hungarica.

Together with the NRLSI (mentioned above and to be renamed the Science

Reference Library), the British Museum Library is to form the "reference" or

non-lending component of the new central national library service which is

now planned for the United Kingdom, to be known in its entirety as the British

Library. The "lending" side of the service will be provided by the NLL (see

above), and by the present National Central Library, which maintains a collection

of works in the humanities?including East European studies?too highly

specialised or too expensive to be readily available for loan elsewhere.

The National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, which has enjoyed copyright deposit privileges since 1710, has quite substantial collections relating to the

USSR and Poland, chiefly in the historical and literary fields.

Central university libraries

The two outstanding East European collections in central university libraries

are at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and at Cambridge University Library. The Bodleian's is the larger of the two, with a greater concentration on history and the social sciences, whereas that at Cambridge covers most aspects of the

humanities, including literature. Both have received government assistance

since the last war to strengthen their holdings of research material, and both

have copyright deposit privileges for works published in the UK. The Bodleian has important collections of older Hungarian and Polish books.

The well-established collections for contemporary East European studies at

the universities of Birmingham, Essex and Glasgow, and the University College

of Swansea, have been noted above. Special interests include Soviet scientific

and technological organisation at Birmingham; Moldavia at Essex; the Soviet

Union of the 1920's and i93o's at Glasgow; and Soviet Central Asia and the 1917 revolutions at Swansea. All four institutions also collect in Russian language, literature and history. Essex and Birmingham, in particular, have good collections of statistical material.

A further twenty university libraries may be listed as possessing East Euro

pean collections of some size. Except where other subjects are stated, the

emphasis in their holdings is on Russian language and literature, and the

history and present state of Russia and the USSR. They are: Belfast; Bradford

(Jugoslavia); the New University of Ulster at Coleraine, Northern Ireland

(20th-century history of Eastern and Central Europe); Durham (Russian works

on Oriental studies, Central Asia); Edinburgh; the University of Surrey a.t Guildford; Hull; Keele; Lancaster (Czechoslovakia); the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds; Liverpool; Manchester; Newcastle-upon-Tyne Polytechnic; the

University of East Anglia at Norwich; Nottingham (Jugoslav as well as Russian

studies); Reading; St. Andrews (which also has a collection of Russian scientific

works of the 18th and 19th centuries); Sheffield; Southampton; and York

(linguistics).

9



342 GREGORY WALKER

University institute, departmental and college libraries

The distinction drawn between these establishments and those in the previous

group rests on formal organisational status rather than on importance, since

they include some of the foremost collections in the country of interest to

students of Eastern Europe. The School of Slavonic and East European Studies, which is part of the University of London, is second only to the British Museum

Library in the size of its stock. This deals with most aspects of Eastern Europe except for the natural and applied sciences, slightly under half relating to the

USSR and the rest to the remainder of Eastern Europe, excluding Greece and

the DDR but including Finland and the former Baltic states. The British Library of Political and Economic Science, besides being the

working library of the London School of Economics within the University of

London, ranks as a national collection in the social sciences broadly interpreted. It has strong collections on Russia and the USSR in the subjects denoted by its title, as well as in law, sociology, and Russian and Soviet history of the 19th and

20th centuries. Coverage of the rest of Eastern Europe is being progressively intensified.

Among other libraries belonging to member institutions of the University of London may be mentioned that of the School of Oriental and African Studies,

which includes much on the Asian parts of the USSR besides works produced in

Eastern Europe dealing with other parts of Asia and with Africa. The Warburg Institute is concerned with the study of the classical tradition and contains

collections from Eastern Europe on archaeology, humanism and the history of

art. The library of King's College maintains a coverage of modern Greek and

Byzantine studies, and that of Westfield College has extensive holdings on

Romania, its language and its literature. The Comparative Education Library of London University's Institute of Education acquires as comprehensively as

possible works on education in Eastern Europe. At Oxford, the library of the Taylor Institution complements the Bodleian

as the university's main collection in modern European languages and literatures.

Its holdings of Russian literature are particularly important. A third centre in

Oxford for East European studies is the library of St. Antony's College, specialis

ing in modern Soviet history, politics, economics and literature. At the Institute

of Economics and Statistics works on Comecon have received particular attention.

The Slavonic Library at Cambridge serves primarily as an undergraduate

library for the university's Department of Slavonic Studies, but the size and

scope of its holdings, relating to the language, literature, history, folklore,

philosophy and religion of all the Slavonic and Baltic nations, make it an

important adjunct to the East European collections of the University Library

proper. The Modern Languages Faculty Library, with which it is to be

amalgamated, has in recent years acquired a substantial representation of

Romanian literature. Also at Cambridge, the Scott Polar Research Institute

houses the world's most comprehensive collection of Polar literature, including extensive treatment of all aspects of the Northern USSR.

Libraries of government departments

The Library and Records Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has a considerable collection relating to Eastern Europe, principally in the

fields of politics, law, history, economics, international relations and diplomacy. The Ministry of Defence Library (Central and Army) contains works on the



BIBLIOGRAPHIE 343

military affairs of all East European countries from both current and historical

viewpoints, its particular strength in the latter case being naturally on the

involvement of British forces in the area as in, for example, the Crimean War.

The Statistics and Market Intelligence Library of the Department of Trade and

Industry is the most up-to-date and comprehensive collection of general, economic and trade statistics in the United Kingdom, and receives data in

varying amounts from all East European countries except Albania.

Libraries of learned societies

and independent research institutes

The Royal Institute of International Affairs has acquired material relating to Eastern Europe since 1922, concentrating on international relations since

the end of the First World War. Its Press Library, established in 1924, has

extensive files of press cuttings on the area. The Central Asian Research Centre

exists for the study of modern Soviet Central Asia, and of Soviet and Chinese

relations with the rest of Asia and Africa. It has a well-established library to

support this work. The library of the Royal Central Asian Society has smaller

holdings dealing with the same area.

Other learned societies and professional bodies, with collections relating to

Eastern Europe in the field suggested by their titles, are the Royal Anthropolog ical Institute, the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Institute of British

Architects and the Library Association.

Museum libraries

Apart from the British Museum Library, already dealt with as a national

library in its own right, four museums of national standing possess strong

library collections relevant to East European studies.

The library of the Victoria and Albert Museum is the largest specialised collection of art literature in Britain. It acquires works from all East European countries on the history, philosophy, technique and appreciation of the fine and

applied arts. The Imperial War Museum, which is devoted to all aspects of

war in the 20th century, has a library in which Eastern Europe is strongly

represented, together with large national reference collections of documents, films and photographs. The Science Museum Library, which is to be developed as a reference library for the history of science and technology, has acquired

works from Eastern Europe since its foundation in 1883. In another field of

the natural sciences, the British Museum (Natural History), which is housed

apart from the British Museum tout court, began obtaining East European material for its library in 1881 and now has a large collection relating to the

zoology, botany, geology, anthropology and topography of the area.

Finally in this section, mention should be made of the Ashmolean Library in Oxford, which complements the collections of the Ashmolean Museum with

its holdings in archaeology and ancient history, including that of Eastern

Europe. The Ashmolean Museum itself possesses, among other things, one of

the finest collections of Russian drawings held by any public institution in

Britain.



344 GREGORY WALKER

Public libraries

A few of the public libraries maintained by local authorities possess sizeable

collections concerned with Eastern Europe. The most substantial of these are

to be found in the largest towns, notably Liverpool, where the city's International

Library has holdings in most East European languages, together with much in

English on the arts, music, languages, literatures, history and description of the

area. The public library systems of certain Greater London boroughs have

cooperated for some twenty years in acquiring publications on and from Eastern

Europe, among them Camden (Czech, Slovak and modern Greek literature), Hammersmith (Russian, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Baltic literatures), Lambeth (Polish literature) and Waltham Forest (Russian and Soviet history and

geography). Similar cooperative specialisation schemes are operated by public libraries in other parts of the country, and in a number of instances are beginning to result in useful accumulations of the major Slavonic literatures and of English

language works on the history and description of Eastern Europe.

Private and independent libraries

This last group includes libraries with a great variety of allegiances and

characters, some of them of national importance in our field of interest by any standards. One of the foremost is the London Library, a subscription library

with collections in Russian history, literature and biography carefully built up over some 70 years, and a further considerable special collection on the Caucasus

and Russian Asia.

Two independent institutions devoted to Polish studies form between them

the most important source of research material for this purpose in the country. The Polish Library, founded by the Polish government in exile in 1943, continues

its original bibliographical function of recording works in Polish and about

Poland published outside that country since 1939, at the same time collecting current publications from Poland on an extensive scale. It also contains a great deal of older material, including gifts, legacies and deposits from Poles all over

the world. The Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum contains the bulk of the

archives left by the wartime Polish government in London and many other

records relating to Polish military operations between 1939 and 1945. Its

library has as a basis a very comprehensive collection on Polish involvement in

the Second World War, and present policy is to acquire any printed material

relating directly or indirectly to Poland. A third large collection is the Polish Central Circulating Library, which distributes Polish-language material for home

reading from a stock of over 50,000 titles to 155 centres throughout the country. Belorussia and the Ukraine also have privately-supported "national"

collections in Britain. The Francis Skaryna Byelorussian Library and Museum,

founded in 1950, aims to collect all available material relating to Belorussia, its

present strong points being in literature, language, history and folklore. Publi

cations of the 1920-1939 period from both Soviet and Polish Belorussia are well

represented. The Shevchenko Library and Museum, set up in 1964, operates a similar acquisition policy with regard to the Ukraine, and holds many original

manuscripts of works by modern Ukrainian authors.

The Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR has collected works in both

English and Russian on every aspect of Soviet life since its library's foundation

in 1924, and holdings, including many back-runs of periodicals, are now exten



BIBLIOGRAPHIE 345

sive. It also holds a large stock of audiovisual instructional material. Lan

guage instruction is also the concern of the Language Teaching Library, which

serves jointly the British Council's English Teaching Information Centre and

the Centre for Information on Language Teaching (CILT). Russian is one of

the languages to which CILT devotes special attention, and as much as possible about its teaching is acquired. The Marx Memorial Library has collected

material since 1933 on all aspects of Marxism, the history of socialism and the

working-class movement, and the First, Second and (particularly) Third Inter

nationals are strongly represented, besides books, pamphlets and journals more

specifically on the USSR.

Bibliographical access and control

The nearest approach to a comprehensive record of locations in the country's libraries for material in Slavonic languages is the Slavonic Union Catalogue,

maintained by the National Central Library together with other union catalogues

supporting its role as a centre of the British inter-library loan network.

Although by no means a complete listing, it now receives regular notification

of new acquisitions from about 50 libraries and contains well over 200,000 entries

in all. It is not normally accessible to the personal enquirer, who can, however, turn to a variety of published lists and catalogues which partially parallel and in

some respects supplement the SUC.

Locations for periodicals and monograph series are given in the British union

catalogue of periodicals (BUCOP),1 which?it should be noted?is not an

absolutely complete list of titles occurring in Britain, and is frequently selective

in its statement of the libraries which hold them. For the East European

periodicals currently received by 19 major libraries, it may be supplemented by the Annual list of current acquisitions.2 For a more specialised category of

publication, the Lists of Soviet statistical abstracts which appear regularly in the

journal Soviet studies9 give the holdings of six leading British collections.

Access to unpublished British theses in the field of Slavonic studies has been

greatly facilitated by a full list published in 1967.4 Details of much work more

recently completed or still in progress can be found in the Information supplements of Soviet Studies and (from 1970) of ABSEES, and in the annual lists o? Research

Work in Progress produced by the British Universities Association of Slavists.

i. British union-catalogue of periodicals, London, Butterworths, 1956, 4 vols. ? ?

Supplement to iq6o, London, Butterworths, 1962. ? ? New periodical titles iq6o-iq68, London, Butterworths, 1970. ? ? Quarterly and annual supplements.

2. Annual list of current acquisitions. Soviet, East European and Western

periodicals and newspapers dealing with the Soviet Union and East European countries, ed. by Jean Fyfe, Institute of Soviet and East European Studies,

University of Glasgow. 3. The first eight lists were published in consolidated form as: M. Kaser,

"Soviet statistical abstracts 1956-65," in St. Antony's Papers, 19, 1966: 134-155.

Subsequent lists have appeared in the third issue of each annual volume of Soviet Studies.

4. J. S. G. Simmons, "Theses in Slavonic studies approved for higher degrees in British universities, 1907-1966," Oxford Slavonic Papers, 13, 1967: 133-159.

Theses completed since 1966 may be traced in: Index to theses accepted for higher degrees by the universities of Great Britain and Ireland..., 1967-68 [etc.], London, Aslib.



346 GREGORY WALKER

Several libraries with important East European collections have published full or partial catalogues of their own holdings. They include the British

Museum,1 the British Library of Political and Economic Science,2 the School of

Oriental and African Studies,8 the London Library,4 the Royal Institute of

International Affairs5 and the NLL.6 Many institutions produce lists of new

acquisitions in the East European field, among them the Bodleian Library, the

British Library of Political and Economic Science and the University of Bir

mingham Library.

Oxford, 1971.

i. British Museum, General catalogue of printed books, London, 1960-66;

263 vols. Also reduced facsimile edition, London, Readex Microprint, 1967-68,

27 vols. ? ? Ten year supplement, 19 56-196 5, London, 1968, 50 vols. ? ? Annual supplements. ? ?

Subject catalogue of modern books acquired, London, 1902-1903,

3 vols. Continued by 5-year supplements. 2. A London bibliography of the social sciences, being the subject catalogue of

the British Library of Political and Economic Science..., London, LSE, 1931-.

3. Library catalogue of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University

of London, Boston, G. K. Hall, 1963, 28 vols. ? ? First supplement, Boston, G. K. Hall, 1968, 16 vols.

4. Catalogue of the London Library, London, 1914-53, 4 vols in 5. Subject index of the London Library, London, 1909-55, 4 vols.

5. Index to periodical articles 1950-1964 in the Library of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Boston, G. K. Hall, 1965, 2 vols.

6. Current serials received by the NLL, March, 1967, London, HMSO, 1967.



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