Slavic and East European Library |
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Slavic Library Catalog Resources
Note: This file is best displayed in Internet Explorer Retrospective Library Catalogs | Online Catalogs-General Catalogs | Online Catalogs Major Regional Catalogs | Directories of Online Catalogs Return to Table of Contents | Return to Expanded Table of Contents
Retrospective Published Library Catalogs National union catalog, pre-1956
imprints: a cumulative author list representing Library of Congress printed
cards and titles reported by other American libraries. London: Mansell,
1968-1980. 658 volumes National union catalog. New York: Roman and
Littlefield, 1956- , UIUC Call Numbeer: Main Reference Q017 C2822 This invaluable work can be extremely helpful to the scholar researching retrospective material. It is organized by author or, if there is no author by title, so there is no subject access. Each entry consists of a photocopy of the card catalog card for a book or serial. Full bibliographic information is included on this card, as is a list of libraries that hold the book. Many of the titles in this catalog can not be traced through OCLC. This makes the National Union Catalog or NUC a very important source if you are trying to locate a title published before 1956 in this country. The retrospective cumulation, often referred to simply as Mansell, includes only pre-1956 imprints, as its title suggests. The later volumes, published from 1958-1978 in five year compilations can be more challenging to use. It is important for the user to kkep in mind that the catalog registers books as they were acquired. That is the books listed in the compilation for 1963-1967 list those titles acquired by libraries in the United States during those years, regardless of their date of publications. Since materials from this period are often not available in online catalogs this is a useful source for those seeking U.S. library holdings of specific titles . This is a main entry catalog and given that the forms of entry used for many institutions have changed over the years using this source effectively does require a knowledge of library practice.
UIUC Call Number: Catalog Cabinet q.016.8918 N42d The New York Public Library Slavic collection was established in 1898. This catalog contains all materials cataloged up to 1972. It is a remarkable catalog in many ways. As a "dictionary" catalog, the catalog entries are filed under author, title and subject. The entries are thorough, often including periodical holdings. One of its more unusual features is the occasional inclusion of a catalog entry for a periodical article. The upper entry at the left is an example of this rather unusual type of catalog entry. Most library catalog entries only include monographs and periodicals, not the contents of periodicals. The lower entry gives some idea as to the type of record one can find here. The information is as one would expect in a library catalog. New York Public Library has an especially important collection of emigre materials which are recorded in this catalog and in its online catalog. For publications acquired at this institution after 1972 see the online catalog CATNYP.
Slavic cyrillic union catalog of
pre-1956 Imprints. Cyrillic Union Catalog. The Slavic materials in this list are Cyrillic alphabet publications issued before 1955. Information on the holding institution for each item is included. Titles are located in many libraries from the Library of Congress to any one of the 220 selected North American libraries whose holdings are included in the catalog. Books, pamphlets, maps, atlases, periodicals, and other serials are listed by author or, if the work has no author, by title. Russian, Church Slavic, Belorussian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Macedonian materials are included. The libraries which hold copies of a work are indicated with abbreviations.
This entry gives some idea of the information in the Slavic Cyrillic Union Catalog. In this particular case the list of holding institutions, handwritten on the lefthand margin, is lengthy. Holding institutions are listed using the same abbreviations found in the National Union Catalog. A list of these abbreviations can be found in the accomapanying broshure. As is also apparent from this entry, the place of publication does not determine inclusion in this catalog. Materials are selected on the basis of the language of the publication regardless of place of publication. The Slavic Cyrillic Union Catalog includes updated versions of all of the entries in the earlier Cyrillic Union Catalog, plus many new entries. However, the Cyrillic Union Catalog is still valuable because it provides a subject organization not available in the Slavic Cyrillic Union Catalog. This older catalog was produced on microcards and requires a special reader for viewing.
Union list of serials in libraries
of the United States and Canada. While extremely outdated, this source can still be very important for locating serials. A bit of background on this title will clarify its early significance. The list includes 156,000 titles with holdings of 956 cooperating libraries. Every entry includes a full bibliographic description using the "latest form" of the title, the dates indicating the complete run, title changes and exact holdings reported by libraries. The list does not include government publications other than periodicals, United Nations publications, almanacs, gift books, newspapers, and a list of other publications primarily of specific types of organizations. While this is not a source to consult first, it is one you may want as a tool for older titles. If you do not find a title in the online catalogs, and it is an older publication it is possible it was never converted to an automated record that could be used in WorldCat or RLIN. If this is the case, the title may be held, but record of those holdings will only be available in the Union List of Serials. It is also a valuable source for identifying the proper form of entry for a periodical title. As was noted in the introductory comments on library catalogs, the form of entry used for the name of an institution can vary from one catalog to another. This alone makes it valuable given the complexity of some of the titles of East European periodicals.
List of the serial publications
of foreign governments, 1815-1930. This is definitely a source for those working with retrospective materials. However, it should not be dismissed because of its age. The bibliography is organized by country. Each country section is subdivided by government departments, bureaus, etc. The holdings of 85 libraries are included in this source. When you are trying to identify publications in a number of countries, the annual reports of the national banks of Hungary, Czech Republic and Poland for example, this is an excellent starting point. It will also quickly indicate which libraries have a pattern of collecting such material.
Retrospective Library Catalogs
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General Catalogs Österreichische Nationalbibliothek This is the retrospective catalog of the Austrian National Library and a major source for East European publications. It includes records for publications issued from 1501-1929. The catalog is searchable by author, title, subject or keyword and has a variety of capabilities for display.
As can be seen from this record there are two options for the format of the record: standard and card catalog. The catalog must be searched using German transliteration. Records can be sent via email. It is possible to search a subject index and personal name index and most terms in the record can be linked to other records with the same terms. This is a very important source for those working on East European history and should not be overlooked.
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Helsinki National Library/Helsinki University Library Online Catalog - Helka The catalog of Helsnki University Library has been available for some time. The current catalog contains records of its Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian and Bulgarian holdings. The online catalog has records for all Russian monographic materials published after 1700.The interface allows for a simple or complex search and also allows for various format for the display of results.
Records can be emailed from this screen or printed. The catalog has an index of subject terms that are especially helpful in finding related records. The older, pre-revolutionary serial publications are not included in this catalog, but Soviet era serials are listed. One of the library's webpages has a chart that is very helpful for transliterating titles and names in this catalog. A scanned catalog of the Slavonic divisions newspaper holdings will help the user identify Helsinki's holdings of this important resource. There are a few scanned catalogs of rare materials available at this site as well. A catalog of publications issued in Harbin, China can be viewed at the link to Harbinin ja Shanghain venäläisestä emigranttikirjallisuudesta. Another link will take the user to a list of rare Russian and early Polonica publications.
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WorldCat is the union catalog of books and periodicals for libraries participating in the OCLC database. What this means in plain English is that at this web site you can find bibliographic records for the holdings of some 8,000 libraries worldwide. All languages and subjects are represented. Using it in conjunction with your Interlibrary Loan department can make vast amounts of material available to you at your home institution that would previously required a research trip. For the researcher it is a treasure trove of material, but it has a few idiosyncrasies that can be misleading. A bit of history can help explain the problem. OCLC became available in the late 1970s for Slavic materials. At that time libraries started adding their Slavic holdings to the database that would become WorldCat. Some libraries have been able to go back and enter all the records for materials that were held in their libraries before that time. However, many have not had been able to do this as it is extremely costly. Therefore, it is perfectly possible to search for a title such as Pravda in WorldCat and not find any record of the holdings at the University of Illinois, or only limited holdings. This would be because we would only add that title if we received it in some new format and, therefore, had a new record for it. The fact that we have a complete, circulating run of this title would be completely overlooked. How does the researcher work around this problem? There is no fool-proof method. However, if when looking for a title you find in OCLC a large number of holding institutions, or you find very obscure institutions claiming to hold an older title, it is a good bet that the title was cataloged before OCLC came online and the holdings of most institutions will not appear there. Another important point concerning OCLC and serial titles is that it does not list holdings. It lists only bibliographic information on a title. Therefore, once you have obtained a list of holding institutions for a serial you will need to check the holdings of the individual libraries to verify that a particular issue is truly available. OCLC can be rather complex to use effectively, particularly for older materials. It is essential that the researcher remember that this is still essentially a library catalog and requires a knowledge of subject headings and, to some extent, the proper form of institution names as used in libraries, if the more complex serial entries are to be identified. When a title is not found, particularly an older publication, it is really not safe to assume that it is not available in the West. It simply means that it is not listed in this catalog. Like all library catalogs, it is a collection of holdings, not a record of all publications. Retrospective Library Catalogs
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RLIN or the Research Libraries Information Network is a subscription service like OCLC. RLIN has many search features that make it unique. Further, RLIN is equal to OCLC in the wealth of material to be found in its database. The current catalog was originally comprised of eight databases: Archival and Mixed Collections, Books, Maps, Computer Files, Recordings, Scores and Visual Materials. These databases are now searchable as one catalog. Another important feature is the special database system available through RLIN. This is of special interest to those in Russian studies as the Russian Academy of Sciences Database is available here. This is just one database in a number of resources that RLIN makes available for the user with an interest in International resources.
The catalog contains more than 30 million titles. The new Web interface allows for both a simple and advanced search mechanism. It is somewhat difficult to limit a search by date of publication, language and place of publication, all of which could be used to refine a search in the earlier versions. The initial search, even at the advanced level only allows for use of two search terms. Those who are familiar with the telnet version (cobalt.rlg.org) of this catalog will find the Web interface something of a disappointment. Nevertheless, for the user who is more comfortable with the Web environment, even with the limitations, RLIN is an essential resource for the serious scholar.
Retrospective Library Catalogs
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Major regional library catalogs online Most of the catalogs listed below receive a more complete treatment in the sections on the individual national bibliographies. These links are included here to provide an easy access point and some general information on each catalog. Cobib.BH - Bosnia and Hercegovina The library catalogs of the former republics of Yugoslavia have a common structure and interface as a result of the large scale project to share catalog information. Thus, the Bosnia and Hercegovina catalog, whose interface is shown below, and the catalogs of Serbia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Montenegro all have a similar structure. All are fairly easy to search. The use of diacritics is not required but can be helpful in this catalog to sort through long lists of citations. The entries can be viewed in a short form or in the "MARC" structure often useful for libraries. Each record includes links to the holding institutions that have the title.
The screen shot shown above gives an ides of the library holdings that can be searched in the Bosnia-Hercegovinian union catalog. At the time of this writing (5-01-03) the catalog for the national and university library was not separately available for searching. For a thorough description of the catalog see our section on Bosnia-Hercegovina National Bibliography. Retrospective Library Catalogs
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ALEPH Library Sofia University
This web site belongs to the ALEPH Library Sofia University. It can be accessed in English or Bulgarian. It contains a search engine and can be best viewed in Netscape 3 or a later version. If viewing the page in Cyrillic, it is recommended that you set your browser to Cyrillic encoding (ISO8859-5). Bulgarian language entries in the catalog must be searched using Bulgarian characters. That is, while the catalog has an English language interface, searching in Latin characters will only return entries for items published in Latin scripts.The catalog contains references to books, periodicals, articles and other documents and can be searched by author, title and subject. There is a link to the Sofia University Library and the Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridiski". The University Library works as a unified centralized system which consists of a Central Library and 25 branch libraries with the respective departments and chairs of the University. Thus, this page plays a central role in the university system. The page is maintained by University of Sofia "St. Kliment Ohridsky". While the National Library of Bulgaria does have a website, as of this writing (4-30-03), there was no online catalog available.
Retrospective Library Catalogs
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Nacionalna
i sveucilisna knjiznica - Croatia URL: http://www.nsk.hr/
This is the site of the Croatian National Library. Descriptions of their collections and contact information, as well as links to university sites in Croatia can all be found here. A full description of this catalog is available in our section on Croatian National Bibliography. This site provides access to their library catalog (CROLIST) which has two interfaces, one in Croatian and one in English. Diacritics are necessary to search the catalog. When searching without diacritics the catalog may return some results, leading the user to believe that they have exhausted the available material. Performing a search on a name such as Bozic (shown here without the diacritic mark over the letter "z") will illustrate the problem. Searching this name with and without diacritics will return very differenct results. Because of the somewhat unusual filing of entries, browsing the catalog may also lead to some erroneous conclusions. All this being said this catalog is extremely valuable for the Croatian materials included. The compilers have drawn on published bibliographies as well as the libraries holdings to list publications dating from the early 19th century. This catalog is also a union catalog and includes the holdings of not only the National Library, but many of the major academic libraries of the country. The catalog also contains analytics for articles in addition to citations for monographs and periodicals. The entry shown above is an example of one of the records for a graphic publication that can be found in this collection. Retrospective Library Catalogs
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National Library of the Czech
Republic URL: http://www.nkp.cz
A detailed discussion of the online national library catalog is provided in the section on Czech National bibliography. The on-line catalog contains records for many Czech books published up to 1995. Czech fonts are necessary for accurate searching. While it is possible to enter a search without using Czech diacritics the results will be inaccurate if you are searching a term/name which contains consonants with diacritics. The diacritics on vowels apparently are ignored in a search. The browse search is somewhat more forgiving as it allows the user to scroll through a list of names/titles to identify the item needed. Along with the catalog of books are catalogs of articles published since 1991, Czech publications in library and information science, early Czech publications (1501-1800). The scanned card catalog of early Czech publications is still available at http://www.nkp.cz/baze_dat/altnk.htm. It will be a necessary source for some time and provides a unique access point. Other databases include a list of Czech publishers assigning ISBN/ISSN numbers and a list of new acquisitions. Also available are the various scanned card catalogs with a description of content and the number of records included. A new feature is the Memoriae Mundi Series Bohemica which includes a database of digitized texts, many of which are Jesuit documents, Hussite and pre-Hussite works. Retrospective Library Catalogs
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Estonian National Library The library catalog here allows access to citations for: Items (books, periodicals,
sheet music, maps, sound recordings) acquired by the Tallinn libraries
of the ELNET consortium beginning with January 1, 1999.
There is also information on holdings of a consortium of Estonian libraries since January 1999. One of the unique features of the catalog is that a subject term can be entered in English and a translated term will be supplied for searching purposes. Searching can be quite complex. The results shown above display some of the holdings information provided in each record. There is also a database of Estonian articles, Index Scriptorum Estoniae, available from the main library page (Estonian version only). There are links here to the Estonian Library Association. Retrospective Library Catalogs
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Hungarian National Library
This is the web site of the National Szechenyi Library in Budapest. At this site there is a wealth of information and databases. Indeed, the combination of resources on monographic and serial publications, retrospective and contemporary sources and biographical resources make it one of the most useful of national library pages. All page information and many of the database descriptions are available in English. There are pages for general information, the history of the library, descriptions of the collections as well as several online catalogs and databases. The following databases were freely available when the National Library pages were reviewed (5/7/03):
Also available are the following databases: Another database with the library's acquisitions from 1991 to the present is also available, the AMICUS database. This is the union catalog of Hungarian libarians. Retrospective Library Catalogs
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Latvijas Nacionala Biblioteka
The Latvian National library was established in 1919.The library has holdings of over 5 million volumes.The online catalog accesses the library's acquisitions from 1996 on. The following databases are available from the website of the National Library:
The catalog is very easy to search. It does not require the use of diacritics to locate materials. The record displayed below was produced with a latin alphabet search on the term "bibliografija".
The interface for the basic search allows the user to search in either cyrillic or latin charcaters. This is a somewhat unusual feature and does make the catalog easier to manage. As can also be seen in this record, locational information is supplied. Searching in the Union Catalog will supply holdings at other Latvian institutions. There are several different types of searches offered,
basic, advanced1, advanced2, multi-field and multi-base. The selection
of cyrillic or latin fonts is only available in the basic search. The
other levels of search allow the user to perform more complex searches
using combinations of different search fields but do not recognize cyrillic
fonts. Retrospective Library Catalogs
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Lietuvos Nacionaline Martyno
Mazvydo Biblioteka This is the web address for the site of the Lithuanian National Library. There are a number of catalogs here that will be of interest to the researcher. The site has an English language interface that will guide the user through the various resources available here.
The image above shows the interface for the catalog of current acquisitions of the library . Clearly, the search options allow for very complex searches that can be limited by language, library , dates, publishers. This catalog is a union catalog, that is, a catalog listing the holdings of several libraries.
For older titles there are other resources on this web site that can be very useful. Beginning in 1969, under the Soviet regime, the Lithuanians began publishing a retrospective bibliography of their books and periodicals. At present the volumes on the books covering publications from 1547 to 1904 have been scanned and are available on the website. Catalogs of later publications, i.e. those issued from 1940-1993 are also available. The later catalogs include periodicals, broshures, dissertations. These catalogs are somewhat difficult to use as there is no search mechanism available. Rather it is necessary to click on the indexed pages to find one's location in the catalog. The catalogs are arranged in alphabetical order by author or main entry. There are brief biographical notes for many of the authors as well as bibliographies of critical literature following the entries of works by the author. . In the older catalogs of retrospective material. The entries on periodicals have very thorough information as can be seen from the entry on the left. Many entries include references to review literature for particular journals.
Retrospective
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COBISS - Macedonia. This site links the user to the union catalog COBISS as it is used in the Macedonian consortium of libraries. This catalog has the same structure and interface found on many of the other former Yugoslav catalogs. Bosnia-Hercegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia are all contributing cataloging to a central source. These records are then being made available for regional union catalogs. In Macedonia the catalog includes listings of holdings for the following libraries:
The first link will take the user to the union catalog which includes the holdings of the other libraries listed here. A full description of the search structure and more detailed information on this catalog can be found on the Macedonian National Bibliography page. Retrospective Library Catalogs
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COBISS - Montenegro. Like the many of the other republics of the former Yugoslavia, Montenegro is participatingin a cooperative project to produce its catalog. A full description is available in the section on Montenegrin National Bibliography. The image below shows the libraries currently participating in the union catalog in Montenegro
This catalog has only recently been mounted and thus has only a few libraries participating. The catalog interface is the same as that used by other libraries of the region. As with all the catalogs, it is possible to find materials in all languages in this catalog. At this writing (5/3/03), it was not possible to search using cyrillic characters in this catalog. The display was also all in Latin characters. Retrospective Library Catalogs
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Biblioteka Narodowa - The National
Library of Poland Polish and English versions of this catalog's interface are available. To access the library catalog select: "NL databases--INNOPAC" The site also provides access to a wide menu of databases. Select:"NL databases--MAK" , then click on the numeral preceding the name of the database). The databases (otherwise available on CD ROM) include:
The catalog of Polish national library collection allows for a variety of search strategies. While one cannot search in cyrillic scripts, cyrillic language materials are included in the catalog in transliterated format. A search of the holdings of the National Library catalog will return a record like the one seen below.
For a more complete description of the catalog and its various options see the Slavic library's pages on "Internet Resouces on Poland". Retrospective Library Catalogs
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Biblioteca Nationala a Romaniei
The National Library has more than 8,000,000 volumes. Unfortunately, there is no description of the contents of its online catalog .The catalog allows for a variety of searches. A simple keyword search, a complex boolean search allowing the user to search a number of terms in different fields and a browse of authors and subjects. There are records for some publications that date back to the early part of the century, there are also numerous current publications. The records at the left show that the catalog contains records for articles and books. Along with the catalog of the National Library there is also a very useful list of Romanian libraries at this site.
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Rossiiskaia Gosudarstvennaia Biblioteka This is the web site of the Russian State Library, formerly the Leninka. The site is in Russian and requires the use of Russian fonts. The library has numerous resources. The list of online resources is included in the pages on Russia's national bibliography in this course. Some of the source included are the library's monographic acquisitions from 1994 through most of 2002. The first search a researcher encounters performs a general search in the library's catalogs. Information on each item is very thorough as can be seen from the sample entry below. This paticular item was the result of a general search on three terms all of which are highlighted wherever they appear in the record.
One thing that can be somewhat disconcerting is the difference between the appearance of the initial search screen and the next search screen. The secondary search screen that appears does identify itself as being part of the Russian State Library but its appearance is very different than the other screens at that library's website.
There are a large variety of options for both the results and the search. It is also possible to search several databases in this catalog. As the library expands its holdings it will become an ever more essential resource. Together with a search of the Russian National Library and its retrospective scanned catalog the researcher has access electronically to a great deal of information on Russian library holdings.
There are other catalogs: books received in the library in the last week; journals received since 1998, dissertations received since 1995 and maps and atlases obtained since 1985. The catalogs are easy to search. Retrospective Library Catalogs
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National Library of Serbia For a thorough description of this catalog and all of its features see our section on Serbian National Bibliography. This site contains much information about the Library and the library profession in Yugoslavia including many full-text articles and laws pertaining to libraries. The image below shows the libraries contributing records to the catalog.
This catalog uses the same interface as that found in the Slovene, Bosnian, Macedonian and Montenegran consortia. It allows for complex searches in both cyrillic and latin characters. There are a number of very valuable resources that can be found at this site inlcuding a retrospective catalog of Yugoslav materials published from 1847-19 There are address lists and links to other Yugoslav libraries. Yugoslav CIP data for 1999 and 2000 can also be found at this site as well as contact information for library staff. Here one can access the on-line catalog for the National Library in its painful telnet version. Retrospective Library Catalogs
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Slovenska narodna kniznica.
This is the site of the Slovak National Library and a more detailed description of the features of its catalog can be found on the Czech and Slovak National bibliography page. Available here are its on-line catalogs of monographs and of articles as well as the Slovak Union Catalog.
The catalogs have an optional English interface, but they do require Slovak fonts. The site includes links to other on-line library catalogs of the Slovak and Czech Republics. Retrospective Library Catalogs
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COBISS (Cooperative Online
Bibliographic System & Services) For a detailed description of this catalog see our pages on the Slovene National Bibliography. This Virtual library of Slovenia contains the union catalog for Slovenia as well as links to over 200 individual library catalogs.
In addition to citations for books and serials, the catalogs include citations for articles too. Through the Slovene version one can use a database to obtain bibliographies of researchers in the fields of science and technology. Search results differ depending on whether or not Slovene encoding is used. Retrospective Library Catalogs
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Narodna in Univerzitetna Knjiznica
The web site of the National Library of Slovenia contains general information about the library, its collections, and publications. The section on Slovene National Bibliography has an excellent discussion of the Slovene catalogs available at this site.
As noted in that discussion, there are several catalogs of both current and retrospective materials available at this site. The image above is an example of an entry from the catalog of materials published between 1774 and 1947. The catalog requires that the user download a "plugin" in order to search but for those working on materials published in this region or planning a research trip it is well worth the trouble.
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National Library of the Ukraine
The library site is rich in resources. The library catalog, including some 204, 000 Ukrainian publications from 1994 on, is available as is a separate catalog of the library's holdings of foreign language materials from 1980-1996. There is also an index of periodical publications.
As one would expect, the Ukrainian publications must be searched using Ukrainian encoding, Russian publications must be searched in Russian, Western publications with Latin fonts. A search will return a list of titles with full bibliographic information. The searches are a bit difficult to navigate but the back button on the browser serves in place of a navigation button taking the searcher back to the initial search screen. It is possible to return to the library's home page from each search result screen. The advanced search will allow the researcher to search by numerous fields including author, title word, subject, rubric, date of publication. It is possible to see a list of the rubrics from the search screen. Numerous links will assist any scholar interested in the Ukraine in finding other sites with electronic journals, newspapers, search engines and other resources. There is also an extensive list of links to some 54 Ukrainian libraries. Retrospective Library Catalogs
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Directories of online catalogs Bibliotheks-OPACs und Informationsseiten, Weltweit This German website has a number of tools that are useful for librarians. Among them is the list of links to library opacs organized by country. The links to each country provide a page with a variety of services. The example below shows some of the links provided on the libraries and online catalogs of Bulgaria.
Together with the UNESCO portal for libraries, this is a useful source for a more complete listing of the libraries of the Slavic world than can be found using lib-web-cats or lib-dex. The directory does not provide much information on the links and what information is provided is in German. Retrospective Library Catalogs
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Listed as a guide for scholars users this is an excellent starting point for anyone doing library research but is directed at librarians. The listing of libraries is possibly the most complete for the Slavic world in general. There is a wide variety of information from links to specific libraries to training for librarians in a variety of areas.
The site is a little difficult to navigate. It is easiest to search by going first to the category of library you need (National, Public, Academic, etc.), then clicking on the continent and then the country of interest. The researcher can then scan the list of links for the relevant libraries.
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This list of scanned or digitized card catalogs is a quick way to find catalogs with extensive retrospective contents. The list is organized by country but no information is provided about the catalogs.
Even with the lack of information about the library catalogs this is a very useful tool for those looking for a quick list of libraries with retrospective tools.
Retrospective Library Catalogs
| Online Catalogs-General Catalogs | Online
Catalogs Major Regional Catalogs | Directories
of Online Catalogs Return to Table of Contents | Return to Expanded Table of Contents
This site is more than just a list of links to Europe's National Library catalogs. There is a wealth of information about each collection and its services at this site. The site provides a list of links to the online services of each library, the information pages of the national libraries, exhibitions and many other options. There is also a search utility that will allow you to search by keyword. The profiles on the individual libraries are very extensive and often have very useful historical information on the development of the collections. Unfortunately, some of the information on online services is somewhat out of date and it is useful to check other sources if you are not finding the information you need. Gabriel has been in existence since 1995. It is overseen by Conference of European National Libraries.
Retrospective Library Catalogs
| Online Catalogs-General Catalogs | Online
Catalogs Major Regional Catalogs | Directories
of Online Catalogs Return to Table of Contents | Return to Expanded Table of Contents
So, now you have found a list of libraries that might hold that one issue of a journal you need. Before sending a request through your interlibrary loan department it is worth your time to check the individual library catalog to be sure that the institution listed actually holds the issue you need. Lib-dex is one of several web sites that can be very useful for this purpose. The site is organized by geographic location, and type of library. It has links to a number of useful utilities for librarians.
There are links to thousands of libraries world wide from this site. It can, therefore, be useful in searching for holdings at European institutions as well as those in North America. There are limitations to these directories. There are very few cyrillic language libraries listed here. So, as with the next resource this is best used when seeking an online catalog in the United States.
Retrospective Library Catalogs
| Online Catalogs-General Catalogs | Online
Catalogs Major Regional Catalogs | Directories
of Online Catalogs Return to Table of Contents | Return to Expanded Table of Contents
This is one of the favorite tools of the Slavic Reference Service. If you are seeking the online library catalog of an institution domestically or internationally this is one of the easiest resources to use. The researcher can simply enter the name of the institution and get a link either to the catalog or to the library's home page. It is possible to search by country in this catalog of catalogs. Such a search will quickly reveal one of the shortcomings of this database. It is not comprehensive for foreign catalogs. It is a very good tool when searching for holdings in the U.S. or Western Europe and as such can be very useful when planning domestic research.
Retrospective Library Catalogs
| Online Catalogs-General Catalogs | Online
Catalogs Major Regional Catalogs | Directories
of Online Catalogs Return to Table of Contents | Return to Expanded Table of Contents
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New
York Public Libray Dictionary Catalog of the Slavonic Division. New
York: G.K. Hall, 1974. 44 vols.
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Slavic Library | Slavic Reference Service Russian and East European Studies Center University Library Gateway | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Last updated: 01/26/06 Comments to: Helen Sullivan |