Since independence in 1991, the production, preservation and dissemination of scholarly and popular works in Central Asia has both expanded and declined in ways undreamt of in the Soviet period.  Along with a flowering of scholarship and literature that would have been ideologically impossible under the Soviets has come a severe lack of resources and underfunding (even destruction, in some cases) of major academic and cultural institutions.  Online library catalogs have emerged even as decades-old national bibliographic sources have faded into the background.  Likewise, although the ability of libraries in the West to collect, manage, and survey the publishing output of Central Asian countries has suffered in some ways, in other ways access is better now than ever before.  Scholars also have improved access to archives in Central Asia vis á vis Soviet times. This guide will touch on the major resources and types of resources available to contemporary scholars of Central Asia, with a focus on those available in Western libraries and on the Web.  Bibliographies and catalogs that allow scholars to review citations to a large amount of material on their subject in the shortest possible time are featured.

                                                              Surrounded by butterflies, locals collect scrap metal from the fuel tank/booster engine of a spacecraft launched from                                                               Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome.  Altai region, Russia, 2000.  (image copyright Jonas Bendiksen / Magnum)