Slavic Literature Guide  Tags: slavic research_methods russian east_european literature  

MLA features some of the best retrospective coverage among databases in the social sciences and humanities, indexing a wide range of materials as far back as 1926. Over 1.8 million citations to journal articles, books, and dissertations on modern languages, literature, film and folklore are included. In many cases book reviews can also be found. Translations of literary works are not indexed in MLA.

• Indexes materials from over 1,000 book publishers and over 4,400 journals and series, which are listed (and individually searchable) via the MLA Directory of Periodicals.
• Huge number of search options
• Includes a thesaurus

For a Western database, MLA indexes a massive amount of material on Slavic and East European languages and literatures, and can be extremely useful to researchers. There are over 19,000 MLA records, for example, that have been assigned the descriptor "Ukrainian literature." Thanks to the huge number of search options and MLA's flexible interface, result lists of this size can easily be narrowed to more manageable proportions. You can limit your search by genre, topic, literary technique and other discipline specific indexes, as well as the more common, language, date, series, etc. 

The number of databases that could be of potential use to you is constantly expanding.  The list in the left hand column includes those that have proven most useful to Slavic in general.  To see the complete list, search the ORR. 

There are a few that you are, no doubt familiar with, but will be reiterated here as they have become central to any research in our field.

MLA  This is perhaps the single most important bibliography for literature and linguisitcs.  The compilers have always included foreign language materials very extensively, making it essential for scholars in our region.

INION - This is the social science database for the Russian Academy of Sciences.  The database is retrospective to apporximately 1986 and is especially useful for literary criticism.  It includes publications in all the languages of the regions and has citations for books, articles and dissertations.

ABSEES - American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies.  Primarily an English language source, it is important for anyone tracking research on Slavic literature in North America.

European Bibliography of Slavic & East European Studies - The European Bibliography was the counter part to ABSEES, tracking European liteature on Slavic topics.

For a lengthier discussion of multilingual, multidisiplinary databases  please consult  "Multilingual Electronic Resources for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies" 

Available on the open Web as a set of databases separated by subject or chronology at http://www.inion.ru/index6.php.  There are some 30 databases to choose from available when you click on the menu option:

The following image is an example of the results a key word search on "литература востока"  yields.

Below are some sample records from this search.

These are records for articles but INION includes records for monographs and dissertations.  It is an excellent source for identifying recent publications on a topic in the vernacular.