Slavic Literature Guide  Tags: slavic research_methods russian east_european literature  

One of the interesting developments with electronic resources is that the general sources, such as library catalogs, sometimes obviate the need to check a variety of subject resources. This has certainly been true with some of the south Slavic national library catalogs that include citations to books, dissertations and articles. The Czech National Library has a multi-functional search portal available from the library's home page that will allow the user to search for article citations online.  Likewise, EastView company has produced an online subscriptionversion of the Russian National Bibliography [UIUC ONLY!] that includes citations to articles, dissertations, maps, journals and books.

Another such source exists via the Bulgarian National Library.  As with the Czech portal, this website provides access to citations for books, articles and periodicals.  However, the access is provided through separate catalogs.  The article catalog is retrospective to the early nineties.  As is clear from the database titles, the book catalogs go back to the 1980s.  The Romanian National Library catalog also includes citations to articles.  However, it is somewhat unreliable and is periodically unavailable. The Baltic countries have some excellent resources for identifying publications, articles and books.

The Estonian National Library catalog, ESTER, allows the researcher to select specific library collections to search.  It can be searched in cyrillic or latin characters.  As with most of the other East European library catalogs, articles, manuscripts and books are included in its records.  It is also the case here that the records only date from the early '90s for articles.  However, the books catalogs include records from the 1700s. 

A list of links to all the library catalogs for Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union are listed in the side bar to the left.

• If you are working on an unfamiliar topic, the bibliography of bibliography can save you a great deal of time in your research. It is the easiest way to identify a subject guide for your area.
• Currently produced by most countries as a serial publication, including Russia, Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Croatia.
• In some cases, the national library catalog now serves the function of this type of source as will be described below.

I know no better starting point when exploring an unfamiliar topic than the bibliography of bibliography. In the best case scenario, it will identify a subject guide that will give a wide variety of information. In any case it will give a very clear idea of how much research has been done on a topic.

Most countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union produce some kind of serial bibliography listing bibliographic sources. The Russians have produced an annual publication of this type for many years. Some of these sources are now available online. These include bibliographies that are published in journals, not just monographs.  As with any serial bibliographic source, searching its contents can be a time consuming procedure.