Introduction

Central and Eastern Europe is a historically, religiously, and linguistically complex region. The geographical designators Central and Eastern Europe, East-Central Europe, Eastern Europe, or Middle Europe are imprecise socio-cultural spatial constructs, and scholars define the borders differently. For historical reference, the countries covered in this chapter correspond to the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the former Habsburg Empire. The region’s northernmost area comprises the Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, situated on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea. The middle area, from west to east, includes Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine, bordered to the west by Germany and to the east by the Russian Federation. To the south are the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. Romania, Moldova, and Bulgaria are covered in the chapter on Southeastern Europe, and Russia and Eurasia are covered in their own chapter.

The majority populations of these countries are adherents to Catholicism (the Czech Republic, Hungary, parts of Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine), Eastern Orthodoxy (Belarus, Ukraine), or Protestantism (Estonia, parts of Latvia).

The region’s linguistic groupings include Uralic, Baltic, East Slavic, and West Slavic.

Estonian, a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, is the official language of Estonia, while Russian is by far the most spoken minority language in the country. Hungarian, a distinct Uralic language, is the only official language of Hungary, and is unrelated to any of the languages spoken in neighbouring countries.

Latvian and Lithuanian are Baltic languages. Latvian is the official language spoken by the ethnic population known as Letts, while Russian is a first language spoken by a quarter to a third of Latvia’s population. Lithuanian is the official and dominant language spoken in Lithuania, with the largest language minorities speaking Polish and Russian.

Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Russian are East Slavic languages written with a form of the Cyrillic alphabet. Belarus has two official languages: Belarusian and Russian. In Ukraine, the official language is Ukrainian. According to a 2022 survey, up to 58% of Ukrainians use the language exclusively or mostly in everyday life. The 2001 census indicated that a large majority of people spoke Russian as a preferred, or first, language—up to 14.3 million people, or 29% of the population. The number of Russian speakers declined from 26% in 2017 to 15% in 2022. Twenty-four percent of people in Ukraine use both languages (Ben 2023).

Polish, Czech, and Slovak are West Slavic languages written in the Latin script. While Polish is the only official language recognized by the constitution of Poland, the State recognizes regional, national, and ethnic minority languages. Czech (formerly Bohemian), and Slovak are related languages and mutually highly intelligible, with both languages serving as the official languages of their respective countries. While Czech is the predominant spoken language in the Czech Republic, in Slovakia there are significant minorities. Hungarians form the second largest ethnic community there, which makes Hungarian the second largest ethnic language spoken in the country. Additionally, Slovakia recognizes Rusyn as a minority language.

Mostly established during the Second World War and the Cold War, Central and Eastern European Studies programs in North America are multidisciplinary, with an emphasis on teaching and research in the arts and humanities and social sciences, particularly in the disciplines of history, political science, and literatures and languages. Library collections reflect these areas of interest. This chapter centers on collection-development resources to highlight past and current trends in the humanities and social sciences, with a focus on the dominant languages of the countries within Central and Eastern Europe.

The Academic Field

Central and East European studies is not a particular field, but, rather, refers to a geographical area and any disciplines that intersect with the study of peoples, cultures, and lands within former imperial (Austria, Austria-Hungary, Prussia, Russia, and Ottoman) or present state boundaries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary), focused on the Modern to Postmodern Eras.

Formal university-level instruction in Central and East European studies is carried out in departments of history, political science or international studies, and Slavic or modern languages and literatures. Faculty also teach in art, anthropology, cinema, sociology, or music with a focus on this region, but they are few. Aside from academic departments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, there are some North American universities with centers or institutes devoted to East European, Russian, Eurasian, and European studies. Below are some notable ones:

• Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at Stanford University
• Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Michigan
• Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto
• Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University
• Harriman Institute at Columbia University
• Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University
• Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

In response to Russia’s war against Ukraine, some universities are in the process of changing the names of some of the centers noted above.

There are also centers focusing on country-specific studies, such as the Polish Studies Center at Indiana University, the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta.

The state of instruction to support undergraduate and graduate research in the vernacular languages of Central and Eastern Europe varies. Russian has been among the most prominent modern European languages in the American and Canadian higher education curriculum for many decades. This remains the case, though enrollments in Russian have been trending downward since the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

According to the Modern Language Association (MLA), of the less-commonly taught languages (LCTL) in the United States, only Polish, Czech, and “Slavic” break into the top-fifteen group of European LCTLs. Enrollments in Polish have declined since 2009 by 54.8% (down from 1,251 enrolled undergraduate and graduate students in 2009 (at 55 institutions) to 731 in 2016 (at 48 institutions)). Conversely, Czech enrollments have modestly increased over the last three-year period by 12.9% (up from 209 enrollments in 2013 to 236 in 2016). Still, the outlook for continued growth is unclear, as the number of institutions offering Czech fell from 26 in 2013 to 19 in 2016. Hungarian enrollments remain steady, averaging around 110 per reporting year (2009, 2013, 2016) spread out across 11 institutions. Those for Ukrainian fluctuate between 60 and 80 over the same years, though there are now two more institutions offering courses than in 2013 (up to 14). Teaching in Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Slovak show low enrollments overall, and these languages are taught at only one to two institutions in the US (Looney and Lusin 2019, 56-57, 59, 61, 65, 67, 69, 72, 77-82).

In Canada, course offerings in languages paint a similar picture, with Russian predominating, followed by Polish, Ukrainian, and Croatian. Many of the university programs are limited to one to two years of instruction. The University of Toronto is an outlier; its Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures offers undergraduate and graduate courses not only in Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian, but also in Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian, and, until recently, Czech and Slovak language, literature, and culture. It also houses Finno-Ugric Studies with instruction in Finnish and Estonian.

Similarly, undergraduate, and graduate enrollments in the humanities in general have been trending downwards since the 2008-2009 recession, with students opting for majors or degrees in areas that will offer safer job opportunities upon graduation. This drift away from humanistic inquiry corresponds to the devaluation of expertise in North America (Brookins and Swafford 2020). Fields important to area- or international-studies programs have experienced significant declines since 2008. This includes history as well as the qualitative branches of the social sciences such as political science, anthropology, and sociology (Flaherty 2018). According to faculty surveyed in 2014 by the National Council of Area Studies Associations (NCASA), student interest in Europe and the Former Soviet Union has stayed the same or fallen. To the detriment of students, budgets for area-studies acquisitions and subject specialist positions in the library are an easy target for cuts when enrollments decline and interest wanes (Adams 2014, 11).

Despite the discouraging enrollment trends and devaluation of disciplines associated with humanistic inquiry, those faculty members, librarians, graduate students, and researchers associated with teaching and research on Central and Eastern Europe have various and robust associations and networks to support them. Many of these societies are devoted to countries or nations, such as the following:

• American Association for Ukrainian Studies
• Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center
• Czechoslovak Studies Association
• Hungarian Studies Association
• North American Association for Belarusian Studies (via Facebook)
• Polish Studies Association
• Slovak Studies Association

Other associations are cross-disciplinary and transnational. These include, for example:

• American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL)
• Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS)
• Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN)
• Association for Women in Slavic Studies (AWSS)
• Canadian Association of Slavists
• International Association for the Humanities
• International Council for Central and East European Studies (ICCEES)
• Society for Austrian and Habsburg History: subgroup of the American Historical Association

These associations hold annual meetings and host receptions, sometimes concurrently with the convention organized by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), usually in mid-November of each year. They foster regular networking and community through websites, listservs, and social-media accounts.

Another way to stay abreast of scholarly developments and discussion in Central and Eastern European studies is to join one of several H-Net free online communities. H-Net is an international consortium of scholars in the humanities and social sciences. It offers several discussion networks, including these seven in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian history or studies:

• H-EarlySlavic: pre-1725 Slavic history, literature, and culture
• H-Poland: history, culture, art, politics, economics, and society of Poland
• H-Romania: Romanian history, politics, culture and society
• H-Russia: Russian and Soviet history
• H-SHERA: East European, Eurasian and Russian art and architecture
• H-Soyuz: postsocialist cultural studies
• H-Ukraine: Ukraine studies

The H-Net network Habsburg Empire is also relevant for Central and Eastern European studies. Each of the H-Net networks provides online scholarly reviews, information on new book releases, academic position announcements, and calls for papers.

The New Books Network is a consortium of author-interview podcast channels; learn about newly released books and keep up with the publishing landscape by subscribing to the threads Eastern European Studies, Literary Studies, and/or Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Publishing Landscape

The Central and Eastern European book market is fragmented, both along linguistic lines and in terms of structure, size, and the role of the different players. The average share of eBooks in this market is far lower than in the North American, German, and French markets, due not only to economic and legal barriers, but also to the region’s linguistic and cultural diversity.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania

While Estonia, with a population of 1.3 million, is a highly literate society, its small readership market means high printing costs, which limit print runs to less than 1,000 copies per title. Of the 1,200 publishers in Estonia, only 20 or so publish more than 20 titles per year. The eBook market (19% of all publication titles) accounts for just 2% of overall book sales revenue.

Latvia, with a population of 1.9 million, experienced a boom in publishing when the country regained its independence in 1990. Today there are 70 trade publishers in Latvia which, combined, release an estimated 2,150 titles each year, with 17% as eBooks. Poetry is at the center of Latvian culture, with poetry collections making up almost half of the literary market. For example, 186 poetry books and 208 fiction titles were published in 2016.

With a population of 2.8 million, Lithuania has 400-500 organizations and enterprises designated as publishers; only 60 or so, however, publish more than 10 books per year, releasing a total of about 3,400 new titles. Alma Littera Group dominates the market, producing about 23% of the sector’s output. Literature by Lithuanian authors accounts for two-thirds of all book titles and about half of the annual circulation. As in Estonia, eBooks have made little traction (Nawotka 2018, 9, 12, 16, 24).

Poland

Poland, with a population of 38 million and one of the largest book markets in Europe, is experiencing a crisis in reading. Consequently, the Polish book market has shrunk since 2011, despite increasing governmental spending to promote reading (Trentacosti 2016). Between 2011 and 2015, the value of the Polish book market in wholesale prices fell by 11%, though the number of published titles rose by 29% (from 24,920 in 2011 to 34,920 in 2015). And though the output of titles increased, overall and average print runs fell (Maciejewski 2019, 175).

The share of belles lettres within the overall title count has increased—in 2020, literary works constituted nearly a third of all titles. Among Poles, bestselling literature tends towards crime and fantasy novels, although Olga Tokarczuk’s fiction has received increased interest after she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2018.

Of the more than 2,000 publishing houses in Poland, only 600-700 bring out more than 10 titles annually, while the remaining issue just a few books per year. As in the Baltic States, the eBook market is still relatively underdeveloped, accounting for only 2-3% of overall annual publishing revenues. The open-access movement is hampered by the lack of a national policy to cover researchers’ costs for fees. And the academic market is dominated by international legacy publishers or local university presses. In 2020, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN was the leading publishing house in Poland, with over 64,000 publications, followed by Znak, with nearly 50,000, and Wydawnictwo Literackie with over 31,000 (Statista Research Department 2021b, 4, 6).

Belarus

Interest in cultural life in Belarus grew after Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015. Alexievich writes in Russian, which reflects the overall situation in Belarus. The ratio of Russian- to Belarusian-language publications in Belarus has not changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Belarusian-language books account for only 10% of the market, with much of the Russian-language literature produced in Belarus or imported from Russia. Of the small share of Belarusian publications, most are state-issued textbooks, followed by children’s literature and fiction. eBooks account for 15-20% of the book market. Since 2013, publishing houses are licensed and regulated by the state, and thus operate in very restrictive circumstances, like conditions under the Soviet Union, where registrations can be turned down with little pretext and operating without a license can bring charges of extremism, heavy fines, and/or closure. The state mandates that only certain publishers can produce books on specific subjects. These repressive measures have resulted in the closure of publishing houses, arrests of writers, and the exile of its most prominent journalistic and literary representatives, such as Alexievich, who has lived abroad on and off (Flood 2015; Anderson 2021).

Ukraine

The collapse of the Soviet regime in 1991 contributed to upheaval in the Ukrainian book market. As Eugene Gerden documents, “What had been an industry dominated by 30 mostly state-run publishing houses turning out 200 million units annually nosedived, average per-capita book sales dropping from 20 in 1990 to four in 2017” (2018). The Covid-19 pandemic further impacted the book publishing market throughout Eastern Europe, including Ukraine—which had the added complication of Russia’s war against the country as well as the initial informational wars, which contributed to the plethora of both legal imports of Russian-language books and the printing of illegal copies within Ukraine. In 2016, the Ukrainian government introduced measures to protect its own market, banning imports of Russian books. Books from Russia had accounted for up to 60% of all titles sold in Ukraine, while Ukraine accounted for 40% of the overall Russian book market (Gerden 2021). In 2020, book production, compared to pre-pandemic figures, was down by 31% in terms of titles and 58% in terms of total circulation (Gerden 2021). Average book circulation fell from 3,500 in 2018 to 700 in 2020 (Shchur 2021). Since early 2022, the publishing industry has faced further catastrophic declines in production and sales, with many editors and authors displaced by Russian aggression, and publishing and printing houses destroyed by bombings (Johnson 2022). In 2022, compared to the previous year, there was a 47% drop in titles (from 17,000 to just under 9,000), and a 56% drop in books printed (from 25.7 million to 9.2 million). On the positive side, the number of rights sales for Ukrainian books nearly doubled (Nawotka 2023).

Figures from 2018 report 5,600 publishing houses officially registered with the State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine, but only 300-350 were active and published more than 50 books a year. Education, followed by political and socio-economic literature, fiction, and children’s books, dominate the market. The top four publishers are, in order in 2020, Knyzhkovyi klub “Klub simeinoho dozvillia” (Книжковий Клуб “Клуб Сімейного Дозвілля”), covering Ukrainian literature and best-selling world writers; Ranok (Ранок), children’s literature; Intelekt Ukrainy (Інтелект України), educational literature; and Folio (Фоліо), literary fiction, retro-crime, history, and philosophy (Knyzhkovyi rynok Ukrainy 2019).

Czech Republic and Slovakia

Compared to Ukraine and Poland, the book market is much healthier in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, with three books published per reader per year. Over 80% of people in the Czech Republic report reading at least one book per year, with contemporary leisure fiction most popular (about a quarter of all books), followed by non-fiction, classic literature, and specialist literature.

The Czech Republic’s publishing market posted a 2.5% increase in book sales in 2017, despite a decline of 1.3% in the total number of books published over the same period. The share of eBooks in total book sales remains modest, at about 1.7%. Overall, the trend in the publishing market is towards consolidation (Adamowski 2019), with the five largest publishers producing 20% of titles. About 15,000-16,000 titles are released per year, with translations accounting for 35-40%. Among the 6,000-7,000 publishers in the Czech Republic, only some 2,000 publish at least one title per year, and only about 20 issue more than 100 titles per year. Fiction accounts for about a quarter of overall output, though a large portion of titles are in translation, dominated by English, German, and French authors. Academic books and textbooks have been trending down since 2014, and decreased from 1,700 titles in 2014 to 500 in 2018 (Turrin 2019). Presently, the largest publishers are Albatros Media (children’s books, non-fiction), Euromedia Group (biographies, children’s books, fiction, non-fiction), and Grada Publishing (education, history, leisure reading, non-fiction).

Since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, Slovakia, with a population of 5.4 million, has been overshadowed by its neighbor to the west, including in terms of recognition for its own literary figures. The country does, however, have 1,650 publishing houses, with 1,000 publishing fiction. Of these, only about 10% issue “highbrow” works rather than the more lucrative genres of popular fiction such as crime, romance, or fantasy. Better known producers of original Slovak fiction include KK Bagala; Kalligram, an imprint of Absynt; and Marenčin PT (Sherwood 2013). While their publications come out in small print runs from 500 to 1,000 copies, there are signs of an upturn in the market, as fiction accounted for a record 27.1% of overall book sales in Slovakia in 2016—up from 15.5% in 2010 (Adamowski 2018).

Hungary

Hungarian readership is high. In 2020, 21% of survey respondents read 1-10 books per year, and 79% reported that they read 11 or more books per year (18% of respondents reported reading over 51 books a year!) (Statista Research Department 2020). Over the previous decade, from 2010 to 2020, the number of books and booklets published in Hungary peaked in 2020, at nearly 15,000 titles. eBooks in Hungary account for 2.1% of the total book market, with crime novels and fantasy and science fiction making up the largest share of this market. The number of active publishers in Hungary is between 1,200 and 1,300. The top revenue getters are in the genres of literature (belles lettres and entertaining literature), children’s books, and scholarly and educational works. And the four main publishers are Alexandra Könyvesház Könyvkiadó (children’s books and entertaining literature), Móra Ferenc Ifjúsági Könyvkiadó (children’s and juvenile books), Kossuth Kiadó (arts, humanities, and social sciences), and Könyvmolyképző Kiadó (children’s and juvenile books) (Statista Research Department 2021a, 6, 10-11, 25, 28).

North America and Europe

In the US and Canada, notable university presses of English-language scholarly works on Central and Eastern Europe or on topics relating to Slavic and East European studies include:

• Columbia University Press
• Cornell University Press
• Harvard University Press
• Indiana University Press
• McGill-Queen’s University Press
• Northern Illinois University Press
• Northwestern University Press
• University of Chicago Press
• University of Pittsburgh Press
• University of Toronto Press
• University of Wisconsin Press
• Yale University Press

In Europe, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Central European University Press (CEUP) carry front and back lists of titles devoted to this region.

Among all these university presses, CEUP’s Opening the Future shows the greatest initiative in broadening its reach through open access, offering an annual subscription to backlist titles and converting them to perpetual ownership after three years. The scholarly presses below publish in the field of Slavic and East European studies:

• Slavica Publishers, affiliated with Indiana University, is the leading specialty press devoted to scholarly monographs, collections of research articles, textbooks, reference works, and journals serving the field of Slavic languages and literatures.
• Academic Studies Press issues titles under various series, such as Jews of Poland, Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and Their Legacy, Lithuanian Studies without Borders, Polish Studies, Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures, and History, and Ukrainian Studies.
• Lexington Books (Rowman and Littlefield) issues titles under the series Studies in Slavic, Baltic, and Eastern European Languages and Cultures, Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, and Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Politics.

Several German-language publishers, including Harrassowitz Verlag, have series focusing broadly on Slavic and Baltic history, languages, and cultures; V&R unipress focuses on Austrian Galicia.

Collection Development Resources 

Whether you’re responsible for acquiring material in European or Central and East European studies, or for one or several disciplines in the humanities and/or social sciences, collection development can be straightforward. Much depends on faculty teaching needs and research interests, and on the flexibility of your library’s budgets and policies. A small undergraduate institution, for instance, with only a few faculty members engaging in research on Central and Eastern Europe, may be best served by receiving on approval scholarly publications by academic presses from North American and European (particularly German) vendors, and supplementing these publications by running demand-driven acquisitions or firm ordering requests from specific in-country (foreign) commercial vendors and/or antiquarian dealers. A large graduate-level institution with numerous faculty, students, visiting scholars, and community members actively engaged in the study of Central and Eastern Europe across various disciplines, in contrast, will require a shift in collection-development resources to multiple regional and/or in-country approval plans, subscriptions to language- or area-specific databases and eJournals, and targeted development of special collections (e.g., rare books, manuscripts, and audio-visual material).

GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO (formerly YBP Library Services) and OASIS from ProQuest Books (formerly Coutts Information Services) are two of the most prominent book marketplace and ordering platforms for academic libraries. Their online services are used by libraries for the selection and acquisition of print and electronic library materials, including firm orders, approvals (with the ability to set profiles of criteria for approvals), standing orders, and demand-driven acquisitions. Librarians can expect that most of the major western English-language academic publishers for Central and Eastern European studies will be covered by at least one of these two platforms and that profiles can be tweaked to receive this material on approval, whether in print format or as e-preferred. See the list of academic publishers noted at the end of the Publishing Landscape section, above.

Librarians should consider receiving, on approval or via slips, translations of belles lettres by Eastern European writers from these publishers, among others:

• Ugly Duckling Presse (Eastern European Poets Series)
• Dalkey Archive Press
• New Europe Books
• Glagoslav Publications
• Lost Horse Press (Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry Series)
• Jantar Publishing
• Parthian Books (The Parthian Baltics Series)
• Twisted Spoon Press
• Zephyr Press

Libraries collecting material in the vernacular languages of Central and Eastern Europe can establish approval plans, or place firm orders on demand, through vendors. Some vendors, such as East View Information Services or MIPP International, can procure library material from the Baltics and East Central Europe, and offer a wide range of approval-plan coverage options in geographic, subject, and format areas. It is advisable, however, to cooperate directly with in-country vendors, either separately or in conjunction with East View Information Services and MIPP International. I also recommend that libraries subscribe to the Central East European Online Library (CEEOL), a provider of academic eJournals and eBooks in the humanities and social sciences from and about Central and Eastern Europe. As of 2021, the CEEOL platform offers access to more than 2,500 journals, 5,600 eBooks, and 6,800 documents of grey literature. A combination of a CEEOL subscription and targeted profiles for English-language material via GOBI Library Solutions or OASIS, along with firm orders from selected Central and East European vendors, may suit most libraries.

Several vendors supply material from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Toomas Etverk (email address) of Teek Ltd, in Tallinn, has been a reliable partner for Estonian- and Russian-language publications printed in Estonia since 1991. Using customer profiles, he sends periodic lists annotated in English, from which one can select titles. Jānis Roze serves as a publishing house, book distributor, and wholesaler. MIPP International and Humanitas cover publications from Lithuania and are experienced in working with libraries in North America. Jānis Roze, MIPP International, and Humanitas also manage online bookshops. All of these vendors have websites that are available in English.

Lexicon is the main supplier of Polish library material in all subjects and formats to North American academic libraries. The company maintains a vast network with publishers in Poland and can supply current titles on the market. Most American and Canadian institutions receive publications on approval. Libraries can also select from 200 titles posted every two weeks on the vendor’s website or by catalogs distributed by email. In 2021, Lexicon launched its first e-Platform. With so many partners in North America, libraries will find it beneficial to create collaborative approval plans to minimize duplication and to increase the regional and cross-institutional depth and breadth of their Polish collections. Ars Polona is another vendor offering approval plans or providing subscription services to content issued in Poland.

North American institutions rely on several suppliers for Ukrainian and Belarusian publications. East View Information Services and MIPP International are the principal providers for material from Belarus. East View also manages approval plans for material from Ukraine, Crimea, and the Donbas. Several libraries have arrangements for blanket orders with the independent book agent Alexandra Isaievych (email address). The occupation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, and the Russian war against Ukraine in 2022, has disrupted book distribution in most of the country, with some publishers moving outside the war zones.

Dependable and reputable vendors for the other countries of Central and Eastern Europe include Regula Pragensis for the Czech Republic; Ulrich Waterstradt for the Czech Republic and Slovakia; Slovart for Slovakia; and Batthyány Kultur-Press and Bouchal Books for Hungary. All can fulfill firm orders, standing and continuation orders, and subscriptions, and deliver books on approval. For libraries on limited budgets, the above vendors can send regular, monthly, or quarterly recommendations of new books, with titles translated into English.

Librarians can keep up with book publishing in Central and Eastern Europe by traveling to annual book fairs and comic-cons held in Vilnius, Riga, Minsk, Kyiv, Prague, Bratislava, and Warsaw, depending on professional funding. Far easier, however, is to attend the annual ASEEES convention, where a few dozen vendors of new publications and online platforms, as well as antiquarian dealers, participate in the exhibit hall. It is common practice to arrange one-on-one meetings with exhibitors to discuss existing approval plans, review new products, and to talk over desiderata of out-of-print material. Additionally, many scholarly presses exhibit, so one can examine present and forthcoming publications, and pick up lists of discounted backlisted titles.

Some of the reputable antiquarian or out-of-print book dealers who carry Central and Eastern European imprints include Penka Rare Books, Simon Beattie Bookseller (Chesham, United Kingdom), Michael Fagan Fine Art and Rare Books (email address; Newton, MA), and ZH Books (Fremont, CA). AbeBooks is useful for finding out-of-print publications. You can find other booksellers by searching the directories of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA) and the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), and limiting the search to world areas or subjects of interest.

Assessment of collection building efforts involves several considerations, including how to allocate a budget across multiple vendors, the average costs per title in each country, and the general and specific needs of your library users. These costs and needs can then be evaluated in a quantitative manner against purchases (or other means of acquisitions, such as bundled packages, digital archives, or gifts) and numbers of circulations and interlibrary loan requests, and electronic usage data. Since faculty and students engaged in Central and Eastern European studies will generally be a small community, a more qualitative analysis focused on research outcomes will better gauge the impact of collections, such as grades of student essays, citations of library resources in faculty publications, successful grant applications, and results of accreditation reviews.

Disciplinary Resources

Journals

Journals that publish scholarship related to Central and Eastern Europe are interdisciplinary or have either a disciplinary or regional focus. What follows is just a selection of core peer-reviewed journal titles issued in English by North American publishers:

• Nationalities Papers is one of the better-known publications and covers a range of issues relating to nationalism, ethnicity, ethnic conflict, and national identity in Central Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the Caucasus, the Turkic world, and Central Eurasia. Subscription resource.
• East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures provides an interdisciplinary forum for research from social, political, and economic perspectives, with a geographical scope for the expanse between Germany to the west and Russia to the east, and the Baltic region and the Balkans. Subscription resource.
• East European Quarterly publishes original articles in the disciplines of East European politics, sociology, economics, history, and international relations. The journal’s status is unclear, as it has not published issues since 2017. Open access.
• Eastern European Economics covers Central and Eastern European economic thought and policy. Subscription resource.
• East European Jewish Affairs is the leading global interdisciplinary journal dealing with Jews in both Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and with the Ashkenazic Jewish community. Subscription resource.

A more complete list of titles covering these areas, with corresponding links to their home pages, is on the Related Journals in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies list maintained by the editors of Slavic Review. The list on the Portal on Central Eastern and Balkan Europe (PECOB) is also useful. Regionally focused North American journals that publish scholarly articles on Central and Eastern Europe include:

• Journal of Baltic Studies, issued by the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS), covers the Baltic region. Subscription resource.
• Lituanus focuses on Lithuanian history and culture. Back issues: open access; current issues: subscription.
• The Polish Review is a scholarly quarterly run by the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (PIASA); it includes articles dealing with all aspects of Polish culture. Subscription resource.
• Journal of Belarusian Studies, published by Brill, encompasses Belarusian literature, linguistics, foreign relations, civil society, history, and art. Subscription resource.
• East-West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies (open access) and Harvard Ukrainian Studies (subscription resource) published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta and the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, respectively, are the main English-language forums for scholarly engagement with Ukraine.
• Kosmas, published by the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, focuses on Czech, Slovak, and Central European studies. Open access.
• Hungarian Studies Review, a joint publication of the Hungarian Studies Association of Canada and the Hungarian Studies Association, and publishes articles in the humanities and social sciences on contemporary and historical issues related to Hungary and the surrounding region, and to the Hungarian diaspora. Subscription resource.

The previously mentioned Central and East European Online Library (CEEOL) is the most comprehensive subscription-based repository of eBooks and eJournals from and about Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It includes content in over 50 languages in the subjects of history, economics, political science, law, geography, sociology, language and literature, philosophy, religion, and fine and performing arts. Content from the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia is best represented. Aside from a full subscription to access all content, CEEOL provides alternative subscription models, such as subject or country/regional collections and even single title selection.

Primary Source Databases

East View and Brill produce and market primary-source databases and digital archives relating to Eastern Europe, although both tend to focus more on the former Soviet Union and today’s Russia than on countries to the west.

East View does, however, carry products relating to Belarus, Ukraine, and the Baltics, such as the following subscription-based databases:

• Periodicals of the Baltics, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine (UDB-EUR): official and independent newspapers and journals, covering current events, politics, economics, science, culture, public life, and more.
• Research Collections: Ukrainian Studies: primary source documents covering 1830 to 1945.
• Social Movements, Elections and Ephemera: Belarus Collection
• Social Movements, Elections and Ephemera: Ukraine Collection
• Ukrainian National Bibliography (UDB-BIB-UKR)
• Ukrainian Publications (UDB-UKR): Ukrainian newspapers and journals

In addition, East View offers a wide variety of specialized digital archives, such as a collection of newspapers from Chernobyl during the 1986 nuclear disaster, and another with newspapers from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine from 2013-2015. The vendor has also developed online historical research collections related to Ukraine, ranging from mid-19^th– to early 20^th-century Judaica material from the State Archives of Kyiv Oblast to documents relating to the 1941-1943 German occupation of Ukraine. Recently, East View began to carry the platform Arcanum Digitheca, which is an online collection of periodicals, newspapers and other resources from Hungary, including the Hungarian diaspora, dating from the late 18^th century to the present.

Brill offers a narrower range of microform and online resources. Among the more relevant are a collection of 17^th-century printed Cyrillic books from Belarus and Ukraine; sources for the history of modern and avant-garde Russian and Ukrainian art; pre-World War II periodicals and monographs for the study of Czechoslovak avant-garde and architecture; newspapers and other serials documenting the Prague Spring; and finding aids and other reference literature covering archives and other manuscript collections in the Baltic States and Belarus.

Primary source material for Central and Eastern Europe can also be found in Europe-wide focused resources, such as the digital library Europeana and EuroDocs, a portal to historical digital documents and collections for all European countries.

Secondary Source Databases

Researchers are well served by traditional abstracting and indexing databases, all of which are very useful for identifying periodical articles in Slavic and East European studies. Note these subscription-based databases in particular:

• American Bibliography of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ABSEEES)
• Arts & Humanities Citation Index
• Historical Abstracts
• MLA International Bibliography
• PAIS (Public Affairs Information Service) Index
• Worldwide Political Science Abstracts

The European Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies (EBSEES), an open access database, provides coverage of publications from 1991-2007 from western European countries. There are also useful and freely available search portals and guides. ARTOS, for example, a joint endeavor of several German and Austrian institutions, allows you to search for articles and reviews from around 350 current journals and selected anthologies in the humanities and social sciences from Eastern and Southeastern Europe and across the region. The Slavonic Studies list, from the University of Regensburg’s Electronic Journals Library, offers a quick way to see the status of over 700 journals, which are open access, and which are only accessible via subscription.

News Sources

For a list of historical news sources for Central and Eastern Europe, consult Bogdan Horbal and Ernest A. Zitser’s Guide to Open Access Historical News Sources from Slavic, East European and Eurasian Countries, hosted at the East Coast Consortium of Slavic Library Collections. Country-by-country lists of contemporary news media outlets can be found on such sites as the World Newspapers List, World Newspapers, News Sites, and Magazines Online, and Wikipedia‘s List of Newspapers. The Centre for Russian, Caucasian and Central European Studies (CERCEC) in Paris curates the freely accessible database Online Primary Resources for Russian, Caucasian, Central Asian, Eastern and Central Europe Studies, which enables filtering by geographical area, language, or time period, and links to archival documents, photograph collections, maps, datasets, oral histories, periodicals, and newspaper collections, among other formats. Librarians covering this area should also note that news content from Central and Eastern Europe is available in English and in some vernacular languages from news aggregators, such as Access World News, Factiva, Global Newssstream, Nexis Uni, and PressReader.

Catalogs, Bibliographies, Archives

The most comprehensive ways to discover what has been published in a particular country are to consult national bibliographies and search national or regional library catalogs. Many Central and East European online national library catalogs serve as de facto national bibliographies. In other cases, earlier and current publishing output is digitized and available freely. While it is often possible to search many years of a national bibliography with a single subject search, there is something lost in the process of meticulous bibliographic research. To give two examples: When I was a graduate student, I examined 100 years of the French national bibliography from 1800 to 1899, scanning title-by-title those sections on fiction, poetry, and drama for any words that suggested a Ukrainian theme (i.e., Mazeppa, hetman, Kijow (Polish name for Kyiv), Petite-Russie, Ukraine, the feminine names Maroussia or Daria). To replicate such a search online would require knowing in advance all the possible keywords, and variations in their spellings, that might appear in the titles. More recently, I assisted a graduate student at the University of Toronto who was compiling a complete bibliography of Russian literary works on representations of the Battle of Stalingrad between 1942 and 2013, including information on print runs and reprints. Again, this type of scholarly work requires a concerted effort that cannot be replicated with casual searching.

The table below provides links to the main online national library catalogs, union library catalogs, national bibliographies, subscription-based bibliographies, and national archives. Not to be overlooked, though, are other valuable catalogs. First and foremost is WorldCat, the union catalog of books and serials for some 15,000 libraries participating in the OCLC database, which has two different interfaces: WorldCat.org (open access) and WorldCat via FirstSearch (subscription resource). Important too are library catalogs that capture the imperial histories of Central and Eastern Europe, such as the Austrian National Library (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek) for Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Serbian, Ukrainian, etc., books, newspapers and journals, prints and graphics, and legal documents. The National Library of Finland also has significant holdings of Eastern European material, especially for Belarusian and Ukrainian. To search and for details, see the National Library of Finland’s Catalog and its Slavonic Library. Another useful catalog is the Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog (KVK), which shows holdings across multiple European library catalogs, including Europeana. It is also important to keep in mind other libraries with historical connections to Central and Eastern Europe, such as ones in Germany (Prussia), Russia (Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union), Sweden (during the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), and Turkey (Ottoman Empire).

Table: Central and Eastern European National Catalogs, Bibliographies, and Archives

Reference Tools

Many current and historical reference sources, such as general and national encyclopedias, biographical dictionaries, historical chronologies, atlases and geographical gazetteers, lexicons, archival guides, and various bibliographies, can now be found online. The Slavic Reference Service at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign maintains guides with descriptions of general resources and at a country level for Eastern Europe, Russia, and Eurasia. For a narrower focus, see the Library of Congress’ European Reading Room website, which provides overviews of collections by country, finding aids, special project descriptions, and transliteration tables that are useful for rendering Cyrillic characters into Roman script. Particularly helpful are research guides to newspapers, periodicals, and serials for the Baltic States, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine; European Address/Telephone Directories at the Library of Congress, for all of Central and Eastern Europe; and research guides on various subjects for Czech and Slovak history, Masaryk and America, Taras Shevchenko, visual arts in Poland, and so on.

Distinctive Print Collections

The depth, scope, and currency of North American library collections vary by language and region. Very few institutions can maintain consistently high rates of acquisitions of new publications across all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, aside from those with large endowments, that are publicly funded, or that have national mandates to collect globally, such as Harvard University, Stanford University, the New York Public Library, and the Library of Congress. For the countries covered in this chapter, aside from the institutions mentioned above which invest and acquire material broadly across the Baltic countries and Central and Eastern Europe, one can find certain special strengths and distinctive collections—for example, the Immigration History Research Center Archives at the University of Minnesota. Some of these collections are described in the still useful, though somewhat outdated, overview of special collections for this region and beyond, Allan Urbanic’s and Beth Feinberg’s A Guide to Slavic Collections in the United States and Canada (2004).

University of Washington Libraries (UW) has a significant Baltic profile, especially in Latvian studies, followed by Lithuanian and then Estonian. Its collection developed late, from the mid-1990s, after the establishment of UW’s Baltic Studies Program. To support the program, the library negotiated the transfer to UW of the complete collection of the Latvian Studies Center Library formerly located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, numbering close to 12,000 books, periodical volumes, and pieces of microform material. The University of Wisconsin at Madison also holds collections dealing with the Baltics, with its library system housing some of the largest Latvian and Lithuanian collections in North America—including the Latvian Gulbis and Jegers collections as well as the collection from Alfred E. Senn known as the “Lithuanian Collection”—on the Special Collections website European History, Literature, & Social Sciences. The New York Public Library’s strengths lie in interwar Latvian imprints and post-World War II publications from Lithuania and in emigration. Among their important holdings is the private library of Helmars Rudzitis, who founded a publishing house in Riga in 1926, continued to publish books after World War II in the displaced person camps in Germany, and resumed his activities in 1951 after emigrating to New York. Yale University’s long running Baltic Studies Program, supplemented by the Baltic Library Internship program, has ensured dedicated expenditures for the acquisition of new Estonian publications in particular, as well as Lithuanian and Latvian material. The University also holds the papers of Estonian-born poet Alexis (Aleksis) Rannit, who served as curator of Yale’s Slavic and East European collections for 20 years, from 1961 to 1981.

Not to be overlooked are heritage collections. The Estonian Archives in Lakewood, New Jersey, documents the Estonian experience in the US in print and manuscript formats. Philadelphia is home to the oldest Latvian library in the US, the Library of the Philadelphia Society of the Free Letts, dating from 1892. The culture and history of Estonia and Estonians in Canada are preserved at the Tartu Institute Library and at the Estonian Central Archives, both located in Toronto, with important holdings of publications and archival materials of the Estonian diaspora in the West after World War II. A similar repository in Toronto is the Latvian Canadian Cultural Centre. Outstanding depositories of Lithuanian publications, archival material, and ephemera are held by the Lithuanian American Cultural Archives in Putnam, Connecticut, at the Lithuanian World Archives in Chicago, and at the Lithuanian Museum Library in Toronto (Kreslins 2002, 203-204).

North American libraries do not lack Polish print and special collections. Formidable collections exist at Cornell, Harvard, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the University of Toronto, Yale, and Stanford. All seven institutions actively collect new material, and several hold large Solidarity collections documenting civil resistance to Communist rule in Poland during the 1980s. The largest and most comprehensive and diverse collection of historical sources on modern Poland outside Europe is at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Polish material in its Library and Archives accounts for approximately 5% (40,000 library items and about 400 archival collections) of the entire Hoover holdings, which continue to grow. The material encompasses personal, military, and diplomatic collections comprised of primary source materials on the Polish People’s Republic, the anti-communist opposition, and Poland’s transition to democracy after 1989. In addition to the Solidarity trade union and related movements, the Hoover Institution houses substantial holdings of papers from communist functionaries. Among its many remarkable collections are the records of the Second Corps Documents Bureau, which the Polish Government-in-Exile transferred to California. The material includes valuable accounts of Poles about Soviet prisons and deportations (Siekierski 2003; Ziółkowska-Boehm 2019).

The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (PIASA), in partnership with the Polish Academy of Sciences and the State Archives, both located in Warsaw, gathers and maintains information about processed and unprocessed Polish, Polish-American, and Polish-Canadian archival collections in North American repositories. Located in New York City, PIASA houses a library and archive, the latter holding political manuscript collections (diplomats, political parties in exile, opposition movements), artists’ and scholars’ private papers, and material on Poles in South and Latin America and in the US . Its library’s books and periodicals can be searched via the shared online catalog of Polish American libraries, which includes the library holdings of the Józef Piłsudski Institute of America, the Polish Cultural Foundation, and the Kosciuszko Foundation.

The New York Public Library is among the institutions with historically well-developed Belarusian collections. Its strengths are in belles lettres and historical works, produced in Belarus and in emigration, from the 1920s to the early 2000s. It holds, for example, the Zora and Vitaut Kipel Collection of Belarusian Periodicals and Newspapers, published abroad by different Belarusian organizations, political parties, and private individuals, as well as records of the Rada (Council) of the Belarusian Democratic Republic and the Belarusian Institute of Arts and Sciences in New York. Harvard University leads in actively building print collections in Belarusian and, in recent years, has organized or participated in web-archiving projects to represent the country, such as the Archive-It Belarusian Politics and Society Web Archive and the Belarusian representation to the Archive-It Global Social Responses to Covid-19.

Significant Ukrainian collections can be found at Harvard University Library, the largest of its kind outside Eastern Europe, thanks to the establishment of the Ukrainian Research Institute there in 1973, which facilitated large donations of material in the following decades, including the libraries of Bohdan Krawciw and Michael Bazansky, as well as manuscripts, archives, and photographs dating from the 1890s to the present. The collections at Harvard are an important resource for the study of Ukraine during the revolutionary years of 1917 to the 1920s, and of Ukrainian émigrés in Europe and the US. For an overview of the Harvard collections, see Ukraine in the World; some are also described in Ksenya Kiebuzinski’s “A Guide to Ukrainian Special Collections at Harvard University” (2007). Also remarkable are the Ukrainian holdings at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library. The University purchased several important collections, such as the Elias Czaykowsky collection of Ukrainian culture and the private scholarly library of the historian George Vernadsky, who took an interest in integrating Ukrainians into the general scheme of Russia. In Canada, collections with emphases on Ukraine can be found at the Universities of Alberta, Manitoba, and Toronto, as well as at cultural and research institutes. Both Manitoba and Toronto hold material documenting Ukrainian Canadians, and Toronto also preserves records on the Ukrainian revolutionary movement, 1917-1923, and on post-World War II Ukrainian refugees. For information on collections related to Ukraine and other Central and Eastern European countries at the University of Toronto, see the Collections webpage for the Petro Jacyk Central and East European Centre. A detailed guide to archival and library collections in Canada, Arkhivna ukraïnika v Kanadi: dovidnyk, was compiled by Iryna Matiash in 2010.

Several libraries have notable Czechoslovak and Czech collections. Indiana University Libraries (Bloomington) emphasizes Czech émigré materials and has one of the best such collections in North America. It also collects deeply in Czechoslovak history and Czech belle-lettres. Indiana, the Getty Museum, Yale’s Beinecke, Columbia, Illinois, the New York Public Library, Harvard, and the University of Toronto all house rich collections of Czech modernism, with wonderful examples of the interplay between content (text) and graphic design (image—i.e., typographic design, the linocut, etching, photo-illustration, photomontage, photogravure, woodcut, and photo-collage) (Davis 2021). The University of Chicago Library holds the Archives of the Czechs and Slovaks Abroad (ACASA). The University of Pittsburgh fills a niche for Slovak materials, and in recent years the University of Ottawa has been expanding its Slovak library and archival collection to support the Chair of Slovak Studies established there in 1990. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries house major Czech heritage collections documenting immigration and exile after World War II and the Prague Spring.

Great Hungarian research collections are associated with universities where Hungarian studies began and continue to be pursued as an academic field, especially at Columbia and Indiana. Worth noting as well are smaller collections at University of California, Berkeley; Rutgers; Pittsburgh; and Case Western Reserve, among others (Niessen 2013).

News about newly received, cataloged, or digitized special collections is featured regularly in ASEEES’s Newsnet (open access). The subscription-based journal Slavic & East European Information Resources includes an “In Our Libraries” column where contributors describe, in depth, material in local repositories that has particular value in terms of subject matter, language specialization, or format (e.g., photographs, manuscripts, rare books). Both WorldCat (WorldCat.org (open access) and WorldCat via FirstSearch) and ArchiveGrid (open access) are excellent starting points to uncover archival collections held by thousands of libraries, museums, historical societies, and archives.

Research engagement with collections can be tracked through definitive abstracting and indexing databases, such as Historical Abstracts, the MLA International Bibliography, and Worldwide Political Science Abstracts.

Professional Development and Networks

The Slavic and East European library community is well organized, service-oriented, helpful, and friendly. We stay in touch and communicate with each other through several channels. The most important forum for networking is Slavlib, the Slavic librarians’ listserv, which should be joined straightaway as it’s the go-to resource for everything from advice on vendors, tips on establishing new approval plans, help with complex research questions and verifying citations, to exchanging duplicate copies or connecting donors with library homes for their material. One can expect an expert response to most questions immediately or within hours. Similarly, the Slavic Reference Service, run by the University of Illinois Library, is an invaluable resource for locating items, answering difficult reference questions, troubleshooting fonts and keyboards for vernacular languages, and securing digital copies of material held by the University Library. The expert staff also provide virtual consultations, regardless of institutional affiliation.

There are two professional library groups to join. The first is the Committee on Libraries and Information Resources (CLIR), part of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). Members are librarians in the fields of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian studies who, through subcommittees, work throughout the year on a wide range of topics, including but are not limited to collection development, copyright, and education and access. New participants are actively encouraged to join one of the subcommittees, which involves a three-year commitment. In-person meetings are held once per year at the annual ASEEES convention. The second group is the European Studies Section (ESS) of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), which promotes cooperation between libraries and scholars in European fields and publishers and book dealers in Europe, and is involved in coordinating the acquisition, organization, and use of information sources originating in or related to European countries. This work is facilitated through several groups, including the Slavic Cataloging and Metadata Committee, and the Slavic and Eastern European Discussion Group. Meetings are held at least twice a year: online in midwinter and in-person or online during the American Library Association’s annual conference.

Aside from CLIR (ASEEES) and ESS (ACRL), three regional consortia help coordinate work with Central and Eastern European library collections through biannual in-person meetings and listservs: the East Coast Consortium of Slavic Library Collections (EEC), the MidWest Slavic and Eurasian Librarians’ Consortium (MidSlav), and the Pacific Coast Slavic and East European Library Consortium (PacSlav). The revived Slavic Library Institute, run by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, brings together and benefits graduate students in library and information sciences, along with early-career librarians, interested in or responsible for collections and user services in Central and Eastern European Studies. The Institute draws on leading national and international experts in the field as lecturers.

The quarterly, peer-reviewed, subscription-based Slavic & East European Information Resources (SEEIR) is the primary journal in English for research articles on Slavic and Eastern European book history, collections, digital projects, metadata services, and librarianship. It has been published since 2000, first by Haworth Press, and presently by Taylor and Francis. The journal also includes book reviews, memoirs, and “Internet” and “In Our Libraries” columns. For a historical perspective, Solanus is invaluable. The international journal, with contributions by North American librarians on American and Canadian topics, was published by the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London in two series, the first as a bulletin from 1966 to 1985, and the new series journal from 1987 to 2013.

To keep up with general scholarship beyond librarianship, such as academic research and book reviews, be sure to occasionally browse the following three journals:

• Slavic Review, an international interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of eastern Europe, Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia; published since 1941, and a membership journal of ASEEES. Subscription resource.
• Slavic and East European Journal covers Slavic and East European languages, literatures, cultures, linguistics, and methodology/pedagogy; published in its current form since 1957 by AATSEEL. Subscription resource.
• Canadian Slavonic Papers, a quarterly interdisciplinary journal devoted to problems of Central and Eastern Europe; published since 1956, in English and French, by the Canadian Association of Slavists. Subscription resource.

Librarians of Slavic and East European studies use newsletters and social media to contribute, on a rather ad hoc basis, news about local collections, digital projects, and research tools, with the best and most informative sources taking the form of blogs. There is an irregular library column in the ASEEES NewsNet. Some institutions, such as the Petro Jacyk Central and East European Centre at the University of Toronto Libraries, publish annual newsletters, such as the PJRC Update, which has come out annually since 2008. The European Language Division of Harvard’s Widener Library contributes an engaging blog, as do the European Division of the Library of Congress, the Curator for Slavic and East European Collections at New York Public Library, and other institutions. See, for example, Harvard Library’s Slavic blog; Library of Congress International Collections – European Reading Room; and New York Public Library Posts from the Slavic and East European Collections.

References and Recommended Readings

Adamowski, Jaroslaw. 2018. “Domestic Fiction Leads Slovakia’s Book Market Growth and Bestseller Lists.” Publishing Perspectives, March 6, 2018. Accessed August 30, 2023. https://publishingperspectives.com/2018/03/slovakian-fiction-leads-book-market-growth/

Adamowski, Jaroslaw. 2019. “Czech Book Sales Rise Amid Ongoing Industry Consolidation.” Publishing Perspectives, February 5, 2019. Accessed August 30, 2023. https://publishingperspectives.com/2019/02/czech-republic-book-sales-depressed-acquisitions-continue-2017-2018/.

Adams, Laura. 2014. “The State of Area Studies: A Survey of Foreign Language and Area Studies Specialists in Higher Education.” National Council of Area Studies Associations (NCASA), April 2014. https://www.wm.edu/offices/revescenter/globalengagement/internationalization/papers_and_presentations/lauraadamsfull.pdf.

Anderson, Porter. 2021. “Belarus One Year after the Election: Writers, Journalists Speak Out.” Publishing Perspectives, August 9, 2021. Accessed August 30, 2023. https://publishingperspectives.com/2021/08/belarus-one-year-after-the-election-writers-translators-journalists-speak-out/.

Ben, Bohdan. 2023. “Ukraine Ceases To Be a Bilingual Country, Polls and Speaking Practice Show.” Euromaidan. February 28, 2023. Accessed October 16, 2023. https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/02/28/what-language-is-the-default-in-ukraine-by-all-means-ukrainian/.

Brookins, Julia. 2018. “Enrollment Declines Continue.” Perspectives on History, February 12, 2018. https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/february-2018/enrollment-declines-continue-aha-survey-again-shows-fewer-undergraduates-in-history-courses.

Brookins, Julia. 2020. “History Enrollment Edges Slightly Lower.” Perspectives on History, December 22, 2020. https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/january-2021/history-enrollment-edges-slightly-lower-wide-variation-characterizes-2019-20-enrollment-numbers.

Brookins, Julia, and Emily Swafford. 2020. “History Enrollments Hold Steady as Department Efforts Intensify: Results of the 2019 AHA Enrollment Survey.” Perspectives on History, January 15, 2020. https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/january-2020/history-enrollments-hold-steady-as-department-efforts-intensify-results-of-the-2019-aha-enrollment-survey.

Davis, Robert H., comp. 2021. “Eastern European Modernism: Works on Paper at the Columbia University Libraries and The Cornell University Library.” New York: Academic Commons. https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-vwef-4a93.

Flaherty, Colleen. 2018. “The Vanishing History Major.” Inside Higher Ed, November 27, 2018. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/11/27/new-analysis-history-major-data-says-field-new-low-can-it-be-saved.

Flood, Alison. 2015. “Belarusian Publisher on Trial for Selling Books without State Registration.” The Guardian, January 7, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/07/belarusian-publisher-trial-books-state-registration-ihar-lohvinau.

Gerden, Eugene. 2018. “Demand for Ukrainian-Language Literature May Prompt a Market Upswing.” Publishing Perspectives, May 4, 2018. https://publishingperspectives.com/2018/05/ukrainian-state-orders-translations-market-forecast/

Gerden, Eugene. 2021. “Ukrainian Publishers Review Industry Numbers from 2020.” Publishing Perspectives, January 27, 2021. https://publishingperspectives.com/2021/01/ukrainian-publishers-say-they-fear-disastrous-numbers-from-2020-covid19/.

Johnson, Hannah. 2022. “Ukraine: A Call to Buy Rights to Support Publishers.” Publishing Perspectives, April 22, 2021. https://publishingperspectives.com/2022/04/ukraine-a-call-to-buy-rights-to-support-publishers/

Kiebuzinski, Ksenya. 2007. “A Guide to Ukrainian Special Collections at Harvard University.” Harvard Library Bulletin 18, no. 3/4: 1-107. https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:427335063$1i.

Knyzhkovyi rynok Ukrainy [Книжковий ринок України]. 2019. Kyiv: Samit-knyha. http://www.library.univ.kiev.ua/ukr/for_lib/konf-2019-1/stepuryn.pdf

Kreslins, Janis A. 2002. “Collections of Baltic Vernacular-Language Publications at Some North American Libraries: An Attempt at a Survey.” Slavic & East European Information Resources 3, no. 2/3 (March): 201-216. https://doi.org/10.1300/J167v03n02_21.

Looney, Dennis, and Natalia Lusin. 2019. “Enrollments in Languages Other Than En­glish in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Summer 2016 and Fall 2016: Final Report.” Modern Language Association. Accessed August 23, 2023. https://www.mla.org/content/download/110154/2406932/2016-Enrollments-Final-Report.pdf.

Maciejewski, Jędrzej. 2019. “Book Markets in Europe: Facing the Challenges of the Digital Single Market.” Comparative Economic Research: Central and Eastern Europe 22, no. 2 (2019): 173-87. https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=783009.

Matiash, Iryna. 2010. Arkhivna ukraïnika v Kanadi: dovidnyk [Архівна україніка в Канаді: довідник]. Kyiv: Derzhkomarkhiv Ukraïny.

Nawotka, Ed, ed. 2018. Publishing in the Baltic Region: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania: the London Book Fair Market Focus 2018. [New York, NY?] Publishers Weekly. https://www.digitalpw.com/digitalpw/baltic_supplement_march_26_2018/MobilePagedReplica.action?pm=2&folio=1#pg1.

Niessen, James P. 2013. “Documenting the Hungarian Heritage of the U.S.: Efforts at Home and Abroad.” Slavic & East European Information Resources 14, no. 4, 234-241: https://doi.org/10.1080/15228886.2013.850611.

Nawotka, Ed. 2023. “War Has Taken Its Toll on Ukrainian Publishing.” Publishers Weekly, March 17, 2023. Accessed on October 16, 2023. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/international/international-book-news/article/91788-war-has-taken-its-toll-on-ukrainian-publishing.html.

Schmidt, Benjamin M. 2018. “The History BA Since the Great Recession.” Perspectives on History, November 26, 2018. https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/december-2018/the-history-ba-since-the-great-recession-the-2018-aha-majors-report.

Shchur, Mariia [Щур, Марія]. 2021. “Українська мова і захист книжкового ринку України.” [“Ukrainian Language and Protection of Ukraine’s Book Market”]. Радіо Свобода [Radio Svoboda], May 15, 2021. https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/ukrajinska-knyzhka-rynok-knyzhok/31256201.html.

Sherwood, Julia. 2013. “A Beginners Guide to the Slovak Book and Literature Market.” Publishing Perspectives, November, 13, 2013. Accessed August 30, 2023. https://publishingperspectives.com/2013/11/a-beginners-guide-to-the-slovak-book-and-literature-market/.

Siekierski, Maciej. 2003. “The Hoover Institution’s Polish Émigré Collections and the Polish State Archives.” Slavic & East European Information Resources 4, no. 4: 89-94, https://doi.org/10.1300/J167v04n04_08.

Statista Research Department. 2020. “Number of books Hungarians read in a year in 2020.” September 23, 2020. Accessed August 30, 2023. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1174439/hungary-number-of-books-read-in-a-year.

Statista Research Department. 2021a. “Books in Hungary.” Accessed August 29, 2023. https://www.statista.com/study/82594/books-in-hungary/.

Statista Research Department. 2021b.” Books in Poland.” Accessed August 29, 2023.https://www.statista.com/study/68730/books-in-poland/.

Trentacosti, Giulia. 2016. “Exploring the Current Polish Publishing Market.” 2SeasAgency, March 2016. Accessed August 29, 2023. https://2seasagency.com/exploring-polish-publishing/.

Turrin, Enrico. 2019. “Focus on the Czech Book Market.” Aldus Up, July 8, 2019. Accessed August 29, 2023. http://www.aldusnet.eu/k-hub/focus-czech-book-market./

Urbanic, Allan and Beth Feinberg, eds. 2004. A Guide to Slavic Collections in the United States and Canada. Binghamton, N.Y.: Haworth Information Press.

Ziółkowska-Boehm, Aleksandra. 2019. “Polish Collections in the Hoover Institution Library and Archives: Interview with Dr. Maciej Siekierski, Senior Curator and Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.” The Polish Review 64, no.1: 50-63. https://doi.org/10.5406/polishreview.64.1.0050.