Libraries
 

U518: Empire and ethnicity in modern Russian history

Building Bibliographies 

Build your own bibliography first as a guide for your research. The following are some of the tools and tips that will help you with building a bibliography.

 

A. Bibliography of books:

1. Use subject bibliographies. Some of the useful titles include:

    • Guide to the study of the Soviet nationalities : non-Russian peoples of the USSR / Stephan M. Horak. 1982. 265 p. [Z2517.E85 G84]: A select subject bibliography. Unfortunately, no up-to-dated bibliography for the studies of Soviet nationalities yet.
    • Russia and the former Soviet Union : a bibliographic guide to English language publications, 1986-1991 / Helen F. Sullivan and Robert H. Burger. 1994. 380 p. [Z2491 .S89 1994]
    • The German-Russians : a bibliography of Russian materials with introductory essay, annotations, and locations of materials in major American and Soviet libraries / James Long. 1978. 136 p. [RCSLAVRF-- Z2517.G4 L65]
    • Rossiiskie nemtsy : otechestvennaia bibliografiia 1991-2000 gg. : ukazatel’ noveishei literatury po istorii i kul’ture nemtsev Rossii / T.N. Chernova. 2001. 268 p. [Z2517.G4 C48 2001]

2. Use IUCAT to gather information on those readily available books and journals:

Tips: Do a subject search in Advanced Search (as opposed to the default Basic Search) using two subject terms, one the name of any ethnic group of your interest, for example, Estonians, Latvians, Poles, etc; and the other “Russia.”

3. Use WorldCat to expand your search beyond IUCAT:

Tips: the same as with IUCAT. (Borrowing materials from outside IU, use ILL services).

4. It is very useful to realize that in both IUCAT and WorldCat, you can limit your search by language (for example, English or Russian) as necessary.

 

B. Bibliography of articles:

1. ABSEES Online: The most comprehensive subject index for the field of Slavic and East European Studies. For your search, use such subject phrases as “Russia--ethnic relations,” “Russia--nationalities,” “[name of an ethnic group]--Russia”, to name a few.

2. Historical Abstracts: Online index to world history scholarship except American and Canadian histories

3. Russian Academy of Sciences Bibliographies: Use such subject phrases as “natsional'naia politika,” “natsional'nye menshinstva,” or the name of an ethnic group, preferably in Russian transliteration, and “Russia.” This database is a Russian product that is useful for finding Russian articles.

4. UDB—Social Sciences and Humanities Journals: Use such search terms as “natsional’naia politika,” “national’nye men’shinstva,” or names of ethnic groups in transliteration.

 

Finding Book Reviews 

Book reviews may be helpful for writing a historiographical essay, among others. Use the following two comprehensive book review indices that cover the whole 20th century to the present. I am not aware of any online index to Russian book reviews yet. Instead, use one of the Russian national bibliographies entitled Letopis’ retsenzii [RCSLAVRF-- Z2495 .L64]

 

Using Scholarly Encyclopedias and Dictionaries 

Useful for finding or verifying historical facts & biographical information, among others. As you all know, Wikipedia should be used only with extreme caution, or not at all. The following are some of the more important encyclopedias.

    • Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History / Joseph L. Wieczynski. 1976-[2000], 60 v. [RCREFDPT--DK14 .M689]. The most comprehensive, scholarly encyclopedia of Russian history to date. Shorter, but no less authoritative is Encyclopedia of Russian history / James R. Millar. 2004. 4 v. [RCREFDPT-- DK14 .E53 2003]
    • An Ethnohistorical Dictionary of the Russian and Soviet Empires / James S. Olson, et all. 1994. 840 p. [DK33 .E837 1994]
    • Dictionary of Russian historical terms from the eleventh century to 1917 / S. G. Pushkarev. 1970. 199 p. [DK36 .P987]
    • Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ / I.E. Andreevskii. 1990 [reprint of the original that was published in St. Peterburg by F. A. Brokgauz and I. A. Efron in 1890-1904], 82 v. [RCSLAVRF-- AE55 .E55 1890a]
    • Russkii biograficheskii slovar’ / A.A. Polovtsov. 1896-[1913], 25 v. [RCSLAVRF-- CT1203 .R9]

 

Using The Correct LC (Library of Congress) Transliteration Rules For Your Catalog Search 

The LC system is the one that is most commonly used to transliterate Russian and other Cyrillic language titles in North American scholarship. Consult the transliteration table.

 

Browsing The Collection 

In the Wells library, all books and periodicals are arranged by subject following the LC (Library of Congress) classification system. Finding the call number range for your subject at http://www.loc.gov/aba/cataloging/classification/lcco/lcco_d.pdf and browsing the collection would be another good way to familiarize yourself with the literature, one advantage which is that it allows you to browse the materials both in the Wells Library stacks and ALF (Auxiliary Library Facilities).

 

Miscellany

    • Association for the Study of Nationalities: An important scholarly association in the field of nationalities studies. It currently publishes an important periodical, Nationalities papers [Coverage: 1997-present. Print: DR24 .N277]
    • Institut etnologii i antropologii RAN: he most important research institute of Russia in the field of ethnography and anthropology. You may take this site as an example of how useful an institutional website can be for your scholarly work.
    • Meeting of frontiers/Vstrecha na granitsakh: An American-Russian joint digital library project, with a variety of materials including rare photos, bibliographies, and rare books in full-text, all related to Siberia or the American West, from US, Russia, and Germany. Extremely useful!

 

For More Consultation 

Contact Wook-Jin Cheun, librarian for Slavic and East European Studies (Wells Library E560).

Email: wcheun@indiana.edu

Phone: 812-855-9413