Slavonic, Central and Eastern European Studies

Contact

Angelina Gibson, Slavonic Subject Consultant (history, social sciences and geography)
tel: +44 (0)1865 270468 / 285998
email: angelina.gibson@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Collection overview

Collection policy for Slavonic, Central and Eastern European Studies

Libraries and reading rooms

During March 2006 all material from the Bodleian Slavonic reading room was transferred to two other sites. General reference and history material is now on the open shelves at Taylor Bodleian Slavonic and Modern Greek Library. Books, journals and reading list material relating to East European politics, economics and statistics is in the Social Science Library.

Principal collections

The Bodleian Library collections of material from and dealing with the area of the former USSR and Eastern Europe are the third largest in the UK, after the British Library and SSEES. Taken together with other collections in Oxford, they form the biggest British concentration of resources for Slavonic studies outside London.

The Bodleian Library has acquired printed and other matter relating to Russia and Eastern Europe ever since its establishment by Sir Thomas Bodley at the beginning of the 17th century. Acquisition was significantly expanded after the second World War, with the help of special government funds, when Oxford was designated as a centre for Slavonic and East European studies.

Publications of a scholarly standard are acquired as extensively as funds permit in the following main subjects: history (including local history); politics and government (including official publications); economics (especially economic history); sociology, statistics and demography, gender studies, geography and topography; bibliography, libraries, archives and publishing; law (at the Bodleian Law Library); and general works of reference. First priority is given to securing adequate coverage of newly published titles, but older material has been widely obtained by donation, exchange or purchase.

Bodleian holdings relating to Russia and Eastern Europe are estimated (in 2005) at around 200,000 book titles in European languages, with a further 25,000 in the non-European languages of the former USSR. Periodicals and other printed serials published in the countries concerned amount to about 2,000 current, out of which 752 are still regular, and over 5,000 discontinued titles. Several electronic databases containing over 400 serial titles have recently been added, most notably from EastView and CEEOL.

Associated collections

Important e-resources

Other links