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Home  »   Subjects and Libraries  »  Subjects  »  Slavonic Languages and Literatures

Contact | Collection overview | Libraries & reading rooms | Important e-resources

Contact

Nick Hearn
Subject Consultant
tel: +44 (0)1865 270462
email: nick.hearn@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Collection overview

Collection policy for Slavonic Studies (Language & Literature).

Libraries and reading rooms

Principal collections

The principal collections for this subject area are located in the Taylor Bodleian Slavonic and Modern Greek Library (TABS) at 47, Wellington Square. This building houses two main collections of Slavonic material: the Research Collection and the Faculty Library (or Undergraduate Library). The Slavonic collections are housed together with the Modern Greek Library. Although the Library is known as the Slavonic Library it also includes linguistic and literary material on non-Slavonic languages: Hungarian, the Baltic languages (ie Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian) and Albanian. The Romanian collections are housed in the main Taylor Institution Library in St Giles.

The Research Collection in the Basement of the building (only accessible to academics and postgraduates) has a particular strength in its holdings of 19^th and 20^th century literature and while the proportion of Russian material is large there are important collections in several other Slavonic languages. The Czech and Slovak collection (housed separately on the 2^nd Floor of the building) is important. The Polish collection is strong while the Bulgarian, Belarusian, Ukrainian and Southern Slavonic collections (ie Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Macedonian) are representative rather than comprehensive. The Research collection includes an important collection of microfilms. The Special Collections offer a small selection of early incunabula and early books and strong holdings of 19^th and early 20^th century material.

The Faculty Library (‘Undergraduate library’) provides teaching collections in support of undergraduate and taught postgraduate courses in Russian language and literature (and to a lesser extent other Slavonic languages which are taught at Oxford). Students of Czech and Slovak may use the Czech and Slovak Research collection on the 2^nd Floor. Material is selected in line with reading lists, syllabuses and recommended authors.

All readers have access to the Reference Collections and Periodicals on the First Floor of the Library. Since 2006, the Taylor Reference collection has been combined with the Bodleian Reference Collection and offers a wide variety of encyclopaedias, dictionaries and bibliographies covering language, literature and history among other subjects. The Library has an unrivalled range of current Slavonic journals covering language and literature across all the Slavonic languages.

Associated collections

The Bodleian library also houses material relating to Slavonic languages and literatures. In particular, legal deposit copies of books published in the field in the UK are available for use and may be ordered to TABS by Automated Stack Request. Among its special collections, the Bodleian holds important collections of early Cyrillic books and manuscripts. There is a rapidly growing collection of Russian and other East European films in the Film Studies collection of the Modern Languages Faculty Library in the Main Taylor. Although TABS has some limited holdings of borrowable language-learning materials, a fuller range will be found at the Language Centre.

Important e-resources

Access to electronic library resources is through OxLIP+. To access many of these resources when you are not logged on to the university network you will need to register for the Oxford Single Sign-On.

Bibliographic databases

These allow you to find library materials that you cannot find on OLIS e.g. journal articles and book reviews. The most important databases for the study of Slavonic languages and literatures are:

ABSEES
MLA Bibliography

Electronic journals

Some journals relating to Slavonic languages and literatures are available electronically (e.g. Druzhba narodov, Izvestiia RAN, Literaturna Ukraina, Nash sovremennik, Neva, Oktiabr’, Russkaia literatura, Russkaia rech’, Znamia, Zvezda, Scando-slavica, Slavic and East European Journal etc)

Other links

The easiest way to find quality information on the internet is to use ‘gateways’ which link to resources evaluated and described by subject specialists. Gateways covering Slavonic language and literature include:

Intute: Arts and Humanities
TABS list of resources

For more information about Slavonic and East European resources, contact Nick Hearn.