Research Guides
For Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Baltic Studies Program, current UW curricular and research emphasis is on the 21st, 20th and 19th centuries. For History, current emphasis is on the 20th century (for Russia, Eastern Europe, the Baltics, Central Asia) and 19th century (for Russia, the Baltics, Central Asia); eighteenth-century and pre-Petrine Russia, while now less central to UW research than in the past, continues to draw some graduate student and faculty attention. For other disciplines where faculty in the interdisciplinary Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies (REECAS) program are active (e.g., Anthropology, Art History, Built Environments, Drama, Economics, Geography, Linguistics, Political Science, Sociology, Women Studies), the chronological focus is primarily contemporary or modern, with some medieval specializations (Art History).
About half of all material acquired pertains to or comes from the Russian Federation. The other half pertains to or is acquired from (in roughly descending order): Poland, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Belarus, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Hungary, the Republic of Georgia, and Mongolia. In collaboration with the Near East Section, material is also acquired from and about the countries of former Soviet Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Within Russia, besides the central provenances of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, an effort is made to acquire material from and about certain non-Russian ethnic or otherwise peripheral regions, e.g. Tatarstan, the Lake Baikal Region, the Russian Far East.
Materials are acquired first and foremost in the vernacular languages of geographic coverage, and in English. For materials pertaining to most disciplines - anthropology, art history, built environments, communications, economics, geography, history, political science/current affairs, sociology, women studies, and others - the Slavic librarian is responsible for acquiring vernacular materials or materials of Slavic area provenance, while materials of North American, British or West European provenance are acquired primarily by the respective selectors for those disciplines. However, the Slavic librarian has full selection and fiscal responsibility for materials published in any language, whether vernacular, English, or others - typically German, French or Italian - pertaining to Slavic, Baltic or other East European languages, linguistics, literature or folklore.
Books, periodicals, media (primarily DVDs and audio recordings), online databases, microforms (for some antiquarian material and archival collections), maps, music scores, sheet music; and some manuscripts and realia.
Not acquired: vernacular material in Albanian, Moldovan, most of the languages of Russia's non-Slavic ethnic minorities (except for Tatar and Buriat, which are acquired). Most Mongolian and Armenian (except for basic reference material).