![]() ![]() (Since the principal interest of readers of this magazine is in Russian material, I will confine myself in what follows to our Russian plans, merely remarking in passing that related plans are under development in other Slavic fields.) YUDIN COLLECTION and the United States, of librarians and scholars able to interpret the two countries to each other. with expert assistance and promote the exchange, between the U.S.S.R. ![]() This purpose the Library of Congress intends to achieve through the establishment of a Slavic Center which will provide American students of the U.S.S.R. It is necessary also to supply learned counsel and advice to their users. What is essential now, is to make Russian materials as available as possible to the broadest possible public.īut it is not enough merely to treat Russian books like books and to make them as readily available as other library materials. Books systematically shelved under a system of classification, and controlled by a central catalog, are more readily available to a larger public than books shelved in special collections. That apprehension is based in large part upon a misconception as to the uses of systematic classification in a large library. The apprehension of scholars who have been accustomed to the use of Russian materials in separate collections can also, the Library believes, be met. With the sympathetic assistance of a Congress and an Appropriations Committee which understood the importance, even in time of war, of making Russian materials more readily available, the Library of Congress has now materially increased its staff of Slavic catalogers and has developed a program for the preliminary cataloging of Russian books which will, it is hoped, make broad control of the collection relatively easy. The difficulty of alphabet can, however, be overcome. For another, specialized scholars who have become accustomed to working with Russian materials in separated and isolated collections, regard a different shelving with apprehension, fearing that Russian books will be less available in general collections than they were when shelved alone. For one thing, the Cyrillic alphabet presents problems for the general staff of any library. The incorporation of the Russian collections into the general collections of a library is not without its difficulties. They will be services, that is to say, intended to bring Russian and American readers together rather than to keep American and Russian books apart. From this time on, the Library's special services in the Russian field will be special services not in terms of the treatment of books but in terms of the relations of men. In the Library of Congress they are in process of incorporation into the Library's general collections, with control through the Library's central catalog. ![]() ![]() Now that the people of Russia have become a part, and an immediate and present part, of the common world of all peoples, Russian books are being treated not as Russian books but as books. During the years when the Americans thought of the Russians as a remote and different people, Russian books were treated as special collections to be held separately from general library collections and cataloged accordingly. The changing treatment of Russian books in American libraries has followed the changing pattern of the interest of the American people in the people of Russia. Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States.) (Originally published in the American Review on the Soviet Union, November 1944. Home > About Division > Slavic Center (1944)Ī Slavic Center for the Library of Congress Archibald MacLeish, A Slavic Center for the Library of Congress (1944) (European Reading Room, Library of Congress) The ![]()
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