Access to East European and Eurasian Culture: Publishing, Acquisitions, Digitization, Metadata

Citation

Lee Eden, B. (2009), "Access to East European and Eurasian Culture: Publishing, Acquisitions, Digitization, Metadata", Collection Building, Vol. 28 No. 3, pp. 131-131. https://doi.org/10.1108/01604950910971189

The essays presented in this volume all center around the challenges of publishing, acquiring, digitizing and describing resources related to Eurasian and East European cultures. Most of the chapters were presented at the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign in June 2006; others at a 2006 Slavic Librarians Workshop and various associated forums. The chapters are divided into four sections:

1. 1.

   two chapters on publishing;

2. 2.

   three chapters on acquisitions;

3. 3.

   five chapters on digitization; and

4. 4.

   two chapters on metadata.

In the publishing section the two papers discuss how scholarly output from Russia has doubled over the past ten years, and how librarians and scholars can navigate commercial publishers in that country. Slovak periodical publishing comprises the content of the second chapter, and provides a history from the second half of the 20th century up to the present. In the acquisitions section three distinct areas are covered: Central Asia, Greece, and the Ukraine. Each of these discusses the challenges and opportunities available for acquiring cultural and unique materials from these countries. The digitization section focuses on various aspects of the digital environment related to Slavic critical editions, Russian history, the development of Russian web archives, digitized images of Russian architectural monuments, and Czech and Slovak poster digitization. Finally, in the metadata section the use of MARC21 in Bulgarian libraries and the importance of librarians in promoting digital scholarship through collaboration and metadata are described.

This is a very interesting collection of essays, focused on a relatively little‐known subject area within librarianship.