Submitted by
Paul L. Horecky, Chief
July 21, 1976

I. ACQUISITION OF MATERIALS

Statistics are a good indicator of the role that acquisitions play in the Division's activities: in the present FY, the Division's specialist staff examined 66,899 national bibliographies, dealer's lists, and other acquisitions guides; made 38,200 recommendations and spent 3,542 working hours in their effort to develop the collections. The countries of our area produce about one-third of the world's printed matter, including materials of great relevance to the sociocultural economic and political development of the countries involved. During the reporting year, the Library received approximately 22,000 Slavic and 18,000 German monographs, as well as a copious flow of publications in other languages from or focusing on that part of the world. Close surveillance of publication trends is also an integral part of the Division' operations. There has been a steady increase in serial publication in the countries of our area over the past decade, with a net increase in the past three years of more than 300 titles per year. A further indicator of the involvement of the recommending officers is the time spent in collection development: the specialists for central Europe and for Russia and the Soviet Union spend 40 to 50 percent of their time on this activity, and the other specialists spend time proportional to the book production of their countries. The Division gives constant attention to recommendations of current materials. For countries with which the Library has NPAC agreements, receipts must be monitored to avoid omissions. In the case of Albania, Cyprus, Greece and Hungary, which remain outside such automatic arrangements by item-selection is necessary despite limited blanket order arrangements.

During FY 1976, the Assistant to the Chief, in cooperation with other members of the Library's staff, devoted much time and effort to the acquisition of current Albanian publications — which, in the absence of official relations with the United States, present special problems — and established a new source through which the Library has already received considerable material. In preparation for the forthcoming NPAC arrangement with Hungary, the Finno-Ugrian Specialist reviewed the draft agreement and made a number of detailed suggestions for modification or expansion. The Soviet Area Specialist provided a statistical summary and analysis of publication practices in the Transcaucasian and Central Asian areas of the USSR to help improve acquisition of Russian-language items from those areas. He also advised the Processing Department on the relative effectiveness of Soviet pre- and post-publication recommending guides as a step toward reducing delays and improving receipts of Soviet provincial publications issued in small editions. All recommending officers participated in the semiannual review of periodical subscriptions to avoid duplication, eliminate unwanted titles, and add important new ones.

The acquisitions and survey trips made by several staff to the countries of our area have opened new and more effective channels for both current and retrospective materials. In Czechoslovakia the Division Chief held talks with representatives of leading libraries and book trade agencies, and developed procurement sources which had hitherto been untapped. When visiting Budapest, the Finno-Ugrian Specialist found unique resources relating to Hungarians in the United States and made arrangements to acquire photocopies of the most interesting materials.

Conversely, productive relations are often fostered when representatives of foreign libraries and scholarly institutions come to see us. A case in point was the visit of the Director of the Library of the Catholic University in Lublin, Poland, an institution which issues religious, historical, and philosophical works that are not available through officially sponsored exchange and distribution programs. On this occasion our talks paved the way for the Library's acquisition of important materials. Through discussions with Mrs. Iordana Parvanova, Deputy Director of the Bulgarian National Library, our staff learned much about the scope of Bulgarian publication programs and possibilities of strengthening exchange relations. Similarly, the participation of Division representatives in a meeting between Library staff members and the Deputy Director of the Zentralantiquariat of the German Democratic Republic has helped the Library make more effective selections from that agency's reprint program and from its valuable stock of retrospective publications. Further, a discussion between a Division staff member and the Deputy Director of Mezhdunarodnaia kniga, the agency which controls the export of printed matter from the Soviet Union, proved mutually beneficial and promises to enhance future operations.

The procurement of retrospective publications also demands close attention, since scarcity of needed material, prohibitive prices, and, shrinking funds for such purchases have rendered this task increasingly difficult. However, the recent proliferation of microforms and reprints has opened new avenues in this respect and has led us to place heavy emphasis on such materials in our procurement program. A notable acquisition of this nature was the vast body of microfiche of the British Foreign Office records of diplomatic relations with Russia in 1914–1941. Combined with other materials in the Library and the National Archives they form one of the world's richest resources on Russia and the Soviet Union. Another significant addition was a microfilm of the St. Petersburg newspaper Sievernaia pchela [The Northern Bee] for 1825–1864. For much of this period it was the only private publication in the Russian Empire that was allowed to print political news. Also, the Library's collection of guides to Soviet archival institutions was augmented by microfiche copies of handbooks describing many Soviet document collections.

Activities of the extent and complexity described above made exacting demands on the Division's specialists, but yielded a rich dividend in terms of the reference and bibliographic services that could be provided on the basis of collections thus obtained.

II. ORGANIZATION OF MATERIALS

Several changes were made in the equipment and layout of the Slavic Room to improve both the appearance of the room and service to the readers. An exhibit case was installed in the reading area. The metal utility shelving which housed the current serials was replaced by wooden shelving designed to display periodicals; a modern card file replaced the old one; a reading table was added to the main reading area and matching chairs were placed at all the reading tables. A work area in the back of the room was converted to a study for visiting scholars, particularly those who plan to work in the Slavic Room for several days or more.

The space problem on Deck 18 is a continuing one, in that the total space allotted the Division remains constant while several hundred new serial titles are received each year. This year the problem was alleviated by rearranging shelving in the non-Soviet section so that 600 shelves could be added. The two bays thus gained were urgently needed to accommodate newspapers. A cage door was fitted to one of the bays to safeguard loose-leaf materials in the Division's custody and, eventually, to protect the mobile deck equipment at night, when the deck attendants are not on duty. This bay is being adapted for this purpose. A systematic program for processing odd issues of periodicals and irregular titles on Deck 18 was initiated in this fiscal year and continues. Overtime was used to speed the process and the work is about two-thirds completed.

The Slavic Room's card-file supplement to the Cyrillic Union Catalog, comprising printed LC cards of pre–1956 Cyrillic imprints cataloged after 1956, has grown to approximately 18,000 cards and has become a reference source frequently consulted by both the LC staff and visitors. Other reference files in the Division were updated and expanded. Some 8,600 cards were added to the East European area files, which consists only of Western-language periodical entries on the social, cultural, political, and economic life of Eastern Europe. Approximately 700 cards were added to the Slavic Room shelf list. The pamphlet file, the file of clippings from the New York Times, and the file of "samizdat" materials (i.e., literature circulated in the Soviet Union without official sanction) were augmented.

The recommending officers established priorities on incoming materials to ensure that the most important publications became available to readers as soon as possible; they also screened duplicates for additions to the Slavic Room collections.

The Soviet area specialist continued to assign priorities to materials in the custodial Russian Cyrillic-4 collection for cataloging by the Shared Cataloging Division.

The active interest in the demand for current Slavic and East European materials is reflected in the 3,366 loans made by this Division to other units of the Library and to outside agencies.

III. USE OF MATERIALS

a. Reference

"Omnium rerum principia parva sunt" [The beginnings of all things are small], as Cicero said. Twenty-five years ago, when the Slavic Division was established, this was indeed the case. There was a part-time chief, a research analyst, and a secretary. The Division had no specialist staff, no area catalogs, no reference files, and no reference collections. Today the Slavic and Central European Division has a staff of twenty, including area specialists, reference librarians, and supportive staff. It has a reading room with a reference collection of approximately 10,000 volumes relating to fifteen countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It receives almost 7,000 current Slavic and Baltic periodicals and some 400 newspapers. In addition, the Division maintains several area card files, compiles the annual American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies, and can point to an impressive list of publications by its staff members.

At the turn of the century, Herbert Putnam, then Librarian of Congress, reported that the Library's collections included about 570 books in Russian, aside from some materials in the Smithsonian Deposit, and less than 100 in Polish. Today there are nearly 3,000,000 books — 800,000 in Russian, 90,000 in Polish, some 400,000 in other languages of Eastern Europe, and approximately 1,750,000 in German, as well as many works in English and other West European languages which deal with the region. The Library's collections on Central and East European countries are unequaled outside the area itself. Indeed, calls for service come from the far corners of the earth and from a domestic clientele with a wide variety of backgrounds and interests.

Many inquiries were received this year on the American Revolution and American ethnic groups. These inquiries originated principally in this country, but also abroad in connection with the impressive research and publication programs in these fields undertaken in Eastern Europe. Questions centered around East Europeans who participated in the Revolution, the reaction among their compatriots at home, and the subsequent development of American studies in these lands. For example, inquiries were received concerning Colonel Michael de Kováts, a Hungarian who distinguished himself in the Battle of Charleston, the attitudes of America's founding fathers toward Poland, Jefferson's observations on German wines, and Serbs who fought in the Revolution. However, the interest in America was not confined to the Revolution. German historians sought materials on U.S.-German diplomatic relations during the Weimar period, a visitor from Vaduz, Liechtenstein, was aided in finding data on migration from his country to the United States, and the deputy director of a major Swiss bank was supplied material on the freedom of the press in America.

The Division's clients included the Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, who visited the Division and expressed a particular interest in Soviet materials of the 1920's and 1930's which are in our custody but which were inaccessible to him in the Soviet Union. The distinguished Yugoslav scholar and librarian, Dr. Slobodan Jovanović, inquired about American studies on and translations of Yugoslav literary works. The Greek Embassy was supplied references to the visit of the King of Greece to the United States in 1942, and the publishers of the International Encyclopedia of Higher Education received a detailed listing of institutions of the United States and Europe that specialize in Soviet and East European affairs.

A major portion of the Division's inquiries dealt with Russia and the Soviet Union. Clients sought information on subjects ranging from the hallmarks on Russian gold and silverware, to the coal mining industry in pre-1917 Russia, the Soviet plan for insurance coverage of nuclear power plants, and the interpretation of terminology used by Soviet armed forces. Some inquiries had a lighter touch. For instance, we were asked to identify fragments of a mysterious text pasted in an eighteenth century bassoon only to find that it was part of a guide to the Austrian postal system of the era. Another client asked for material on Lithuanian folklore about the devil.

Requests from Congress and government agencies played a substantial role in our reference work. For example, we answered numerous subject and bibliographic inquiries for the Congressional Research Service and routinely prepared scores of translations from or into languages not covered by its staff, and we directed a Congressional subcommittee to the records of the Czech press reports of the trial of Rudolf Slanský, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, who was executed in 1953. A partial listing of government agencies served by the Division includes the Army Material Command, the FAA Civil Aeromedical Institute, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the National Aeronautics and Space Agency, the National Archives, the National Security Council, the U.S. Bureau of Mines, the U.S. Air Force Academy, the U.S. Army Foreign Science and Technology Center, the U.S. Bureau of Standards, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of State, the U.S. Information Agency, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Office for Environmental Control, and the Voice for America.

There was frequent collaboration between the Division and the nongovernmental bodies as well. For instance, we were frequently in communication with the newly established Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, which is part of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution. Indeed, before the formal established of this Institute, the Chief and Soviet Specialist briefed Ambassador Kennan and others on the Library's resources and acquisitions programs. Subsequently, staff members of the Institute were familiarized with the Library's holdings, services, and reference tools most pertinent to the Institute's interests.

The Division also assisted other units of the Library. Contact was frequent with the Federal Research Division in reference and bibliographic matters. The Preservation Microfilming Office was given extensive information about the unique collection of 19th century Russian provincial gazettes in the Division's custody as background for microfilming these gazettes and thus making them available to other libraries. The Photoduplication Service was assisted in describing materials offered for sale in photocopy. Bibliographic references on Soviet and East European publications were given to the Latin American, Portuguese, and Spanish Division for inclusion in the Handbook of Latin-American Studies, and information was supplied the Geography and Map Division on forthcoming Polish cartographic materials. Division staff members translated a letter from one famous Russian composer to another for the Music Division and letters from East European correspondents of various other divisions of the library.

We cooperated fully with the Librarian's Task Force on Goals, Organization, and Planning, particularly in the User's Services and Area Studies subcommittees. Among other things we prepared a thirty-six page report on the Division's role in area studies programs and activities. Division staff members met with and supplied information to members of the Task Force subcommittees on bibliographic access and on the bibliographic role of the Library.

b. Exhibits

Through a program of exhibits, the Division emphasized the cultural bonds between the peoples of Eastern Europe and the United States, showing their impact on the history of the United States as well as the American influence in their homelands. Two major exhibits were prepared. One commemorated the 150th anniversary of the Hungarian Academy of Science, the other illustrated the role of Czechs and Slovaks in the United States and was prepared in connection with the Congress of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences in America to be held in Washington this summer.

These twelve months have brought a number of expressions of appreciation for services rendered. A letter from the University of Auckland in New Zealand stated, "The documents arrived safely and we are most grateful to you and your staff for carrying out this exercise with such meticulous attention to detail." A publishing company in Illinois wrote, "I cannot begin to thank you enough for this invaluable material. I hope it will be sufficient to say that the amount of time and effort that obviously went into the response is greatly appreciated." An academic administrator of Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, commented, "Yours is the fastest response from a Federal organization that I have ever received, but of course, the Library of Congress is no ordinary organization." The Foreign Service Institute of the State Department spoke of a 'job well done' concerning the participation of staff members in briefing Department personnel on Poland and Yugoslavia. And, finally, another letter stated, "As a scholar and a taxpayer I certainly appreciate such efficient assistance and your staff deserves commendation." It is also gratifying to note that the responses to the Division's reference activities have been very appreciative of the efficiency and promptness of our services.

c. Bibliography

The 1974 volume of the American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies was completed in this fiscal year. It comprises more than 5,300 main entries and over 2,000 reviews of 1974 books or an increase of about 600 entries over the 1973 volume, which was prepared in the Division, and an increase of about 2,700 entries over the most extensive of the annual bibliographies prepared by previous compilers. This significant increase in coverage, together with the accelerated completion of the annual volumes in contrast to their irregular appearance in previous years, has established the bibliography as a major reference resource, and the Library of Congress as the national bibliographic center in the field. As one review put it, "It was a wise decision to transfer this comprehensive project to LC. . . " Automated coverage of the indexes to the bibliography was initiated this year and we anticipate a resultant saving of about one-man week of time in preparing each annual index. A similar time saving in catalog searching is expected when the Division receives its computer terminal. Meanwhile, the 1975 volume of the bibliography is well under way and the 1976 volume has been started.

The American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies, although it is the most prominent bibliographic activity of the Division, is by no means the only one. Three other major bibliographies are being prepared and are scheduled for completion in the first quarter of 1977. Drafts of the fourth edition of the USSR and Eastern European Periodicals in Western Languages, the second edition of The Federal Republic of Germany: A Selected Bibliography of English-Language Publications and Finland: A Selective Reference Bibliography are nearing completion. We are also at work on a manual describing the Library's services, facilities, and collections in our field.

The Division cooperates actively with outside bibliographic enterprises as well, for example, our area specialists prepared bibliographic data for the Foreign Acquisitions Newsletter of the Association of Research Libraries. The Assistant to the Chief aided the Slavic Librarian of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, in establishing the best system of contact between the new Slavic bibliographic search unit at the University of Illinois and the pertinent units of the Library of Congress.

The Greek Area Specialist compiled an inventory of Greek incunabula in American libraries together with several indexes and commentaries on a number of the incunabula.

The subject matter of ad hoc bibliographies prepared in the Division varied widely. Some examples of topics are Russian-language sources on Abyssinia, recent journal articles on West German terrorism, Soviet statistical publications, literature related to the Baranya Soviet Republic of 1919, and recent literature on German diplomats under Hitler.

IV. ADMINISTRATION AND PERSONNEL

Dr. Yaroslav Shaviak, Senior Processing and Reference Assistant retired on September 30 after nearly 16 years of service in the Library, all in the Slavic and Central European Division. Mr. Richard Becker joined the Division staff on December 1 as Processing Assistant. Mr. Albert E. Graham and Ms. Ruzica Popovitch, Senior Reference Librarians, were promoted from GS-11 to GS-12. The continuity of service, which characterizes the Division's staff, was exemplified by this year's federal service pin awards. Dr. Arnold H. Price was awarded his 35 year federal service pin by the Department Director and Dr. John P. Balys was presented his 20 year service pin by the Chief of the Division.

Several Division staff and members held offices in employee organizations. Mr. Albert E. Graham was the Division representative and Mrs. Janie M. Ricks alternate representative to the Reference Department's Human Relations Committee until that committee was terminated in 1975. Mr. George E. Perry is President of the Ethnic Employees of the Library of Congress and was General Counsel of the Black Employees of the Library of Congress.

Division staff members continued to take an active part in the Library's training programs, both as recipients of training and as speakers at training sessions. The Chief attended the Library of Congress Labor Relations course "Living with the Union" and the Assistant to the Chief attended the Collective Bargaining Negotiations course; both courses were offered by the Civil Service Commission. The Division's Soviet area specialist described the Division's mission and activities to several groups of new employees in the Library's Professional Orientation Series and the Assistant to the Chief gave a similar briefing to the Library's interns.

Two of this year's interns spent a portion of their training in the Division, performing a valuable service to the Division as well as gaining unique experience. Mr. David Schumacher indexed the Russian Provincial Gazette collection in the Division's custody and Mr. Richard Korman assisted Dr. Price in preparing the external affairs section of the second edition of The Federal Republic of Germany. Mr. James D. A. Brown, III, a senior at the Episcopal High School of Arlington, Virginia, worked in the Division for several weeks on The American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies on a voluntary basis, as part of his school's study program.

V. EXTERNAL RELATIONS

Participation in the work of professional organizations, special assignments undertaken for other government agencies, and a flow of visiting scholars from this country and abroad provided a platform for mutually beneficial exchange of views and information.

A very close tie was maintained between the Division and the organizations sponsoring two of its bibliographical projects: the Assistant to the Chief continued to serve on the Bibliography and Documentation Committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, and the Central European Area Specialist retained his association with the Conference Group on German Politics.

Attendance at international and national meetings of professional organizations establishes contacts useful to the Library. Mr. Kraus represented the Library in September at the Urbana (Illinois) Slavic Librarians' Conference, and he, Drs. Hoskins and Allen, and Misses Navon and Popovitch attended the Atlanta meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in 1975. Dr. Hoskins attended the International Congress of Historical Sciences in San Francisco, Mr. Graham participated in the Air University Conference on the Role of the Military in Communist Societies, held in Huntsville, Alabama, and Dr. Balys attended the Conference on Baltic Studies in New York City.

Staff members were also called upon to perform specialized tasks for other government agencies. Mr. Graham was included in a fact-finding group on the U.S. Senate charged with an on-the-spot investigation of the Soviet presence in Somalia. The Czechoslovak, Finno-Ugrian, and Polish Specialists were interviewed by the Voice of American on cultural developments and commemorative events for broadcasts to the respective countries. The Polish and Yugoslav specialists lectured at the State's Department's Foreign Service Institute on Polish history and Yugoslav literature.

Close cultural relations with foreign governments were fostered by liaison with officers of East and Central European embassies in Washington. For example, cultural attaches of Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, Germany (West and East), Greece, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia were briefed on the facilities and services of the Division and the Library and were aided in solving reference and bibliographical problems.

The Division was also host to numerous distinguished visitors who were briefed on the Division's and Library's collections and activities. To select a few from this extensive roster we may mention Dr. Mieczysław Karaś, President of Kraków University in Poland, the well-known Romanian playwright Vasile Rebreanu, the Yugoslav writer Vesna Krmpotić, and Dr. Hans Raupach, President of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

Sometimes visitors appeared in droves, straining the Division's limited facilities. For example, we met with some 70 tourists from Poland, as well as a group of undergraduates majoring in German from the University of Delaware, and contingents of West German archivists and military historians. Other groups were more manageable, such as a study group of directors of Soviet university libraries, a research team from the Kennan Institute of Advanced Russian Studies, a delegation of Romanian scholars specializing in American studies, and a group of Soviet historians.

VI. PROFESSIONAL BUT UNOFFICIAL ACTIVITIES

The staff also engages in professional activities outside its official duties.

Dr. Robert V. Allen continued to act as editor of lists of articles on Russian history for Recently Published Articles, a separate publication of the American Historical Review.

Dr. Elemer Bako participated in the American Bicentennial by organizing panels for the Society of Federal Linguists, by delivering a lecture to the Fourth International Finno-Ugrian Congress, held at Budapest in 1975, by contributing an essay on Louis Kossuth to the National Gallery's Abroad in America: Visitors to the New Nation 1776–1914, and by serving as the featured speaker at the Charleston, S. C., 1976 session honoring the Revolutionary war hero Michael de Kováts.

Dr. John P. Balys presented a paper on "The American-Lithuanian Press" to the Conference on Baltic Studies in New York City in May of 1976 and began service on the Committee on Baltic Bibliography. He also contributed articles on Lithuanian publications to the Journal of Baltic Studies (Winter 1975) and to Lituanus (Spring 1976).

Mr. Albert E. Graham contributed several articles on Soviet military and political leaders to recent volumes of the Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History (International Press, Gulf Breeze, Florida).

Dr. Paul L. Horecky continued to serve as project director and chief editor of East Central and Southeast Europe: A Handbook of Library and Archival Resources in North America, a project sponsored by the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, to be published shortly by the Clio Press (Santa Barbara, California). He was named to the Board of Consultants of Historical Abstracts. Dr. Allen and he served as expert consultants to the Pahlavi National Library in Teheran, preparing a detailed report on the formation of a Russian-USSR collection to be developed in the projected new Iranian National Library.

Dr. Janina W. Hoskins evaluated the Polish entries in the American Historical Association's Bicentennial competition and wrote an article entitled "Jefferson Views Poland" for the January, 1976 issue of the Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress.

Mr. George E. Perry published a report on Greek participation in the U.S. Bicentennial in the May, 1976, issue of the Greek Review of Social Research.

Ms. Ruzica Popovitch presented a paper, "The Serbian Psalter of 1638 in the Library of Congress," in October at the Seventh National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in Atlanta. She continues to work toward her MLS at Catholic University.

Dr. Arnold H. Price served as commentator at the 1975 Georgetown University Forum on German history, organized a meeting of the Group on Quantification in German Studies, as part of the annual Convention of the American Historical Association, held in Atlanta in 1975, and continues to edit the lists of articles on Central European history for "Recently Published Articles" of the American Historical Review.