Submitted by
David H. Kraus, Acting Chief
October 19, 1979

I. ACQUISITION OF MATERIALS

The nineteen countries of Central and Eastern Europe for which the Division has functional responsibility produce about one-third of the world's books, play a major role in the economic, political, and cultural life of the world, and are the ancestral home of several significant groups in the U.S. population. The Division's role in developing the collections for these countries is a complex one, but much of our task is eased by the availability of national bibliographies, a well organized book trade in most of these countries, and blanket-order agreements for procurement of current publications. However, such arrangements vary with time and we must carefully monitor receipts; for example, major adjustments had to be made this year for the U.S.S.R., Poland, and Yugoslavia.

Our review of the Library's collections in connection with reference searches, the preparation of exhibits, or assistance to users often reveals gaps that lead us to search for libraries that hold the missing items. In some cases the search results in proposals for cooperative filming of a title held incompletely by several libraries. Such was the case with the Czech journal Naše Revoluce. At times we ask the Exchange and Gift Division to procure the film from an exchange partner abroad, as the newspaper, Sankt Peterburger Zeitung, held by a German library. Sometimes a commercial microform dealer is the best source, as was the case with archives of the British Foreign Office pertaining to Russia and the Soviet Union. Reprint programs by several publishers have afforded us the opportunity to replace deteriorating volumes of older "classics" in the Slavic and East European field at relatively low cost.

Our acquisitions activities are reflected by the Library's printed cards. In FY 1979 the Library produced approximately 39,500 cards for publications in the languages of the countries within our area of recommending responsibility. They may be grouped as follows: Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian 8,850; German 17,290; Other languages 13,360. There was a considerable decrease in receipts of Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian books compared with last year, but we hope that this will be remedied by the new acquisitions arrangement for the U.S.S.R. Recommendations in the West European languages will begin as appropriate area specialists are added to the staff.

From time to time staff members visit other institutions, at home or abroad, to improve our receipts from those institutions. The benefits frequently span several fiscal years. The German specialist received information subsequent to his last-year's visit to Germany that led to a far-reaching revision of his approach to recommending German literature, particularly in economics. The Polish specialist visited the Polish National Library and the Jagiellonian University Library to discuss acquisition of Polish materials, and through subsequent correspondence receipts from these sources have been broadened.

Personal contacts between staff members and outside sources also lead to the acquisition of valuable materials. The Czechoslovak specialist examined a Czech literature collection in nearby Delaware, determined that it contained many rare titles not held by the Library, and was able to procure them for the Library. He also procured, as a gift, letters of the Czech poet J.S. Machar held by a private party in New York, and secured an agreement with the film director Miloš Forman (who is of Czech origin) to give his papers to the Library. The Acting Chief's visit to a retired diplomat brought to the Library a group of newspapers, books, photographs, pamphlets, and observational notes pertaining to Yugoslavia in the 1940's. Visitors to the Division also proved to be acquisition sources. The Rector of the Catholic University in Lublin, Poland, agreed to send materials pertaining to the Catholic church in Poland, and a dealer from London made on-the-spot arrangements to speed the delivery of retrospective Czechoslovak publications. Authors or artists visiting the Division have made recordings for the Library's Archive of World Literature on Tape, for example, the Russian dissident poet Iosif Brodsky, the Czech poet Ivan Diviš, a group of four Bulgarian poets, and the Hungarian actress Adrienne Jancsó, who read a program of prose and poetry prepared for her American tour.

Some other acquisitions of note were the Edward E. Goldstein collection of publications of the Czechoslovak exile government in London during World War II, microfilm of a substantial body of Polish books and serials on the peasant political movement in Poland in the interwar years, Ukrainian émigré publications, and, from the Soviet Union, photographs of the visit of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford to the U.S.S.R. in 1926.

A large part of the Division's acquisition activities involve cooperation with other units of the Library, in particular the Collections Development Office, the Overseas Operations Division, the Exchange and Gift Division, and the Order Division. This year the Division worked closely with the Collections Development Office in its review of collection policies pertaining to area studies. In collaboration with the Collections Development Office, the Exchange and Gift Division, and the Order Division we were able to reduce serial subscriptions substantially.

In cooperation with the Overseas Operations Division we determined means of improving receipts. Cooperation extended to alerting other divisions to the existence of East European publications of possible interest to them. This applies in particular to the other area divisions and to the Music and Geography and Map divisions.

A means of judging the success of all these efforts is the degree of satisfaction of researchers using the collections and the success of the staff in finding the answers to reference inquiries. In both cases the record has been good. To quote the Washington family motto, "Exitus acta probat" [The result of the act is the test].

II. ORGANIZATION OF MATERIALS

The partially cataloged Cyrillic materials - monograph, serial, and pamphlet - housed in the Northwest Attic of the Library of Congress Building and serviced by the European Reading Room, have been the object of special attention this year. These materials, which are cataloging arrearages in the Division's custody, comprise approximately 40,000 items with imprints from about 1880 to 1940 and are mainly in Russian. The periodic "finds" among these holdings that appear to be unique in America and perhaps the West, and a sampling of several dozen of the periodical titles in the greatest demand led the Acting Chief to recommend that a survey of at least a portion of this collection be made on contract. Examples of these finds are the Siberian provincial gazettes (which are not only rare in the West but are not available to Western scholars studying in the Soviet Union) and the official bulletin of the Imperial Russian office charged with censoring foreign books. Both have proved to be central to doctoral dissertations written in the United States and Canada. A sampling of periodical titles showed that the holdings of pre-revolutionary Russian government periodicals in the Attic bore little resemblance to those shown in the Library's serial records. This led us to recommend that the survey be devoted to the pre-revolutionary government periodicals, which constitute about 1,200 titles.

The European Reading Room remains a center of traffic of the Division and a focus for both the neophyte and the seasoned researcher. To keep a proper balance of materials so that all types of users could be served most efficiently, the entire collection was shelf-read and renovated by the reference librarians and area specialists in keeping with principles outlined by the Acting Assistant Chief, as head of the reading room. In this same effort the set of current serials displayed in the reading room was thoroughly revised to achieve balance and to meet changing needs.

he "European Reading Room" sign at the room's entrance and the Division's new name drew an increasing number of readers interested in West European affairs and reference sources. We have kept track of the number and type of such inquiries for planning the make-up of the collections of the European Reading Room when it moves to its new location.

The Division's various reader aids were updated and enlarged. In the European Reading Room about 180 cards were added to the catalogs of holdings and some 1,000 cards to the Cyrillic Union Catalog supplement. The Russian "samizdat" collection, which is in the Division's custody and available through the European Reading Room, was augmented by Czechoslovak and Ukrainian materials. Additions were made to the brochure collection and East European Area File, both of which are housed in the Thomas Jefferson Building. The area file is a source frequently consulted by staff and readers. It comprises about 750,000 cards arranged by country and within country chronologically by subject, citing works primarily in Western languages on the social sciences and humanities as they pertain to Eastern Europe. The Division's American Bibliography project supplied a large part of the 8,200 cards that were added to the file this year.

As a service to the public reference units of the Library, the Acting Assistant Chief prepared a history of a finding aid to the Library's "Slavic unclassified" materials, portions of which are in the Division's custody.

The Division continues to provide service to other units of the Library and to outside clients from the materials in its custody. During the present fiscal year, 39,209 items were delivered to users in the European Reading Room or elsewhere in the Library, predominantly issues of newspapers and current serials. Within the Library, the Federal Research Division was the leading "customer," and the Photoduplication Service and the Loan and Science and Technology divisions were also frequent users. Six hundred and sixty items were loaned to outside agencies.

III. USE OF MATERIALS

A. Reference

Anniversaries and special events figured prominently in the Division's reference works. The election of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła as Pope elicited many inquiries about Poland. The Hungarian national holiday, St. Stephen's Day, was the object of much reader interest, and the fortieth anniversary of World War II heightened the demand for information about the German occupation of East European countries, concentration camps, the underground movement, and the role of churches in the war.

The Division served Congress in several ways, including the preparation of translations into and from English in languages not covered by the translation unit of the Congressional Research Service. A Soviet military historian was identified and information on Romanian mental hospitals was supplied to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Biographies of prominent Hungarians in American history were prepared for a senator, a history of Hungarian immigration in the United States was provided [to] a congressman, and information on Michael Kováts, a hero of the American Revolution, was supplied to several congressmen for reading into the Congressional Record on the two-hundredth anniversary of Kovaás' death in the Battle of Charleston.

The Division assisted many government agencies, including the Department of State, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the Smithsonian Institution, the Hirschhorn Museum, and the Voice of America on topics ranging from uniforms and insignia of the armies of independent Latvia and Lithuania, to translations of Goethe's Faust, and resources for area studies.

The lion's share of reference requests, however, came from the academic community, and varied from identification of items needed for research to extensive assistance to visiting scholars. A few examples of subjects of interest were medieval and renaissance music collections in Poland, Soviet policy in Yemen, Yugoslav politics and political publications in the 1920s, Bulgarian institutions and youth organizations through World War II, King Zog and Albanian politics between the wars, the wit and humor of Berliners, Lithuanian folk instruments, early Ukrainian imprints, Czechoslovak publications on the Orthodox Church, and Soviet interpretation of U.S. history. A sampling of the academic institutions served shows Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, the Universities of Delaware, Minnesota, California at Santa Barbara, Northern Iowa, and Illinois, and, locally, American, Georgetown, and George Washington universities, to name a very few.

The Division also maintains contacts with foreign educational institutions and researchers. Information on Thomas Masaryk's first-draft manuscript of the Czechoslovak declaration of independence was supplied to Masaryk's former secretary, now living in Malta, a scholar in Australia was sent a guide to sources on Soviet railroads, the Hochschule der Bundeswehr in Germany was provided a bibliography on Soviet news agencies, a prominent Yugoslav historian received a list of works on Catherine II's Turkish policy, and details of Madame Curie's visit to the United States in 1929 were supplied to a Polish documentary film maker.

The general public – private organizations and individuals – also expressed a lively interest in European matters, as evinced by the request of a Chicago publishing firm for information on the Library's holdings of Ukrainian children's books, or an Alaskan research and exploration group seeking information on the wreck of a Russian ship off the Alaskan coast in the early 19th century. By far the greatest area of interest to the individual reader was his family history and coat-of-arms, and the Division's genealogical reference sources were heavily used for this purpose. Requests for information on Western Europe have been steadily increasing. The requests have been mostly on questions of biography, educational institutions, genealogy, heraldry, and geography.

The foreign diplomatic corps in Washington frequently used the Division's services. Generally they sought information on the Library's resources pertaining to their country or to the field of specialization of one of their nationals coming to Washington. Other divisions of the Library were also served. The Acting Assistant Chief participated in Manuscript Division interviews of candidates for a position involving Russian Alaskan materials and the German specialist assisted both the Manuscript Division and the Preservation Office in deciphering documents in 19th-century German script.

One of the many pleasant aspects of serving our readers is the expression of thanks that comes sometimes in person, sometimes in a letter, and sometimes in print. In his recent book Cissy, Ralph Martin thanked the Polish specialist for providing "help above and beyond the call of professional duty. . ." A professor at the University of Tennessee wrote to express his gratitude to the Russian specialist, and a professor from Central Connecticut State College wrote to the German specialist to thank him for his ". . . splendid suggestions. I have acted on your various recommendations."

B. Bibliography and Publications

The Division's bibliographic projects were of four types – ongoing, surveys, biographical, and ad hoc. The ongoing, annual project, The American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies, saw the completion of the 1977 volume, the largest to date with more than 6,000 entries. Works by U.S. and Canadian authors in the social sciences and humanities were cited, together with reviews of books in scope. The addition of a temporary bibliographic and editorial assistant accelerated work on the 1978 and 1979 volumes.Four collection surveys were initiated or completed this year. The Baltic area specialist completed his survey of Lithuanian serials held by the Library of Congress and other libraries in the United States and Canada. This survey was undertaken in cooperation with the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, and has been proposed as an LC publication. A survey of the Library's Ukrainica was completed by Professor Emeritus Jaroslav B. Rudnyckyj with the assistance of Division staff members. Professor Harold M. Leich of the University of Illinois Library has begun a survey of the Library's pre-revolutionary Russian government serials in the Division's custody. The surveys of Professors Rudnyckyj and Leich were undertaken under contractual agreement. Dr. Joan F. Higbee is surveying the French components of the Library's collections to provide the Division with background information for its new West European responsibilities. This survey concentrates on the special format collections with a quantitative assessment of the general collections.

The Czechoslovak specialist prepared a biographical sketch and listing of American editions of the works of Czech author Kareĺ Čarek, in commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of that author's death. It was published as an appendix to the LC Information Bulletin (December 29, 1978). The Polish specialist authored a reading list of English-language works about Casimir Pulaski for publication by the Library on the occasion of the two hundredth anniversary of Pulaski's death during the siege of Savannah in the Revolutionary War.

The Division also cooperates with other divisions of the Library in bibliographic matters, principally the other area divisions, by supplying information in card form, mostly as a byproduct of the screening of materials for the American Bibliography. We assisted the Catalog Search Unit of the Loan Division with difficult East European interlibrary loan requests that required our specialized knowledge to trace or identify.

Examples of cooperation with outside institutions are the Division's periodic contribution of bibliographies and bibliographic news items to the ARL Foreign Acquisitions Newsletter, and assistance to the search unit of the University of Illinois Library in identifying and locating hard-to-find East European printed sources. The Division is also assisting the Chairman of the Bibliography Committee of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, who is preparing a detailed list of the Library's Latvian periodical holdings as part of the Association's commitment to compile a union list of Baltic periodicals in U.S. and Canadian libraries.

The Division worked with the profession to promote the filming of the Library's Slavic Cyrillic Union Catalog, and with the Catalog Publication Division and other units of the Library to prepare the catalog for filming. Filming has begun and the microfiche product, which will be made available to the public, is scheduled for completion in late fall.

The reference work of the Division frequently leads to the preparation of brief, highly-specialized, ad hoc bibliographies. A few examples of such bibliographies are the History of the Main Bavarian Archive, Recent Works on the Crimean War, and Russian Serfdom.

IV. ADMINISTRATION AND PERSONNEL

This fiscal year was marked by stability of personnel. The management of the Division continued under the Acting Chief and Acting Assistant Chief. The Chief's position was posted in the final days of the fiscal year. The only major change was the retirement of the area specialist for Central Europe, Dr. Arnold H. Price, who had been with the Division for nineteen years. His replacement has not yet been selected. The temporary Bibliographic and Editorial Assistant position was extended for two months after its initial expiration date in early September, pending posting for an additional nine months. A work-study student, Alan Hecht, was hired to transport current serials from the Serial Record Division to the European Reading Room and the European Division office, following the discontinuation of this service by another division. Two of the Division's library technician positions were revised to meet changing conditions and submitted to the Classification Office for review.

Dr. Joan F. Higbee, a French language cataloger in the Shared Cataloging Division, is on assignment to the European Division to survey the French resources of the Library.

Mr. Jurij Dobczansky, Bibliographic and Reference Assistant, continued his program of courses toward an MLS at Catholic University under the Library's tuition support program.

The Division was on both the giving and receiving end of briefings or training programs. On the giving end, the Acting Chief briefed the interns and the new Library information officers on the mission and activities of the Division and the Acting Assistant Chief did the same for new staff members of the Library. On the receiving end the Acting Assistant Chief attended a Training Office course on the implementation of the rating panel system for position applicants.

Division staff members participated in broader matters of Library administration by serving on committees. The Acting Chief continues to serve as a member of the Working Group on the Future of the Catalog, the Working Group on Non-Roman Alphabets in MARC, and the Ad Hoc Committee on the Archive of World Literature on Tape, and was recently appointed to the Advisory Group on the Future of LC Retrieval Systems. The Acting Assistant Chief is a member of the Ad Hoc Committee on Acquisitions Policy Development.

V. EXTERNAL RELATIONS

Relations with institutions and individual scholars from the countries within the Division's area of responsibility are an important part of the Division's activities, enabling the staff to keep abreast of developments in those countries and to impart information of interest to those institutions and individuals. These relations involve direct contact with visitors–academicians, scholars, students, writers, researchers–and correspondence. This year most visitors were briefed on the scope of activities of the Division and its role in the Library's activities as a whole, and many were given direct assistance in their search for published or unpublished sources. The majority of the visitors came from Central and Eastern Europe, but the contacts included countries beyond our area, such as Japan, Malta, and the Sudan. The largest group among the visitors were members of academic institutions, followed by members of embassy staffs, representatives of journalism or publishing enterprises, and specialists from libraries, archives, or museums.

Prominent visitors representing foreign governments were Mr. Emil Wojtaszek, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, Professor A. Drobnys and J. Zujus of the Lithuanian SSR, and Mr. M. Georgijević of the Foreign Ministry Archives of Yugoslavia. Among the eminent foreign scholars visiting the Division were Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, Senior Researcher at the Institute of World History, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and the Yugoslav historian Vladimir Dedijer of the Serbian Academy of Sciences.

A selection from the long list of academic institutions represented by foreign visitors will demonstrate the diversity of interests of the Division's foreign contacts–the Institute for the Economy of World Socialist Systems, Moscow; the Institute of the USA and Canada, Moscow; the University of Warsaw; the Institute for the Study of Social Problems of Capitalism, Warsaw; the Jagiellonian University, Kraków; the Cuza University, Iasi, Romania; the Institute of Ethnological Research, Bucharest; the Institute of Folklore, Sofia, Bulgaria; the University of Zagreb, Yugoslavia; the University of Debrecen, Hungary; the Institute of Party History, Budapest; and the Institut für Internationale Beziehungen, East Berlin.

Visitors from the ranks of journalists included representatives of the Yugoslav journals NIN and Delo, the Bulgarian weeklies Puls and Literaturen Front, and the Polish weekly Tygodnik Powszechny. Some of the foreign libraries and museums represented by our visitors were the library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Wilanów Poster Museum in Warsaw, and the Pułaski Museum in Warta, Poland.

Members of embassy staffs in Washington were frequent visitors. They included the Austrian and Polish ambassadors, and the cultural or press attaches of the Bulgarian, Czechoslovak, East German, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Soviet, West German, and Yugoslav embassies. Division staff members were also invited by the embassies or foreign governments to participate in special events. The Acting Chief represented the Library at the ceremonies dedicating the new building of the Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin at the invitation of the Mayor of Berlin and the director of the library.

The Division's professional contacts included other government agencies. Several groups of International Communications Agency librarians, representing ICA libraries throughout Europe, were briefed on the Division's activities. The Yugoslav specialist addressed students at the Department of State's School of Foreign Languages on present-day Yugoslavia. The Czechoslovak specialist participated in a four-day working session of the Ethnic Heritage Program of the U.S. Office of Education, acting as an evaluator of ethnic studies proposals and both the Polish and Hungarian specialists were interviewed by the Voice of America on subjects of their research or experiences for subsequent broadcast abroad.

The specialized knowledge of the Division staff was also utilized by foreign institutions. The Polish specialist was invited to lecture in Poland on the Library of Congress and on the development of Slavic studies in the United States, and the Acting Chief was interviewed by Bulgarian Television on the Library's resources and activities pertaining to Bulgaria.

VI. PROFESSIONAL BUT UNOFFICIAL ACTIVITIES

In addition to their regular assignments, many staff members of the Division engage in unofficial but professional activities. These activities are diversified and consist of both private research and writing and participation in the activities of scholarly organizations. Several staff members carry on these activities on a continuing basis.

Drs. Robert V. Allen and Arnold H. Price are section editors of Recently Published Articles, a publication of the American Historical Association, Dr. Elemer Bako serves as Permanent Representative of the Society of Federal Linguists (SFL) to the Interagency Language Roundtable, Dr. John P. Balys is a member of the Bibliography Committee of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, Mr. George J. Kovtun is a member of the editorial board of the Czech-language periodical Svědectví and contributes book reviews to it, Mr. David H. Kraus is ex officio member of the Bibliography and Documentation Committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) and Chairman of the East European Acquisitions Committee of the Association of Research Libraries, Mr. Basil Nadraga is treasurer of the Ukrainian Library Association of America, and Ms. Ruzica Popovitch is on the editorial board of the Serbian-language journal Njegoš and a regular contributor to it.

In addition to these long-term commitments, staff members engaged in a variety of activities.

Dr. Robert V. Allen spoke at the March meeting of the Society of Federal Linguists on Soviet publications dealing with Asian studies. He also served on a doctorial examination committee on a Russian history topic for the George Washington University.

Dr. Elemer Bako acted as chairman of the Society of Federal Linguists' Program Committee, organizing seven panels, several of which included presentations on the Library and its collections. He also edited a volume of The Federal Linguist, and served as Director of the Bicentennial Research Department of the American Hungarian Federation.

Mr. Jurij W. Dobczansky's article on the Ukrainian science-fiction writer Oles Berdnyk, was published in vol. 4, #1, Spring, 1979 issue of the Journal of Ukrainian Graduate Studies.

Mr. Albert E. Graham prepared and presented the Russian section of the Advanced Language Proficiency Seminar, Naval Intelligence Support Center, for which he received an official commendation from the Navy.

Dr. Janina W. Hoskins held a seminar at the American Studies Institute of Warsaw University.

Mr. George J. Kovtun completed the translation into Czech of a cycle of sixty poems by Osip Mandelstam which will be published in West Germany.

Mr. David H. Kraus prepared an article on the Slavic collections of the Library for the UNESCO Journal of Science, Librarianship, and Archives Administration. He also served as a panel member at the AAASS convention in Columbus, Ohio.

Ms. Ruzica Popovitch presented a paper, "Education for Women in 19th Century Serbia," at the AAASS Convention in Columbus, Ohio.

Dr. Arnold H. Price participated in a panel session of the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in San Francisco, and was elected president of the newly-founded Association for the Bibliography of History. He also participated in an American Library Association panel on bibliography and history.