Submitted by
David H. Kraus, Acting Chief
October 16, 1986

Preface

Fiscal 1986 was a year of significant change in the European Division with regard to both physical location and staff. The move to temporary quarters in the Jefferson Building uprooted staff from a location occupied for more than thirty years. Closely following the move, the Division lost five seasoned staff members through retirement, resignation, or other reasons, and due to budgetary constraints was unable to replace an additional two staff members who had left during previous fiscal years. And this from a normal staff of twenty persons. However, the fiscal year ended on a positive note: three of the vacant positions were posted, a new position was created in order to make fuller use of the automation to help offset staff shortages, and a reorganization plan was proposed that holds promise of better use of existing and future staff.

I. Major Development

As part of the renovation of the Adams and Jefferson Buildings, the European Division was moved from quarters it had occupied in the Adams Building (5th floor, SE Curtain) for 34 years and in the Jefferson Building (LJ 147) for 12 years to a new location in the Jefferson Building (North Curtain and NW Pavilion, 2nd floor). The move was made quickly (December 13 and 14) with minimum disruption of service. The new quarters offered a major advantage, that of bringing the Division offices and reading room into immediate proximity of each other. Further, the physical layout of the European Reading Room was much improved in its new location, offering better access to the stacks, more room for the collections, and a better work area for readers. The Division's current serials deck is on the same floor as the Division but on the opposite side of the Thomas Jefferson Building. The disadvantages of the new location are lack of privacy and a great increase in noise and traffic at the worksites. The lack of worksite privacy (an open work area versus previous private offices) is compensated somewhat by a conference room, a convenience the Division had never had. The noise factor remains the greatest problem. Carpeting is not available for the public passageway along the Division's reading room and office area. The noise of trucks (mail, book) in the passageway is so great that all verbal communication must cease while a truck is passing.

The move placed the European Division between the Rare Book and Special Collections Division and the Hispanic Division, neither of which offered Saturday service to its readers. For security reasons, the corridor connecting the three divisions was closed on Saturdays. The European Division attempted to provide Saturday service in the new location by installing a desk in the nearby NE Pavilion, 2nd floor, but the arrangement proved so cumbersome and unsatisfactory that Saturday service was suspended on March 8, 1986 until further notice. Despite the annoyances mentioned above and other, less noteworthy problems such as poor light on dark days and difficulty of concentration due to normal noises in an open worksite area, the staff of the European Division adapted quickly and remarkably well to its new situation.

II. Acquisition of Materials

French/Italian specialist Armbruster's acquisitions trip to Paris and Strasbourg, France, in May of 1986 was the highlight of the Division's acquisitions program. The trip was coordinated with the African/Middle Eastern and Asian Divisions, the specialist devoting a specified number of days to each of the divisions. This joint venture was a first for the European Division and proved very satisfactory to all three divisions. Specialist Armbruster visited libraries, archives, dealers, and sources of ephemeral literature, as well as investigating French advances in electronic printing and automation. In October of 1985, Polish specialist Hoskins also visited Paris in search of Polish solidarity materials and duplicates of older materials in Polish libraries and bookstores.

Budget reductions required the Division's recommending officers to examine periodical subscriptions with the aim of reducing the dollar expenditures for each country by 15-20%. This exercise was painful but constructive, being designed to cause the least damage to the Library's research base. In a similar move, the specialists began examining blanket-order shipments from the large-allotment countries (France, Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union) with special care to help dealers keep within their new allotments. Meanwhile, several new arrangements were made. A mini-blanket order was awarded to Interpress (London) to supply Czech and Slovak publications issued outside Czechoslovakia. Blanket Order dealer Casalini was asked to supply Italian government publications and Rita Panourgas (Athens) was asked to supply Greek government and learned-society publications. The Casalini arrangement was a mixed success, largely due to the lack of bibliographic control of such publications, while the Greek arrangement has been highly successful, solving a long-standing problem. The Division has lacked a Russian/Soviet specialist since August of 1985 and a Finno-Ugrian specialist since December of that year. Three Division specialists have shared the recommending duties for Russian/Soviet materials, but the Finno-Ugrian recommending has had to be turned over to specialists in other divisions (European has no back-up staff with those languages), under the guidance of the European Division and the Collections Development Office. This is a temporary and tenuous arrangement, awaiting the filling of the Finno-Ugrian position (see Section VIII).

With respect to individual recommendations, the French/Italian and Polish specialists concentrated on filling gaps in serial runs and multivolume reference works or supplying key reference works in a particular field. Among this year's significant acquisitions were the more than 100 titles, many of them rare items from the 1920s and 1930s, from the private library of Miloslav Hýsek, a Czech literary historian. La Stirpe (Rome, 1923-40), a leading Fascist monthly, was acquired by transfer from the Department of Labor through the efforts of the French/Italian specialist. The German/Dutch specialist recommended the facsimile edition of the Evangelium of Henry the Lion (1129-95) and the microfiche collection, Reformed Protestantism: Netherlands and Germany. Film of the Czech-American newspaper Slavie (1861-1914), recommended by the Czechoslovak specialist, was received by the Library and proved a fruitful source for that specialist's manuscript, Masaryk and America (see Section V). The Czechoslovak specialist, in cooperation with the Prints and Photographs Division, identified and classified the 611-item glass slide collection on Czech themes (1918-22) received as a gift from the Jan Hus Presbyterian Church in New York City.

III. Organization and Management of Materials

The European Reading Room collections underwent many changes this year. Prior to the December move (see Section I), nearly 1,400 volumes were discharged from the collection to make room for West European materials and office collections of the area specialists. These office collections had been necessary because of the separation of the area specialists (Adams Building) from the European Reading Room (Jefferson Building). The French/Italian and German/Dutch specialists devoted a great deal of effort to building the West European collections, including the addition of periodicals to the European Reading Room shelves. The Automation Liaison abetted the overall effort to update and improve the European Reading Room collections by initiating JANUS inventories of the holdings that resulted in printed catalogs for France, Italy, East and West Germany, Austria, and Liechtenstein for staff use. Recommending for Eastern and Central European collections in the reading room have kept pace with those for Western Europe and the aforementioned 1,400 volumes have been replaced by new or updated volumes. Several reference aids were created for the reading room. The French/Italian specialist prepared handouts citing key reference works and their locations in the Library (European Reading Room, the general reading rooms, the Newspaper and Current Periodicals Reading Room, the Law Library, and the special collections reading rooms). Reference Librarian Harris prepared a list of bookstores and dealers that specialize in European language materials, and the Division's English-language newsletters and reports were organized and boxed for reader convenience.

Three displays were mounted in the European Reading Room: Recent Russian and East European Reference Works (October/November, 1985), Cyprian Norwid, Poet (January/April, 1986), and Joachim Lelewel, Scholar (May/September, 1986). Librarian Harris prepared the first display and Polish specialist Hoskins the latter two. The rapid turnover of staff on the Divison's current serials deck (Deck 13, Thomas Jefferson Building), required the use of overtime to maintain order and service. Through overtime 7,921 issues comprising 821 volumes of periodicals were prepared for binding.

IV. Reference Services

Despite the relocation of the European Reading Room, the discontinuation of Saturday service in the reading room, and the loss of staff during FY 1986, reference performance remained close to that of the previous fiscal year, decreasing by less than 14%. Two international conferences held in Washington shortly before the move brought a heavy influx of readers and researchers to the Division, including visitors from abroad. Several of them spent a month or more taking advantage of the Library's resources. These visitors came not only from West European countries, but from Japan, India, Sri Lanka, Australia, and New Zealand. These conferences were the Fifth International Conference of Europeanists (October 19/20) and the Third World Congress on Soviet and East European Studies (October 30-November 4). Current events that drew a large number of reference requests were the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union and the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to the French author Claude Simon. The Division copy of Soviet Life (Moscow, February, 1986) which described the Chernobyl complex and its safety features was in great demand. Two special studies were made for the Librarian of Congress in connection with his travels abroad: an analysis of cultural exchanges under the Helsinki Accords, and the status of the Library's Italian collections and Italian libraries. Automation Liaison Posey played a considerable role in support of reference work. She executed JANUS runs as background for numerous reference studies (see Appendix C). She also introduced the Division's reference staff to the SCORPIO Send Command and EMAIL, and made arrangements to bring the Book Paging service to the Division. Her tape datasets for many of the geographic regions in the Division's area of responsibility permitted rapid and effective retrieval on subjects of narrower scope.

There was an unusual variety of subjects treated by our reference staff, covering every country in the Division's area and all the social sciences and humanities. No trends were evident, except for a steadily increasing number of inquiries concerning business and commerce in the West European democracies. In the European Reading Room, reference requests for information on the Soviet Union remained dominant, but more and more inquiries were made concerning Western Europe, reflecting improvements in the book collections and the larger number of current periodicals available in the European Reading Room. The majority of clients were from the academic and government communities. The new location of the Reading Room on the second floor drew fewer casual visitors from the public. The visitors included several celebrities: The Honorable Michael Jenkins, Acting Ambassador from Great Britain and specialist in the Russian Decembrist movement, Princess Elizabeth (Oxenberg) of Yugoslavia, who is writing a book on the last days of the Yugoslav monarchy, Dr. Stephen Bryen, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, Alexander Shkurko, Deputy Minister of Culture of the Russian Federated Republic, and Gregory Grechko, former Soviet cosmonaut.

Authors Irmgard Elsner Hunt (German emigre writer), Erling Indreeide (Norwegian poet), Heinz Knobloch (East German writer), and Aqqaluk Lynge (Danish/Greenlandic poet) recorded for the Library's Archive of World Literature on Tape. The Division made an unusually large number of translations for Congress this year (78 versus 44 the previous fiscal year). The increase was due primarily to translations from the Russian following the retirement of the Congressional Research Service's Russian translator. In a variant on the translation theme, the French/Italian specialist acted as liaison between ASO specialists and French engineers who represented a firm that had sold optical disk equipment to the Library.

V. Bibliographies and Other Publications

There were two important general developments affecting the Division's publication program. Automation Liaison Posey provided extensive JANUS bibliographies for all the Division's publications, effecting a great saving in time for the authors. Additionally, the COMPUCORP word processor was used to create coded diskettes for printing by the Central Services Division on its Compugraphic. This gave the European Division specialists control over the foreign-language entries from beginning to end.

The Division's publication program was viable despite the reduced specialist staff, remaining nearly the same as in the previous fiscal year. Specialist Krewson accounted for half of this productivity. Her monograph, The German-Speaking Countries of Europe. A Selective Bibliography served as a model of format for the aforementioned Central Services Division products. Other publications of the Division included The Netherlands. A Selective Bibliography of Reference Works by Margrit B. Krewson, and Joachim Lelewel Scholar 1786-1861. Biobibliographic Sketch by Janina W. Hoskins. Three manuscripts were completed and forwarded to the Publishing Office, Masaryk and America: Testimony of a Relationship by George J. Kovtun, and two works The Economies of the German-Speaking Countries of Europe and Berlin: 750 Years [The Economies of the German-speaking Countries of Europe: a Selective Bibliography] by Margrit B. Krewson. Robert V. Allen's Forty Commisars in Chicago. Imperial Russia Looks at America [Russia Looks at America: the View to 1917], revised, with the addition of an introduction, epilogue, and conclusion was resubmitted to the Publishing Office. Two works by Janina W. Hoskins are nearing completion, Library of Congress Resources for the Study of Poland and Polish Genealogy and Heraldry. The Division's request for the reprinting of two popular publications that are out-of-print, Czech and Slovak Literature in English and the Czechoslovak Declaration of Independence, could not be met for want of funds. French/Italian specialist Armbruster prepared bibliographic guides to resources in the Library of Congress on subjects of frequent reader inquiry, namely, Italian Folklore, Italian Genealogy, Italian Newspapers, French Archives, and French Business. These and other guides by Specialist Armbruster are updated regularly and distributed to the Library's reading rooms. The Library's West European reference resources are divided among various reading rooms and the Armbruster guides lead the reader through this maze. These guides will eventually be combined in book form and proposed for publication.

The co-sponsor of the American Bibliography project, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, provided the project with equipment to automate the operation, namely, a COMPAQ minicomputer with laser printer as well as word-processing and database-management software. This equipment arrived in time to produce the index of the 1983/1984 volume of the bibliography. The 1985 volume and subsequent volumes will be produced entirely with this equipment. The American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies for 1983/1984 appeared in print in late September, 1986. It contains 8,760 main entries and is the largest volume of this annual that has been produced to date. This accomplishment is especially significant because it was achieved with a staff that was reduced by half, for budgetary reasons, midway through the preparation of the volume. About 65% of the entries for the 1985 volume have been selected and classified, and are being entered in the project's data base.

Division specialists contributed three articles to the Library of Congress Information Bulletin. Specialist Kovtun contributed an article on Czech and Slovak literature in English to the USIA's magazine Spektrum.

VI. Special Events

French/Italian specialist Armbruster proposed a Library of Congress symposium on Eighteenth Century French Publishing and Its Influence on America in connection with America's commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution (1989). The symposium concept was approved and planning begun in conjunction with the Center for the Book and with the participation of various divisions of the Library. The Ambassador of the Netherlands, Richard H. Fine, held a luncheon at the Embassy to honor specialist Krewson for her bibliographic work on the Netherlands (see Appendix B).

VII. Activities in Professional and Official Organizations

Division professional staff participated in several major professional events. The Symposium on Book Studies, sponsored by the Center for the Book and held in the Library of Congress on October 29, in connection with the Third World Congress of Soviet and East European Studies, attracted the entire professional staff of the Division. The Congress itself (October 30-November 4) was attended by specialists Hoskins and Kovtun, librarians Graham and Harris, and the Acting Chief, who chaired three panels devoted to library and automation matters. An extension of the Congress was held at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville on November 5-6 to discuss international exchanges. The Acting Chief was invited to participate in that session. Specialists Armbruster and Krewson attended the Fifth International Congress of Europeanists, held in Washington, D.C. on October 19 and 20. The Acting Chief attended a Workshop on Resources for Russian/Soviet and East European Studies held at the University of Pennsylvania on February 26, where he delivered a paper on resources in the Washington, D.C. area. On March 17 he attended the Workshop on Publication, Library Activities, and Conferences for Soviet and East European Studies held at the Library of Congress and sponsored by the Congressional Research Service. He was a panelist on the Library Activities section of that workshop.

Specialist Armbruster attended the Wilson Center seminars on Contemporary Italian Historiography, the Vatican Synod of Bishops, and Historiography of the French Revolution, as well as the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference (Columbus, Ohio, October 24-26), and the West European Studies Section (WESS) of the American Library Association at that association's annual convention in New York City on June 27-30. Specialist Krewson attended the First North American Translators Conference held in Mexico City on February 25-28, a Seminar on the Two Germanies held at the Carnegie Conference Center (June 12), and a Seminar on German-American Relations held at the Fredrich Ebert Foundation (September 17). Specialist Kovtun attended the Twelfth Annual Conference of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Policy held at Georgetown University (June 26-27).

Invitations were extended to several staff members in recognition of their achievements or specialization. Specialist Hoskins was appointed to the Scholarship Committee of the Kosciuszko Foundation, Specialist Krewson was invited to the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany to participate in a discussion of a new German cultural center proposed for the Washington area. Specialist Armbruster gave a talk on Italy at the Foreign Services Institute, and Librarian Harris was invited to join the Dictionary Society of America. The Acting Chief is a permanent member of the Bibliography and Documentation Committee of the American Association of Slavic and East European Studies, and is a member of the Bibliography, Information Retrieval, and Documentation Subcommittee of the Joint Committee on Soviet Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Sciences Research Council.

Division staff were also invited to participate in Library activities. Albert Graham, Head of the European Reading Room, is serving as the 1986 Combined Federal Campaign Coordinator for Research Services. He also represents the Division at the Reference Roundtable. Automation Liaison Posey served on the Research Advisory Group (RAG) Subcommittee on Authorities, which completed its work this fiscal year. She represented Research Services on the ASO team that tested the new version of JANUS before it went into production, and she assisted staff from other divisions in the use of JANUS/ROSCOE (Collections Development Office, General Reading Rooms Division, Congressional Research Service). The demand for her time became so great that the Acting Chief had to restrict her JANUS activities to the European Division and the Department. The Acting Chief was a member of the Subcommittee on the Geographic Allocation of Book Funds of the Acquisitions Committee.

VIII. Administration, Staff, and Fiscal Matters

Staff changes vied with the move as the major development of this fiscal year. A division that had been stable for decades suddenly faced a rapid change of personnel. On December 30, Finno-Ugrian specialist Bako retired; on April 14, Processing Assistant Becker's position was abolished; on June 3, Processing and Reference Assistant Fessenko retired; on September 5, Clerk-Typist Williams resigned; on September 25, Processing Assistant Stephenson resigned; the remaining Processing and Reference Assistant, Mykola Kormeluk, announced that he would retire on October 30, 1986. On the positive side, Grant G. Harris was promoted to Senior Reference Librarian, and a new position, Automated Bibliographic Resources Librarian, was approved, posted, and a recommendation for an incumbent forwarded through channels. This position is especially important now, when the reduced professional and management staff has special need for automation assistance in bibliography, reference, and acquisitions work. Further, permission was granted to hire a temporary deck attendant and a work study student to help keep the current serials deck (Deck 13, TJB) current during the staff shortage. Deck Attendant Stephen Adams and Work Study student Linda Gray began work in July. A second Processing Assistant position was created by converting the vacant Clerk-Typist position. In September, two Processing Assistants were selected and should be available for duty early in the next fiscal year. A request for posting has been submitted to fill the part-time Processing Assistant position formerly occupied by Mr. Stephenson.

Although this rapid change of personnel presented major problems for continuation of service, it also provided an opportunity for reorganizing the Division staff. The Acting Chief has proposed that Processing and Reference Assistant Kormeluk's position be converted to a Scandinavian specialist position to complete the Division's West European coverage, and that this processing operation (recording serials) be moved to the Division's current serial deck to be carried out by the new processing assistant staff. The Russian/Soviet specialist position was posted near the end of the fiscal year, and a posting request has been submitted for a Finno-Ugrian specialist.

The Division was fortunate to have an excellent intern and several student volunteers this fiscal year. Melissa Flannery, an LC Intern, worked with specialist Armbruster on French visual materials. Student volunteers Christine Barata (Paris) and Marco Gatti (UCLA) worked under the direction of specialist Armbruster on French and Italian business literature, respectively. Gretchen Hachmeister, Stephan Lindner, and Ann Burnes, all of Georgetown University, worked with specialist Krewson on Berlin, German economics literature, and Germans in the American Revolution, respectively. Katherine Ingmanson (Lewis and Clark University) and Alvin Kapusta (University of Maryland) worked under the direction of the Acting Chief, Ingmason on Bulgaria's deviations from Soviet foreign policy and Kapusta on an analysis of the Yudin collection remaining in the European Division's custody. The work of Hachmeister and Lindner was incorporated into Division publications. Division staff also showed interest in improving its skills and knowledge through formal courses. Grant Harris took four courses at the Catholic University toward a Master of Library Science degree, and Stephen Paczolt took courses in German and Czech at the U.S. Department of Agriculture graduate school. The Acting Chief and the Head, European Reading Room, took supervisory courses through the Staff Training and Development Office.