Each year divisions of the Library of Congress submit annual reports describing their activities for the year. The first Slavic Section annual report was submitted in 1919 by Dr. Peter A. Speek, and the process continues today for the unit now called the Latin American, Caribbean and European Division. The annual reports do not cover calendar years, but rather fiscal years, the parameters of which have changed over the years. At times the fiscal year ran from July through June. Today it is from October through September.
The text of these reports was taken from the copies retained in the Library of Congress Archives in the Manuscript Reading Room of the Library of Congress. The text is reproduced as presented in the reports (including some old-fashioned spellings and capitalization), albeit with some typos and punctuation corrected for easier reading.
As some of the authors of the reports were not native speakers of English, some uses of definite and indefinite articles are odd, but they are presented as written in the reports. All notes by the editor of the electronic versions appear in brackets. The originals are available for researchers in the LC Archives held in the Manuscript Reading Room.
Presented here are annual reports from 1919–1992, lacking only 1932, which is missing from the Archive, and 1944–1950, when the Slavic Division was disbanded and no reports were created. They are grouped by decades regardless of the name of the division. For reports submitted after 1992, please consult the Manuscript Reading Room.
Although excerpts from the Slavic Division annual reports appear in the published annual reports of the Librarian of Congress, many details are omitted. The full text of the unpublished division annual reports are presented here to satisfy the curiosity of those who are interested in library history and who might wonder how the outstanding East European collections in our national library were built.
