The vast majority of materials related to Russia and in Russian at the Library of Congress are held in the general collections. The general collections count may be as high as 90% of the Russian collection. The term general collections refers to the primary stacks located in the Thomas Jefferson and John Adams buildings of the Library of Congress. There are also off-site storage centers in Cabin Branch, MD and Ft. Meade, MD which contain additional general collection items.
The general collections includes materials published after 1801 and primarily consists of monographs and bound serials. As a result of the inclusive collection policy of the Library of Congress, the general collections contains materials on nearly every subject, excluding technical agriculture and clinical medicine, which are the collecting priorities of the National Agricultural Library and National Library of Medicine respectively.
Russian materials in the general collections reflect these overall trends; there are Russian books and periodicals from the era of Aleksandr Pushkin in the early 19th-century all the way through the Soviet period and the present day. Although Russian materials at the Library of Congress are particularly well-represented in the fields of history and literature, Russian-language sources can be found under nearly every class of the Library of Congress classification system. The most relevant classes are AP (Periodicals), DK (Russian and Soviet History) and PG (Slavic Languages and Literature).
The Library of Congress strives to have a well-rounded collection encompassing not only most subjects, but also different kinds of publications such as those produced by commercial, academic, museum, and governmental publishers. Self-published materials are sparsely represented in the Russian collection. The scope of materials also is broad, ranging from highly-specialized works and scholarly titles to popular history and literature, as well as works for children. Siberiana is a special focus of the collection due to its origins in the Yudin Collection, acquired in 1906 from the Siberian bibliophile Gennadii Vasil'evich Yudin.
It is important to note that the general collections has materials in Russian which are not only from Russia, but also from Russophone communities around the world, including the United States of America, Israel, China and the countries of Europe and South America. There are also Russian materials published in various countries of the former Soviet Union, such as those of the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Baltics.
Furthermore, the Library of Congress acquires materials about and in many of the official languages of the Russian republics, such as Bashkir, Buryat, Chechen, Chuvash, Tatar and Yakut. There is also select material in other languages of indigenous communities in the Russian Federation, such as Mansi and Chukchi. Note that some of these materials can be requested in the African and Middle Eastern Reading Room for Turkic languages such as Tatar or the Asian Reading Room for Mongolic languages such as Buryat.
Last, the general collections has books about Russia in dozens of languages other than Russian, mainly English. The Library of Congress collects books from several publishers with series focusing on Russian, Slavic and Eurasian Studies, such as Academic Studies Press, Anthem Press, Routledge and Bloomsbury Publishing. The Library of Congress also acquires the latest titles from academic presses, many of which specialize in printing works on Russian history, politics and culture, such as the University of Wisconsin Press, University of Pittsburgh Press and Cornell University Press.
Other than books and periodicals, the general collections offers unique holdings of Russian resources. These include:
Although the stacks are physically closed to the public, materials in the general collections can be searched in the Library of Congress Online Catalog and requested in any of the six reading rooms in the Jefferson and Adams buildings, namely the Main Reading Room, European Reading Room, Hispanic Reading Room, African & Middle Eastern Reading Room and Asian Reading Room in the Jefferson and the Science and Business Reading Room in the Adams. As a rule of thumb, if an online catalog record notes to request an item in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms, the item falls under the general collections. More than 25 percent of the Library of Congress general collections are stored offsite, so it behooves you to allow sufficient time for ordering and delivery of materials. Feel free to contact us in advance of your research visit - Ask A Librarian
