Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies: Scholarly Resources

Traditionally scholarly materials for literary studies are divided into primary and secondary sources.

Primary sources are firsthand accounts or original materials created during the time an event took place, or later through formats like memoirs or oral histories. Examples of primary sources include written items like:

• Letters
• Journals or diaries
• Manuscripts
• Speeches and interviews
• Memoirs
• Audio and video recordings
• Photographs
• Newspapers
• Artistic works
• Research data
• Government documents

This is not a comprehensive list. No medium is excluded and today much of it is available on the web and is becoming a part of the bibliographic landscape for all countries.

Secondary Sources postdate the original work, movement, document, no matter its format. They include a variety of materials such scholarly criticism and biography.

Tip: When looking for secondary sources, remember that the author, artist, organization, etc.,  is now the subject!

Monographs

Much of the material that will fall into the category of secondary literature will be monographs and can be located using a search of the library catalog via the Catalog using an author's name and the subject as the search by option. For a more extensive listing of books go to WorldCat, a catalog of books in US libraries and international.  There are also numerous avenues to searching the collections of European, East European and Russian libraries in preparation for a research trip or to get a more complete picture of the published monographs on a topic.  These include such sources as The European Library gateway, UB Karlsruhe interface, and COBISS.Net.

Articles

A large proportion of the secondary literature will be articles.  For some subject areas there are excellent databases, some providing full-text, others only citations.  Some of the databases have tremendous retrospective depth covering the published literature from 1900 or even earlier.  

Any list of the major databases for the region would include:

More through the Library's Databases A-Z List

Tip: You can search for databases for Slavic by selecting the subject Russia, Poland, etc. in the Library's Online Research Resources.

Tip: Make sure to access the Library's online databases through the Library Proxy. Off-campus users must provide a authenticate with their netID and password.

Full-text online Library databases include: