COLLECTIONS:

Special Collections

University Archives

Collection Preservation

Research Collections:
Slavic and Eastern Languages Collection

Collection Overview
Collection development supports undergraduate coursework, M.A. coursework and research, and faculty research of the Slavic and Eastern Languages Department. The Russian Press Service approval plan of current publications from Russia provides Russian language materials for the Russian Language and Literature and Slavic Studies programs. Emigré literature is covered through publishers in the United States and abroad. Linguistics collection development is concerned mainly with the Indo-European languages. A number of faculty research areas are also taken into consideration in collection building. In Russian, they include such areas as classical and modern Russian poetry, Jews in Russian literature, Nabokov, the teaching of Russian, and the South Slavic area. In linguistics, faculty research areas include general and historical linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, semantics, syntactic theory, teaching English as a foreign language, theories of language learning in historical perspective, liturgical language, morphology, morphophoemics of ancient languages, poetics and poetic theory, and areas which can be related to language such as music and mathematics. In Chinese they include modern writers, Chinese dialects, methods of teaching Chinese, and the cultural approach to the Far East. In Asian Studies they include historical linguistics, other Eastern languages including Japanese, and Japanese culture studies. In the Celtic area: Celtic philology, the idea of Irishness, the life of Saint Patrick, and the Celtic Heroic Age. Collection development levels support the B.A. and M.A. in Russian Language and Literature, Slavic Studies, and General Linguistics. Enrollment at the M.A. level is small and mostly in Russian Language and Literature. The mainstay of the department remains its many courses in Russian language and culture, followed by a fairly even balance of courses in Slavic languages and culture, Chinese language and culture, Japanese language and culture, Celtic languages and culture, the English language (especially as a second language), and linguistics. Also included are courses in other Eastern languages. The department is small and capable of changes in emphases, which collection development needs to take into account.

Robert Bruns
Slavic and Eastern Languages Bibliographer
1-617-552-4832
E-Mail: bruns@bc.edu

Selected Resources

In the O'Neill Library:

• The Russian literature section contains the collected works and criticism for an extensive selection of Russian writers in both the English and Russian languages and the microfilm set Russian Futurism is in the microforms area on Level One. The collection also contains a wide selection of dictionaries and grammars for languages worldwide and a concentration of dictionaries and grammars for those languages taught in the department. There is a strong collection of books on linguistics from publishers in the United States and Europe.

• Important sets: American Philological Association Proceedings and Transactions, CHILDES/BIB, Current Trends in Linguistics, Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics, Linguistic Bibliography 1948-, Year's Work in Modern Language Studies.

• Important Indexes: Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts, Communication Abstracts, MLA Bibliography, Language Teaching, Francis bulletin signalétique.

• Reference works: Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Language and Languages, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics, Handbook of Semiotics, Western Histories of Linguistic Thought, Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, among others.

• Indexes on CD-ROM: Database of Classical Bibliography (L'année philologique),

• Full text databases on CD-ROM: CETEDOC Library of Christian Latin Texts; Thesaurus Linguae Graecae.

On the Web (Restricted to the BC Community):

• Subject indexes to the literature:  MLA Bibliography, Education Index and Abstracts, ERIC (Educational Resource Information Center), Com Abstracts-CIOS (Communication Institute for Online Scholarship).

• General indexes: Article 1st, Arts & Humanities Citation Index (Web of Science), Dissertations Abstracts Online, FRANCIS Bulletin Signalétique, Index to Theses (Great Britain and Ireland), Periodical Contents Index, Social Science Citation Index (Web of Science), Uncover Reveal.

• Full text electronic journals: Electronic journals in linguistics may be found at the following e-journal gateways: JSTOR and Project Muse.

• Other databases in the humanities: Subject Indexes to Online Databases: Humanities.  This web page also has links to databases outside the humanities.

Research Guides
More information about available resources can be found in the following resource guides: Linguistics (under construction), and Russian Language and Literature (under construction)

Interdisciplinary Elements of Subject Area
The area of linguistics intersects with areas studied in the Romance Languages and English Departments, and also with areas studied in the departments of Psychology (psycholinguistics), Sociology (sociolinguistics), and Computer Science (which offers the department a minor in cognitive science). Language acquisition is also studied in the School of Education. Linguistics is a part of the Irish Studies program and is also important in the study of liturgical language and of medieval texts. In the Slavic and Eastern Languages Department ,there is an interest in music history and musicology which intersects with the Music Department.

Formats and Types of Materials
The bulk of the material is monographic, although there is a good representation of serials in Russian language and literature and in general linguistics. Some audiovisual materials dealing with language are bought for the library, but it is not an area of large emphasis because a language lab on campus also acquires audiovisual materials on language learning. Some language textbooks are bought. Some microform collections are also of interest to the department..

Languages
Most of the foreign language materials bought for the department are in Russian. Other European languages are bought for the program areas of Russian, Slavic studies, and linguistics.A small amount is bought in Chinese, and a small amount in Japanese and other Eastern languages. Works in English cover the whole spectrum of the department's needs, including works in English translation.

Geographic Areas (Subject Approach)
Russia and Eastern Europe, peripheral Western Europe, and the Far East are the main geographical focal points of the department, with also some emphasis on the Near East, although a geographically broad range of languages are considered for linguistic analysis both at the undergraduate and graduate level.

Time Periods (Subject Approach)
While many courses involve modern languages, the area of general linguistics studies languages over time and the antecedents of modern language, so that archaic languages and philology are required.

Date of Publication
Library buying keeps up with current publications and retrospective buying is done as budget permits.

Subject Areas Collected by Library of Congress Classification Number
BCAT, the online catalog, can be searched by LC classification number to get a better idea of what specific titles the Slavic and linguistics collections contain.  For example, the command c=PG3325 will produce the beginning of a list of works by or about Dostoevsky.  This list can be browsed by pressing the F8 key or typing f and pressing the Enter/Return key.