The Soviet Gulag: An Online Resource

"Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives" @ http://gulaghistory.org/ Today’s digital technologies create strong imperatives for collaboration between academic historians and museums, libraries, and archives across the world. "Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives" is one example of such collaboration. The website located at http://gulaghistory.org/ is supported by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University in Virginia in association with the Gulag Museum in Perm’, Russia and the International Memorial Society in Moscow, Russia. The project is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities; Title VIII, The U.S. Department of State; Kennan Institute; and Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. "Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives" presents an in-depth look at life in the Gulag through exhibits featuring original documentaries and prisoner voices. From the front page, one may navigate tothe Archive, Exhibits or the Resources page. The Archive page may be browsed and searched either by keywords or by tags. The page contains text documents as well as photographs and other graphic resources related to the history ofthe Gulag. All materials are supplied with short bibliographic descriptions in English. Scanned copies of original documents in Russian are provided in a PDF format. The Exhibits link takes visitors on a thematic exploration of Gulag life, including a virtual tour of the reconstructed camp and museum made possible by the Gulag Museum in Perm, known as the gateway to Siberia. Online Exhibitions are available in Russian as well as English. The Resources page provides a list of recommended readings and curricula materials for history teachers. An important asset of this online resource is contribution of Steve Barnes, a Professor of History at George Mason University who hosts “Episodes in Gulag History,” designed as a series of conversations with scholars about the history and legacy of the Soviet Gulag system. Due to the fact that the website is still very much work-in-progress, only Episode 1 is available from the Resources page at this time (http://gulaghistory.org/podcast/). Episode 1 features a conversation with Lynne Viola, a Professor of History at the University of Toronto. It is available for download via Windows Media Player. The website allows you not only to subscribe to the Episodes via RSS feeds, but also to engage in a scholarly discussion in the blog area provided. Although the website appears to be in the process of construction, and it is hard to pinpoint the time of the last update, we recommend it as a useful resource for scholars interested in the Gulag history. Its major strength lies in its connection to the Museum in Perm’ and International Memorial Society in Moscow allowing instant access to materials that would be otherwise hard to obtain.

Baza Biogramow Biblioteki Jagellonskiej

Since the spring of this year there is a new biographical database available on the Jagiellonian Library homepage. It is titled _Baza Biogramów Biblioteki Jagellońskiej_. The URL is: http://www.bj.uj.edu.pl/biogramy/?c=html&a=index It promises to be a valuable tool for searching for biographical information on lesser-known persons of Polish origin. The database is constructed on the base of materials that had been gathered for many years by the Jagiellonian librarians. At this point the database includes over 32,000 records and is being continually updated.. Each person’s record may contain the following information, depending on its availability --first and last name --dates and places of birth and death --field of activity or profession --titles (scientific or otherwise) --bibliographic description of published biographies or biobibliographies devoted to the person The database includes information on Poles living in the 20th and 21st centuries, mostly those born after 1870. It is linked with _Baza Ikonografii Teatralnej_, which allows it to display theater-themed photographs and their descriptions. This is only one example of several interesting biographical databases posted on the continually expanded page of the Jagiellonian. The ever-growing list now includes several regionally-oriented databases, as well as listings of persons by profession, and numerous databases covering different periods of Polish history, from the Napoleonic wars to the times of the post WWII communist regime. The list of databases is available under the URL: http://www.bj.uj.edu.pl/var/bibl_biogr_bibl1_pl.php

Gazety Rossii (1703 - 1917) database

There is a new database available from the site of the Russian National Library: Газеты России (1703 - 1917) The breadcrumbs look as follows: Главная > Ресурсы > Каталоги > Электронные каталоги > Каталоги периодических и продолжающихся изданий As of June 16, 2009 the database contained 6460 entries. The catalog is a result of cooperation between three major Russian libraries: The Russian National Library in St. Petersburg (РНБ), The Russian State Library (РГБ) [Moscow], and the State Public Historical Library (ГПИБ) [Moscow]. The extensive pre-revolutionary newspaper holdings of these libraries have heretofore been accessible only in part (and only through the use of Soviet-era catalogs in printed or microfilm form that are not widely held in Western libraries). The catalog is based on the holdings of the above libraries, as well as the holdings of the Research Library of Federal Archives (НБ ФА) [Moscow] and The Belinskii Sverdlovsk Regional Universal Research Library [Ekaterinburg] (СОУНБ). It contains bibliographic descriptions of all the newspapers published on the territory of the Russian Empire (within its 1913 borders) in the Russian language, from 1703-1917 inclusively. Additionally the catalog includes newspapers published in foreign cities containing large populations of the Russian diaspora: Lviv, Chernovtsy, and Kharbin. Included also are newspapers published by military units. The database allows for a title search which can be narrowed by specifying the place of publication. The search by year of publication is possible, for now, only for the first and last years of a newspaper’s run. The entries provide the following information: · Title of publication, following the title of the final issue. If a newspaper changed titles, these changes are reflected in the notes under "Загл.". · Information on the theme of the newspapers, its links to other publications, publishing bodies, editors or founders of the periodical. This information is based on the final edition of the paper. · The dates of the publication run and place of publication are also provided · Other information, such as the organization of the paper’s internal structure, changes in layout, possible breaks in publication, changes in language of the paper, etc. are included. If there were any indexes (ukazateli) and/or supplements to the paper, these are also reflected in the description. · For ease of ordering, call numbers assigned to the papers in РГБ and РНБ (or other holdings’ location information) are included. Holding institutions are marked by abbreviations: РНБ, РГБ, ГПИБ, НБ ФА, СОУНБ. This new online resource should save researchers a significant amount of time in identifying newspaper titles that may be useful for their research, and in identifying newspaper holdings in Russia, potentially superseding a number of older print sources. Since we haven’t had the chance to test the database extensively, we base the above on the description provided on the database website.

CEJSH -- THE CENTRAL EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

CEJSH -- THE CENTRAL EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES The journal, founded in 2004 publishes English abstracts of articles and reviews, which appeared mostly in the national languages in the Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Slovak scientific journals devoted to social sciences and humanities. It is being sponsored by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences and Slovak Academy of Sciences. The service is hosted by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modeling, Warsaw University (ICM UW) within the Virtual Library of Science (BWN). The journal is frequently updated and at this point contains some 11 557 abstracts from 209 scientific journals. The CEJSH covers the following disciplines: ANTHROPOLOGY ARCHAEOLOGY ARTS & ARCHITECTURE ECONOMICS (Business & Management) ETHNOLOGY EDUCATION HISTORY LAW & ADMINISTRATION LIBRARY & INFORMATION SCIENCE MEDIA & COMMUNICATION PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS PHILOSOPHY POLITICAL SCIENCES PSYCHOLOGY SOCIOLOGY SCIENCE OF SCIENCE THEOLOGY OTHER SOCIAL SCIENCES To seach, click on find publication or find editor source You can also search the Digital Library of the ASCR, contains full-text articles published by some of the journals of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Database Nauka Polska

Database Nauka Polska http://nauka-polska.pl/index.shtml This is an internet portal which showcases the database maintained by Ośrodek Przetwarzania Informacji since 1991. It is the most complete database of this type in Poland and is available free of charge. The previous version of the portal can be viewed under http://nauka.opi.org.pl The databases constituting the portal contain over 121, 000 records. The data are grouped in several sections: --information on Polish scholars (holders of PhD degrees, professors, etc.), living in Poland and abroad --information on Polish scholarly institutions of all types --information on scholarly research works, such as dissertations or post doctoral research articles. The contents, numbering over 100,000 records and backdated to 1999 and parallel the database SYNABA. --information on scholarly conferences, exhibitions, etc. --information on ongoing research projects To search a database, click on Szukaj which can be found in the upper right corner of the particular page. There is also a help section found under Pomoc. The database is continually updated.

Russian memoir sources digitized

I would like to recomment a website titled Universitas Personarum, which is maintained by the Moscow State University. The URL is: http://www.srcc.msu.su/uni-persona/ The site is dedicated to Russian memoir literature. Under the heading of Dnevniki i zapisnye knizhki, we find a series of full-text memoirs of several prominent Russian figures, mostly literary and cultural luminaries. More importantly, though, the heading Issledovaniia dnevnikovoi prozy leads to the digitized and searchable version of P.A. Zaionchkovskii's Istoriia dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii v dnevnikakh i vospominaniiakh. Unfortunately only the first three volumes have been scanned so far. (The website does not provide a reason for this, nor is it clear whether the remainder of the work will be put in digital format) The same link leads also to works by Mikhail Mikheev on the Soviet memoir literature of the 1930s and, Russian memoirists of the turn of the century, and others. The cite appears to be under construction and not all of the material is of equal weight and interest, but the digitized version of Zaionchkovskii, albeit incomplete, makes it worthwhile to visit.