4/10/2013

Guide to Linguistics from the Russian National Library

The Russian National Library is an essential resource for many scholars studying Russia and the former Soviet Union. Not only does the library have an amazing scanned card catalog and periodicals database (both of which are heavily used by the Slavic Reference Service), the institution's librarians also create detailed guides to reference and bibliographic sources open to public use. 


List of available guides to reference and bibliographic sources from the Russian National Library 
The newest guide that the Russian National Library has created is about linguistics: Языкознание. Although its focus is mainly that of Russian linguistics, it does not limit itself to that topic, as there are sections about Germanic and Romance languages, as well as other Slavic languages. The guide is divided into three parts: 1.) Directories, which include encyclopedias, glossaries, and dictionaries 2.) bibliographic tools and databases and 3.) Other portals and websites. Each of these main categories leads to a list of books, journals and articles; the list of links lead to annotations for the items. The final section offers web links the Russian National Library deems valuable to the study of linguistics.

This guide is obviously directed at linguistics scholars who already know Russian, but a student of the Russian language could benefit from some of the resources listed. The guide itself is a rich resource, allowing scholars to learn about a variety of resources from one spot on the Russian National Library's website.