Digital reference in Slavic and East European studies with an examination of practice at the University of Illinois and the Library of Congress

Slavic and East European Information Resources

Volumn 6, Issue 2-3, 2005, Pages 183-217

  Cannon, Angela ^a  

^a LIBRARY OF CONGRESS   (United States)

Author keywords

Central Europe; Digital reference; East Europe; Eastern Europe; Electronic reference; European Division; European reading room; Internet; Libraries; Library of Congress; NIS; Online resources; Russia; Slavic; Slavic reference service; United States; University of Illinois; Virtual reference

Indexed keywords

EID: 33748996256     PISSN: 15228886     EISSN: 15229041     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1300/J167v06n02_12     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. Deanna B. Marcum, "Library Collections for the 21st Century: Rethinking Our Strategies," Keynote Address to the 2004 Nylink Annual Meeting, text of speech circulated to Library of Congress staff via e-mail in May 2004).
2. Sloan's Digital Reference Service Bibliography can be found at (accessed July 1, 2004).
3. The Virtual Reference Desk hosted its sixth annual Digital Reference Conference on November 8-9, 2004. See (accessed July 1, 2004) for details about this and previous conferences.
4. The discussion groups referred to include Dig_Ref at (accessed July 1, 2004)
5. and Livereference at (accessed July 1, 2004).
6. See IFLANET (accessed July 22, 2004)
7. and the ALA website (accessed August 3, 2004) for more details.
8. Helen Sullivan, "Slavianskaia spravochnaia sluzhba: Tendentsii razvitiia i novye vozmozhnosti," in Informatsionno-bibliograficheskoe obsluzhivanie 1: Istoriia i sSvremennoe sostoianie: sbornik statei (Sankt-Peterburg: Rossiiskaia natsional'naia biblioteka, 2003), 183-191.
9. Helen Sullivan, "Slavic Bibliography Online: WebCT as a Resource for Online Instruction," Slavic & East European Information Resources 3, no. 1 (2002): 21-33.
10. Teresa E. Tickle, "Expanding Outreach to a Unique User Community: The Slavic Reference Service and the Internet," The Reference Librarian 67/ 68 (1999): 69-83.
11. Michael Neubert, "Using Russian Internet Resources for Ready Reference: Good Enough for Prime Time?" Slavic & East European Information Resources 1, no. 4 (2001): 69-77.
12. Gordon B. Anderson, "Save Yourself a Trip: A Guide to Exploiting Your Home Library's Bibliographic Databases for Slavic-Language Research Materials," Slavic & East European Information Resources 1, no. 1 (2000): 13-28.
13. Marta Mestrovic Deyrup, "Report on SLAVLIBS Survey on Information Literacy," Slavic & East European Information Resources 5, no. 1/2 (2004): 41-46.
14. Terri Tickle Miller, "The Census Online: Internet Census Resources for Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union," Slavic & East European Information Resources 3, no. 4 (2002): 51-63.
15. Peter Roudik, "Researching Russian Laws: A Guide to Major Online Information Resources," Slavic & East European Information Resources 2, no. 3/4 (2001): 99-105.
16. Russian Reference Works (accessed July 25, 2004).
17. Joseph Janes, "Why Does Digital Reference Matter?" presented as a live webcast February 10, 2003 (accessed July 18, 2004).
18. A testament to the rapidly changing nature of the Internet is that upon retracing my steps several years later to refresh my memory for this article, I discovered a recent site about Karabchevskii that links him right away to his father-in-law's osobniak, although it did not provide the explanation about the moniker of Palace Karabchevskii.
19. Available at (accessed July 29, 2004).
20. The two bibliographies are available at and respectively (both accessed July 29, 2004).
21. Slovenia's database: (accessed July 30, 2004). Serbia had a similar researchers' database entitled Bibliografije istraživača at , but it no longer is available to Internet searchers.
22. David Zdeněk Chroust, "Slavic-Language Material in OCLC and the Search for Matching Records: Reconsidering an Overlooked Problem," Slavic & East European Information Resources 1, no.4 (2001): 41-67, p. 56. This article provides a good overview of some of the complications with transliteration systems.
23. The press release was provided by Jane W. Jacobs in a personal communication. For more information about this program see the instructions for patrons and Russian language information at and (accessed August 2, 2004). For details on the process of changing the records into Cyrillic see Jane W. Jacobs, Ed Summers, and Elizabeth Ankersen, "Cyril: Expanding the Horizons of MARC21," Library Hi Tech 22, no.1 (2004): 8-17.
24. Ross Bourne, "National Bibliographies and the Technological Gap," International Cataloguing and Bibliographic Control 24, no. 2 (April/ June 1995): 26-29, p. 26.
25. Hrvatska Bibliografija (Niz A, B, C) is available at
26. Česká národní bibliografie is available at
27. the Hungarian National Bibliography, Bibliography of Books is available at (all accessed August 2, 2004).
28. Available at (accessed August 2, 2004). For more information about this project see Murlin Croucher, "Digitizing and Making a Web Site for the Soviet Letopis' zhurnal'nykh statei, 1956-1975," Slavic & East European Information Resources 3, no. 2/3 (2002):179-183.
29. These two sites are available on the web at and (both accessed August 2, 2004). Editor's note: More about FEB-web can be found in the article by Joseph Peschio, Igor Pil'shchikov, and Konstantin Vigurskii in this volume.
30. Brokgauz available at , Dal' available at , all literary encyclopedias available at (all accessed August 5, 2004).
31. Russkii biograficheskii slovar' available at (accessed August 20, 2004). While preparing this section of my essay, I came across the classic case of the instability of Internet resources. About half of the digitized reference tools I had used in the recent past were no longer accessible as of August 5, 2004. Some, which were previously free, are now available only by subscription at . Others have simply disappeared.
32. Polish encyclopedia available at , orthographic dictionary at , selected entries from Ukrainian linguistic encyclopedia at (all accessed August 5, 2004).
33. Country studies available at (accessed August 5, 2004).
34. The two volumes of Half a Century of Soviet Serials can be found at: and (accessed December 25, 2004).
35. Michael Brewer, "Using JAKE: A Guide for the Slavic Specialist," Slavic & East European Information Resources 3, no. 4 (2002): 79-84.
36. The following link shows the electronic journals management systems that are available at public terminals in the Library of Congress: (accessed July 28, 2004). They have been designated as E-journal Search Tools. All of the titles in the Full-Text E-Journals Collections are represented in at least one of the three systems.
37. To view the UIUC Online Research Resources interface see (accessed July 28, 2004).
38. Anderson, "Save Yourself a Trip."
39. For more information about the history and status of both ABSEES and EBSEES see Aaron Trehub, "Building a World Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies: ABSEES, EBSEES, and Beyond," Slavic & East European Information Resources 3, no. 2/3 (2002): 103-119.
40. Available at (accessed August 3, 2004).
41. Available at (accessed August 3, 2004). For more information about this database see Lidia Derfert-Wolf, "BAZTECH: Polish Technical Journal Contents," Slavic&East European Information Resources 5, no. 1/2 (2004): 149-154.
42. REESWeb is available at (accessed August 6, 2004). For more information about the origins and changes in REESWEb see Mark Weixel, "Restringing the Threads of REESWeb," Slavic & East European Information Resources 1, no. 1 (2000): 105-108.
43. UNC's site available at , Berkeley's site available at , MSU's site available at (all accessed August 4, 2004).
44. Portals to the World available at
45. SRS Internet Resources available at (both accessed August 4, 2004).
46. For more information about Portals to the World, see Kenneth Nyirady, "Country-Specific Information Portals at the Library of Congress," Slavic & East European Information Resources 3, no. 1 (2002): 69-71.
47. ArcheoBiblioBase is available at (accessed August 4, 2004).
48. Available at (accessed August 4, 2004). See Sullivan, "Slavic Bibliography Online" for more details about the development of the guide.
49. The librarians who work in the European Division of the Library of Congress are not involved in reference work full-time like the SRS staff. All have additional responsibilities such as collection development, outreach, special projects, etc.
50. Finding aids to telephone directories are available at (accessed August 6, 2004).
51. Although digital communication is less expensive for patrons, some kinds of it, for instance chat, are more expensive for libraries. See note 48.
52. Web forms for SRS/UIUC may be viewed at (accessed July 14, 2004)
53. and for the EurD/LC at (accessed July 14, 2004).
54. Another difference is that the basic chat is totally html based, while the enhanced chat requires that the patrons download software onto their machines and enable Java. In fact, the entire QP system is html-based except for the enhanced chat. For more information on QuestionPoint, see (accessed July 18, 2004).
55. A note of explanation is required: The statistics for the EurD include not only Slavic and East European reference questions, but also those pertaining to Western Europe except for Spain, Portugal, and the UK. Those three are covered by other reading rooms in the Library. Since statistics are not kept for subject or geographic region, only a rough approximation can be made of the number of questions received concerning Slavic and East European studies, that being about 75% of the total.
56. For an eye-opening and entertaining dissenting opinion of the value of digital reference, and of chat in particular, see Jonathan D. Lauer and Steve McKinzie, "Bad Moon Rising: A Candid Examination of Digital Reference and What It Means to the Profession," The Reference Librarian 79/80 (2002/2003): 45-56. The authors believe the profession has gone "bonkers" over digital reference and refer to digital communication tools as "inferior gadgetry."
57. Jana Ronan and Carol Turner, Online summary of Chat Reference, SPEC Kit 273 (Association of Research Libraries, December 2002) (accessed July 30, 2004).
58. Steve Coffman and Linda Arret, "To Chat or Not to Chat: Taking Another Look at Virtual Reference, Part 1," Searcher: The Magazine for Database Professionals 12, no. 7 (July/August 2004): 38-46, (accessed July 2, 2004). This article reviews the history of the competition of commercial versus library virtual reference services and cites usage and cost statistics. It turns out that chat services are quite expensive to set up and maintain.
59. The concept of lag time is discussed in R. David Lankes, "The Digital Reference Fallacy," The Reference Librarian 79/80 (2002/2003): 35-44. Coffman and Arret in "To Chat or Not to Chat," mention the chat experiences of commercial call centers; Lauer and McKinzie, in "Bad Moon Rising," summarize evidence from other published studies that mention the slowness of digital reference.
60. The details about photoduplication and document delivery pertaining to the EurD do not include the methods and services provided by the Library of Congress Photoduplication Service or Collections Access, Loan & Management Division, rather they are meant to elucidate what the librarians in the EurD have at hand to serve patrons directly. Likewise, there is no discussion of the Interlibrary Loan department at the University of Illinois Libraries, only methods and tools for the SRS.
61. Jeffrey Pomerantz and Frederic Stutzman, "Lyceum: A Blogsphere for Library Reference" (Paper presented on panel "Weblog Applications in eLearning, Business and Libraries," Thirteenth International World Wide Web Conference, New York, NY, May 18, 2004), (accessed August 6, 2004).
62. Steven M. Cohen, Keeping Current: Advanced Internet Strategies to Meet Librarian and Patron Needs (Chicago: American Library Association, 2003).
63. Ronan and Turner, Online summary of Chat Reference, SPEC Kit 273.
64. Mentioned in a posting by a librarian in Syracuse,NYto DIG_REF listserv, July 27, 2004.