Today Ukrainians remember the shock of the air strikes in the early hours of 24 February 2022 that heralded Russia’s full-scale invasion of their country and mark the appalling destruction and loss that continue to this day.  A great deal has been written across the world about Russia’s move from the previous 8 years of conflict to this open war (“special military operation”) but in this post we focus on what has been written specifically by Ukrainians, including new translations into English.

Interest in the Ukrainian language outside the country leapt following Russia’s assault, as awareness of Ukrainian culture and identity grew and as those working with and hosting refugees from the war worked to gain at least basic knowledge of the language.  But the many resources we collect in the UL in Ukrainian to capture Ukrainians’ experience of the devastating war will still have a fairly small audience, so we try to pick up translations into English as much as possible too, so that all our library readers have the chance to hear directly from those facing the attack.

Continue reading “24.02.2022 in the words of Ukrainians” →

The University Library’s financial year runs from August to July, so the 2022/23 year has finished only recently.  After the frenzy of last-minute chasing for invoices in late July, this is now a good time to look back on what we have acquired over the year.

In order to look at books the UL has acquired about Ukraine, I performed various searches based on a subject search for Ukrain* – the asterisk at the end allows the search to find Ukraine and Ukrainian, etc.  That search does depend on the cataloguing being complete which won’t be the case yet for everything acquired during the year just finished.  My searches also included the 1st of August 2022 as the creation date for the physical item record (for print material) and for the electronic portfolio (for electronic material). Continue reading “Ukraine-related acquisitions in 22/23” →