In the last few weeks, we have received a particularly high number of parcels of new Ukrainian books, and here are 25 of them. Links to their catalogue records follow further down. Improved records will displace in iDiscover later tomorrow (11/2) and classmarks will be added early next week.
A quick post today about some Ukrainian books that arrived just this week.
The Ukrainian Bookshelf Project “provides for the distribution of Ukrainian literature in the original language and its translations in the world’s leading libraries”*, and the University Library has recently benefited from this fantastic and generous scheme. A large delivery coordinated by the Ukrainian Embassy in London and by the British Library has seen books selected first by the BL but then any duplicates to their holdings offered to academic libraries collecting Ukrainian, and Cambridge’s rapid response has seen us benefit most wonderfully with the donation of nearly 50 modern Ukrainian titles.
Continue reading “Donations via the Ukrainian Bookshelf Project”
The Ukrainian city of Kherson has often been in the headlines since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Kherson was occupied in early March 2022, but many of us will remember inspirational footage of its citizens demonstrating against the Russian occupiers, waving Ukrainian flags and singing Ukrainian songs. September saw the Kherson Region (Khersonsʹka oblastʹ) claimed by Russia to have been legally annexed in an internationally condemned move, while Kherson’s liberation by the Ukrainian army took place in November. Recovering from months of occupation and destruction, Kherson then suffered seriously from flooding and pollution caused by the June 2023 destruction of the Kakhovka dam. Continue reading “Kherson poetry : the July 2023 Slavonic item of the month”
As the University’s financial year draws to a close, our department works hard with our various suppliers to try to ensure that books ordered in 2022/23 will arrive before the end of July where at all possible. Our Ukrainian supplier and all their local agents have done an amazing job this year, supplying us with scores of books over the months. Their final 22/23 parcels are currently being unpacked but here are some of their earlier deliveries (on history and cultural history, literature, architecture, and the Russian war) from the late spring and summer.
These books can all be found in iDiscover, but please write to slavonic@lib.cam.ac.uk if you have got any questions.
Mel Bach
The last week saw the terrible news of the death of the writer Victoria Amelina from injuries sustained in the Russian missile attack on a restaurant in Kramatorsk a few days beforehand. Amelina was a celebrated writer and prominent activist and investigator – and the finder of the murdered writer Volodymyr Vakulenko’s hidden war diary. Continue reading “Amelina (1986-2023) and Vakulenko (1972-2022)”
The provider East View has recently started to stock Ukrainian ebooks that libraries can buy (libraries require special licensing), and we recently bought an initial 30 volumes, including a couple of Crimean Tatar titles that I wrote about in another post and don’t cover again here.
All the books listed in the table were published in Kyïv or Kharkiv. Except for a few in English translation, they are all in Ukrainian. The list displays a little clumsily since the blog software doesn’t much like Excel formatting, but I have given rough section headings and there are four columns for the book entries: title, author/editor, date, URL to take Cambridge readers straight into the book. Continue reading “New Ukrainian ebooks : the June 2023 Slavonic items of the month”
This week, another volume was added to the 50-volume Tvory (Works) set by Mykhaĭlo Hrushevs’kyĭ that has been being published since 2002. The new volume said it was v. 34, v. 6, and it contains part of Hrushevs’kyĭ’s epic history of Ukraine-Rusʹ. Having taken the numbers at face value, assigning the number as v. 34(6), I increasingly suspect that the v. 6 referred to on the title page will turn out to be preceded by v. 1-5 in the set’s v. 29-33 rather than all within a massive v. 34. Ah well – labels can be reprinted and metadata updated when we know for sure.
What we have so far in the set is: 1-4(2), 5-11, 13-16, 22-23, 34(6), 46(1-2)-47(1-2), and we have covered their contents in the first of two lengthy contents notes in the set’s record. The second note covers what v. 1 explained would be the subsets the overall set would involve, and we have added the relevant volumes that have turned up under these subsets as they appear (again, v. 34/34(6) seems to be altering the pattern):
Series [1]. Socio-political works. v. 1-4(2). (1894-1926) — series [2]. Historical studies and investigations. v. 5-10(2). (1888-1934) — series [3]. Reviews and overviews. vol. 10(2), 14-16 (1888-1913, 1924-1930) — series [4]. Literary criticism and literary works. v. 11-13 — series [5]. Diaries and memoirs – series [6]. History of Ukraine-Russia. v. 34(6) — series [7]. History of Ukrainian literature — series [8]. Monographic historical works. v. 22-23 — series [9]. Auxiliary materials: directories, indexes, archives. v. 46(1-2)-47(1-2) — series [10]. Epistolary heritage.
Last week, I wrote about a newly rediscovered and catalogued book of works by the Ukrainian poet and fabulist Hlibov and promised an update about the other books Cambridge has by and about him this week.
First, though – his name. Last week’s 1927 book had his name as Leonyd Hlibiv. His standard Ukrainian form is Leonid Hlibov. One of the items we have about him is in Russian, which would normally have him as Leonid Glebov, but it is a pre-revolutionary essay published in 1911 and therefore has pre-reform spelling – so he is Gli︠e︡bov there (technically Gli︠e︡bova since his name is in the genitive form; I have updated the record to give it a modern spelling reference too (Glebova)).
Cambridge University Libraries have four books (three Ukrainian, one Russian) where Hlibov is named in the catalogue record as author or subject: Continue reading “Hlibov books in the catalogue and online”
This morning, I had the satisfaction of solving the problem of a missing Ukrainian book. It hadn’t been missing in the normal library sense of not being on the shelf. Instead it was entirely missing from the catalogue.
A little while ago, a colleague sent me a few photos of covers of Ukrainian literature and history books in the University Library, and among them was this:
I looked up in the catalogue what I saw on the cover – Tvory [Works] by Leonyd Hlibiv. Nothing came up, so I tried to think about what mistakes previous cataloguers might have made, eg Tvori by Leonid Glibiv if they had applied Russian Cyrillic transliteration rules to the Ukrainian Cyrillic here. Again, no results, so then I tried Hlibov (a common version of his name, still in Ukrainian) and then Glibov to cover that version if misidentified as Russian. Nothing. So then I tried the publisher – Si︠a︡ĭvo (a lovely word meaning shining or glittering). Again, no luck. Continue reading “Locating Hlibiv’s ‘Tvory’ : the April 2023 Slavonic item of the month”
Languages across Borders 