Columbia University Libraries

Representative: Robert Davis

Faculty and students at Columbia have access to one of North America’s largest research collections for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian studies—both in the vernacular languages of these regions, as well as in English and Western European languages.  Holdings range chronologically from a late 13th century Serbian royal charter, to the latest monographs from Bucharest.  The Librarian for Russian, Eurasian & East European Studies actively collects new humanistic and social science imprints and electronic materials pertaining to, and in the various vernacular languages of, Albania, Belarus, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Mongolia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia (including some sixty ethnic minority languages), Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. (Armenian materials are the responsibility of the Librarian for Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies). Each year, via approval plans*, gifts, and special acquisitions, Columbia adds thousands of new titles to the collections.  Cooperative partnerships with the Cornell University Library (known as “2CUL Slavic”), and with Princeton, The New York Public Library, and Harvard University Library further expand the resources at the disposal of students and faculty both locally and within the Borrow Direct & Ivy Plus library networks by reducing duplication, and ensuring geographical and linguistic coverage for the entire region.  

Complementing Columbia’s extensive holdings of print materials is Columbia’s Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History & Culture, founded in 1951 and curated today by Tanya Chebotarev.  Named for Boris A. Bakhmeteff (d. 1951), the last ambassador of the Russian Provisional Government to the United States and a longtime professor at Columbia, it is the second largest (after California’s Hoover Institution) repository of manuscript, printed and visual materials related to the Russian and Eastern European émigré communities outside of the homelands.