Call for Applications! 2014 Summer Research Laboratory on Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia
Thank you for participating in the Summer Research Laboratory (SRL) in previous years. The Russian, East European and Eurasian Center is pleased to let you know that the application process is now open for the 2014 Summer Research Lab (June 16-August 8) and for our new, annual Workshop in Scholarly and Literary Translation from Slavic Languages (June 16-20). The Title VIII Program for Research and Training on Eastern Europe and Eurasia – so essential in supporting educational, research, and public service programs like the SRL – did not receive an appropriation for the federal fiscal year 2013. Although there has subsequently been a significant reduction in the amount of grants our center is able to provide, we invite you to apply again and revisit SRL this year.
For more information and to apply, please see the REEEC SRL website.
As you will recall, the Summer Research Laboratory on Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia is open to all scholars with research interests in the Russian, East European and Eurasian region for eight weeks during the summer months. The SRL provides scholars access to the resources of the University of Illinois Slavic collection within a flexible time frame where scholars have the opportunity to seek advice and research support from the librarians of the Slavic Reference Service (SRS). Graduate students and junior scholars will also have opportunity to attend the specialized workshop on scholarly and literary translation.
For graduate students, the SRL provides an opportunity to conduct research prior to going abroad and extra experience to refine research skills. Students will also have the opportunity of seeking guidance from specialized librarians skilled in navigating resources pertaining to and originating from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia.
The SRS is an extensive service that provides access to a wide range of materials that center on and come from: Russia, the Former Soviet Union, Czech and Slovak Republics, Former Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. The International & Area Studies Library, where the Slavic reference collections are housed, contains work stations for readers, a collection of basic reference works, and current issues of over 1,000 periodicals and 110 newspapers in Western and area languages.
The Slavic Reference Service provides access to several unique resources pertaining to the Russian, East European and Eurasian region. Currently, there are plans at the University of Illinois’ to become the first library in the Western Hemisphere to gain access to the Russian State Library’s Electronic Dissertations Database, which contains the full text of nearly 1 million dissertations in a wide variety of fields.
In addition, the SRS provides access to:
- one of the three copies available outside Uzbekistan of the famous 594-volume Turkestanskii Sbornik containing materials on Central Asia prior to 1917;
- recent direct acquisitions from Central Asia which include the complete national bibliography of Kazakhstan (2002-2010) and the complete digitized national bibliography of Uzbekistan (1917-2009), both of which are not held by any other U.S. library;
- perhaps the most complete collection of Russian Imperial provincial newspapers (gubernskie vedomosti) in North America; and
- extensive print, digital, and microform holdings relating to Eastern Europe, including rare materials acquired via Keith Hitchins and other noted scholars.
