Belarusian Language and Literature   Tags: belarus, belarusian, belarusian, language, literature  

This guide aims to provide an introduction to resources for studying Belarusian and some other Slavonic languages.  It aims to help you make use of SOLO, OxLIP+ and OU e-Journals so that you can make the most of Oxford's libraries and electronic resources. A list of other libguides is available and may be of assistance.

Works of Belarusian literature and books about Belarusian language and literature are to be found in the Research Collection of the Taylor Bodleian Slavonic and Modern Greek Library at 47 Wellington Square (TABS).  This library also has a good selection of Belarusian Language and Literature periodicals and reference material.

In order to locate books on the shelves you will need to find out the shelfmark by looking your title up on SOLO.  You will need to transliterate according to the Library of Congress (LC) Transliteration Scheme if you are looking for a Belarusian title on SOLO (although more and more titles are appearing on the catalogue in Cyrillic). When you have looked up your title you can either go to the shelves if a copy is available or you may need to write the LC shelfmark on a slip and ask one of the Issue Desk staff to fetch it for you from the Research Collection in the basement. 

There are two classification schemes at TABS.  New books in the Research collection and  the undergraduate collection are classified according to a standard version of the LC classification scheme used across the Bodleian libraries.  Older books in both collections are classified according to inhouse adaptations of LC.  LC Slavonic  shelfmarks  begine with  the letters PG. They are then numerically subdivided by language and literature.  The Belarusian  sequence begins PG2830.

If you come across a shelfmark beginning TNR or REP. SLAV (or no shelf-mark at all), this means that the book is kept out at the Bodleian Storage Facility (BSF) and you will have to do a stack request.

If you cannot find the book on SOLO, you could try looking for it on COPAC which is a union online catalogue of UK national, academic and specialist libraries.  WorldCat covers libraries throughout the world and includes millions of records representing 400 languages. KVK (Karlsruher virtueller Katalog) is another union catalogue covering academic and national libraries throughout Europe and beyond.

There is a library specialising in Belarusian materials in London the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum.

If you cannot find a particular text in Oxford you may sometimes be able to find it on an electronic library such as Belaruskaia Palichka.  See also section on Finding Ebooks in this guide on electronic libraries.

if you wish to search the catalogue of a Belarusian library such as:

Belarusian national library  The portal is in three languages: Belarusian, Russian and English.

You will need to be able to type in Cyrillic.  It is quite easy to instal a Cyrillic keyboard onto a computer these days.  However, if you do not have access to a Cyrillic keyboard, the Russian search engine Yandex offers a virtual keyboard which you can use when necessary as it has a Belarusian keyboard option.

Other Belarusian search-engines include Akavita and Google Belarus

If you have a specific enquiry relating to Belarusian or Slavonic resources or would like to book an individual appointment for advice about Belarusian or Slavonic resources for your course,please contact:

Nick Hearn (Slavonic Lang. and Lit. Subject Consultant (including Belarusian Lang. and Lit.))

TABS (Taylor Bodleian Slavonic Library), 47, Wellington Square

Monday: 9:00 - 5:00

Tuesday: 9:00 - 5:00

Friday: 2:00 - 5:00

Email: nick.hearn@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Tel: 01865 (2)70462