GLEETT - University of Washington

ALA tuTval 1985 fere Papers
Slvica at Yale before World War II
1jaxds the eed of the last century ani the beginning of this century,
as Yale 1lee develçed into a University, its library started to giw
acoordixqly. The main source of grwth of the library at that time seenm
to have been gifts. The material aoguired at that time, as today, was
mainly that connected with courses given or with existing research,
although enthiaticn of the holdings theeselves do not necessarily prove
this observation.
Focusing on one particular collection is not easy. Yale's use of its
won, older classification schese, nt othined with the Library of
Congress cataloguing systen, created great difficulty In determining the
size of total holdings and, even sore so, of the holdings of a given
collection within the whole Yale Library systee. Of 1rse, this is the
case in any and all dntralized libraries, even if they are organized
under head. Still, it is possible to say that today Yale has ca. seven
sdllion volumes, and to estlirate that ca. 250,000 of these are Slavic and
East European materials.
The begipnings of what ws , call the Slavic and East European
Cbl1ecti go back to th. last century and to Joel Sun'ner Smith, who
graduated frcn Yale in 1854 eM served as a cataloguer and then assistant
librarian at Yale University Library frm 1894 to 1903, aM donated his
uraisual collection of Slavica to the Library. .1. S. Smith was one of the
rare atndenta, at the time, of Slavic laoguages and literatures. Although
his proper field was saisic, an interest in Slavic sbxties led him to
collecting and prrwhasing material connected with this area, and he
aonzrulated an IDç%ressive nocleus of Ca. 6,000 volumes, mainly in
Russian, pertaining chiefly to literatm, language, history, geograhy, and
bibliograIy. it the mast lxtçortant works in his collection are
governmental serial publicatic and those of learned societies. Although
predninantly Russian, Smith's collections included such vital Polish
iteus as Esterreither's bibliogray, Linde's dictionary of the Polish
language (1810-14), aM other 19th century Polish poblications, as well as
isportant materials frce other Slavic countries. Smith's colleague, the
University Librarian Milson Van Htni, described the transaction is the
ronoving words:
3ib1t this time (1886], he entered on the work of making a
carefully chosen collection of Russian books, and for the next ten
years he devoted a large part of his salary, practically his only
source of iine, to this thject. In 1896, when the collection had
reached such cce,leteness as he felt able to give it, and rambered
ea six thousand volumes, he printed a catalogue and gave it all
to the University Library.
Smith's interest in the Slavic Field also resulted in articles on the
subject by him, which were p.blished in the $atio and the te.r Fu1ander.
He also did sai translations, mainly of Russian poetry. His translation of
A. Nekrasov's "-Nosed Frost" was blisbed in 1886 (Boston: Tichner).
A second, 1887 edition was illustrated by William J. Linton, who was also
the first to translated Mickiewicz 's "ode do alodosci" (Ode to youth).
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