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These numbers, however, could be considered quite high since only 403 book
titles have come out in the territory of the republic over the last 75 years. The
current publishing policy does not facilitate language preservation either.
Today, the books of small peoples of the North are published in short runs of
500–1000 copies.
In 2008-2010, only 50 titles were published in the languages of the Northern
peoples or dedicated to them, of which eleven items ‐ in Evenki, eight ‐
in Even, seven– in Yukaghir, and one ‐ in Chukchi. These books include
Encyclopedia of Nature, Principles of Organization of the Phonetic System of
the Evenki Language, written by T. Andreeva in the Evenki language, and
Types of Evenki Heroic Sagas gone out of print in the Ethnic Heritage of the
Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples of the Russian North, Siberia and the Far
East series; Grammar of the Even language in Tables and Charts, an e-book by
S. Sharina in Even; etc.
The Library is proud to house donated collections of personal libraries of
such world-known Northern ethnology researchers as Glafira Vasilevich
(1,675 items), Klavdia Novikova (318 items), as well as collections of books
of such famous Northern ethnology researchers as Kh.I. Dudkin (200 items),
Zhanna Lebedeva (150 items) and others.
We believe that success and consistency of our work in this sphere was made
possible largely due to the creation in 1975 of a section of literature of the
northern peoples within the Library’s department of national and ethnological
literature staffed by a senior manager and a librarian, which at present is
unique in Russia. Once established, the section facilitated the launch of targetoriented
work on compiling holdings of literature in the languages of the
small-numbered peoples of the North and its promotion, and setting up library
services to these peoples living in ethnic pockets.
In the years that followed the creation of the section, a project was run to
study the literature read in the languages of the Northern peoples within the
All-Russian experiment on library and bibliographical service to the Northern
peoples. The results of the experiment were used to produce recommendations
on how to optimize library service to the small-numbered peoples of the North.
It was recommended to the publishers to increase, in cooperation with the
library communities, the number of books going out of print in the languages
of these peoples, coordinate their publication and distribution throughout the
northern territories of the country, etc. In those years, the Talking Book project
was carried out and was highly appreciated among the indigenous peoples of
the North, as well as the country’s library community. Under this initiative,
the “narrators” were chosen among the authors who then recorded their
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