The Idea of the Comprehensive Research Collection,the Perils of “Linguistic Impoverishment,” and Print Publications in the Turkic Languages of the North Caucasus, 1806-2017 (Part II) |
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| Authors: | Kit Condill |
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| Institution: | 1. International &2. Area Studies Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USAcondill@illinois.edu |
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| Abstract: | ABSTRACTAfter several centuries of intensive collection development activity, the major research library collections of North America and Western Europe, taken as a whole, can be expected to provide reasonable coverage for all of the world’s languages and peoples. One might also expect that any two languages with a similar number of speakers and a similar publishing output might have similar profiles in terms of the amount and quality of materials available to scholars in Western library collections. For the Turkic peoples of the North Caucasus (Kumyks, Karachais, Balkars, Nogais, and a few others), however, this is not the case. This article (which is Part II of a three-part series) demonstrates that, despite the scholarly value, intrinsic interest, and potential geopolitical significance of publications in North Caucasus Turkic languages, these publications are severely under-represented in Western libraries and, relatedly, in Western scholarship about religion, politics, history, culture, war and revolution on the northern perimeter of the Muslim world. Print and online bibliographic resources for the study of the Turkic peoples of the North Caucasus are considered, and are used selectively to assess the strength of Western library collections. Part I of this article appeared in the previous issue of Slavic & East European Information Resources (vol. 18, nos. 3–4). |
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| Keywords: | Research collections sources scholarship Turkic languages North Caucasus Daghestan Kumyk Karachai-Balkar Nogai |
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