InfoGuides: Core Sources in Russian, Former Soviet Union, and Eastern European History: Find Books and Imprints

Library Catalogs

Mason Library Catalog
Search for print and electronic books, films, music and more.
WRLC Catalog
Search the Washington Research Library schools book collections for titles not owned by Mason.
Center for Research Libraries
The University Libraries is a member of The Center for Research Libraries (CRL). This international consortium of university, college, and independent research libraries provides our scholars with deep and diverse collections including many foreign language and ethnic newspapers as well as many archival collections available via microfilm.

WorldCat This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Provides records of any type of material cataloged by OCLC member libraries, such as books, music, videos, microform, digital content, and medieval manuscripts. Tutorial for the WorldCat database.

To find books in a catalog, try searching for your keywords and one of these LC Subject Headings for primary sources.

--correspondence; --description and travel; --interviews; --maps; --narratives; --collections; sources; --pictorial works; --diaries; --biography, --quotations; --discovery and exploration

Major Collections

Russian literature online
A collection of Russian literature, for the purpose of studying and improving knowledge of the Russian language.
Russian Library of Classics
An extensive collection of Russian literature, in Russian for the most part, with some English translations.

ACLS Humanities E-Books This link opens in a new window
Searchable collection of scholarly books in the humanities by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) in collaboration with thirty-one learned societies, over 100 contributing publishers, and the Michigan Publishing division at the University of Michigan Library.

American Theological Library Association (ATLA) Historical Monographs Collection: Series 1 This link opens in a new window
Collects titles from the 13th century through the 1893 World Parliament of Religions with the majority of titles from the 19th century. Covers diverse topics such as philosophy, the evolutionary debate, the Reformation, spiritualism, prayer, ancient linguistics, archaeology, devotionals, and ethics. Includes many volumes in Aramaic, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, and other languages , documenting the recovery of languages used during the biblical era and provides an in-depth view of the way that biblical languages emerged during the nineteenth century.
Tutorial for the ATLA Historical Monographs Collection database.
American Theological Library Association (ATLA) Historical Monographs Collection: Series 2 This link opens in a new window
Collects titles published from 1894 through 1923 that address subjects including the conflict between religion and science, the growing interest in Eastern religions and other world religions, and significant shifts in the religious identification of Americans.
Tutorial for the ATLA Historical Monographs Collection database.

Using Books as Primary Sources

To find books in a catalog, try searching for your keywords and one of these LC Subject Headings for primary sources.

correspondence
personal narratives
interviews
sources
pictorial works
diaries
maps
biography
narratives
quotations
collections

From one vantage point, books are the quintessential secondary source: scholars use primary source materials such as letters and diaries to write books, which are in turn secondary sources. However, books can also be a rich source of primary source material. In some instances, as in the case of published memoirs, autobiographies, and published documents, it is easy to determine when a book functions as a primary source.

But even secondary source materials can function as primary sources. Take, for instance, Lytton Strachey’s famous history of nineteenth century England, Eminent Victorians, first published in 1918. On one hand, Eminent Victorians is a secondary source, a history of English society and culture in the 1800s based on Strachey's research and analysis of primary sources. On the other hand, a present-day scholar could treat Eminent Victorians itself as a primary source, using it to to analyze the mores and attitudes of Lytton Strachey and the early twentieth century English intelligentsia of which he was a part.