Hilandar Research Library

Collection Development Policy

Introduction

The Hilandar Research Library (HRL) houses the largest collection of medieval and medieval heritage Slavic Cyrillic manuscripts on microform in the world. Holdings include over a million microfilmed pages from more than 100 original, primarily European collections, including portions of several collections from the active monastic republic of Mount Athos (Greece). In the late 1960s, the monks of the Serbian Orthodox Hilandar Monastery, one of the three Slavic Orthodox monasteries on the predominantly Greek Orthodox Holy Mount, requested assistance in preserving a record of the manuscripts and documents in their library and making it accessible to scholars worldwide. This request led to the creation of the Hilandar Research Project (1969-1984), and the eventual establishment in 1984 of the HRL of the University Libraries and the Resource Center for Medieval Slavic Studies (RCMSS) of the College of Arts and Sciences, the latter, a non-national center providing broad interdisciplinary research support for the promotion of medieval Slavic studies. Thanks to the initiative of the monks of Hilandar Monastery and the HRL/RCMSS, for the first time, women—barred from the Holy Mount since the 10th century—were able to access this invaluable written record of the cultural heritage of the Orthodox Slavs.

The manuscripts on microfilm in the HRL from the Slavic Athonite monasteries of Hilandar, Zograf (Bulgarian), Panteleimon (Russian), and from the non-Greek collection of the oldest monastery on Mount Athos, Great Lavra—reflecting the diversity of its history and inhabitants as well as its diplomatic and spiritual interactions with the rest of the world—include materials in Slavic (Serbian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Macedonian, Russian), Wallacho-Moldavian (Romanian), Greek, Georgian, Ottoman Turkish, etc. Even after fifty years since the establishment of the Hilandar Research Project, the materials most frequently consulted by scholars are those that represent approximately 80 percent of the extant Slavic material found in monasteries on the Holy Mount.

In support of its teaching mission, the HRL is working to expand its modest collection of original Orthodox Christian, primarily Slavic and Byzantine manuscripts, fragments, and early printed books. The HRL serves a worldwide constituency, and successful collection development has led to its being recognized as a leading resource for medieval Slavic (primarily Cyrillic) manuscript and early printed book material in the world. It is also renowned for its reference collection of more than 10,000 volumes supporting wide-ranging interdisciplinary research on medieval Slavic topics in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Additional collections of photographs, slides, archival collections and iconographic artwork contribute to an understanding of the Eastern Christian milieu in which the primary sources were created.

Slavic and East European Studies in the United States is broadly conceived to include the former Soviet Union (including the Caucasus, Baltic states, and Central Eurasia), as well as the Balkans and East Central Europe. With the requisite knowledge of the related languages, history and culture, the HRL also serves as the Special Collections repository for Slavic and East European studies materials in a wider range of subject matter and time frame, for example, the correspondence from 1944-1958 of Constantin Fotitch, Ambassador to Washington of the Yugoslav Royal government-in-exile; half a dozen examples of early 20th-century Russian pulp fiction; the records of the Society for Slovene Studies; as well as books from the libraries of Ohio State faculty members who were specialists in Estonian and Lithuanian literature, 19th-century Russian philosophy, modern Serbian poetry, etc.

Mission

It is the primary mission of the HRL to create access to and to preserve medieval Slavic (primarily Cyrillic) and medieval Slavic heritage materials and to support the research, teaching and study of these materials through the acquisition of necessary primary and secondary sources, including monographs, journals, images, archival collections, etc. To accomplish this mission, the HRL works closely with the RCMSS, and other units within the University Libraries and The Ohio State University.

The HRL also collects rare, distinctive and special materials related to specific Slavic programs at the university such as the Kenneth E. Naylor Memorial Lecture in South Slavic and Balkan Linguistics, the Serbian Educational Alliance, the Slovene Research Initiative, and Global Arts and the Humanities Discovery Themes, and in support of the research agenda of campus constituents associated with, for example, the departments of History, Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, and the Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies.

It is also a collection development goal to ensure that a first-rate reference collection pertaining to Cyrillic (and Glagolitic) manuscripts and medieval Slavic culture is readily available. As the premier center for study of the medieval Slavic cultural tradition, the HRL acquires specialized modern scholarly print and microform resources also as part of the land-grant mission of Ohio State to support regional, national, and international scholarship.

In support of its unique Pimen M. Sofronov Collection, a 20th-century Old Ritualist [Library of Congress subject heading "Old Believer"] iconographer’s archives and library, the HRL collects scholarship related to Old Believers from the 17th century to the present, including Old Believer migration to the United States (e.g., Alaska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania), as well as icon patterns, pattern books, resources related to the iconographic tradition from Byzantine times to the present, with an ongoing goal of collecting photographs of Sofronov iconographic work in the U.S. and abroad. The Old Believers are the Eastern Orthodox Christians who maintained the liturgical practices and beliefs before the Schism that resulted from the reforms in the Russian Orthodox Church by Patriarch Nikon of Moscow (1652-1666), for which they were subsequently suppressed and suffered severe persecution.

Whether acquired via purchase or donation, individual acquisitions decisions are based on a proposed item’s or collection’s relevance to the collection development policy; its relationship to materials already in the collection; its near- and long-term scholarly and pedagogical utility; its ability to support University Libraries’ commitment to promoting social justice, diversifying its collections, and offering users different cultural and historical perspectives; and potential continuing costs related to its ongoing stewardship (preservation, housing, etc.).

Scope

Primary source materials

  • original Slavic and Byzantine manuscripts and fragments (primarily as teaching tools);
  • appropriate facsimiles of such material as well as facsimiles of other palaeoslavic alphabets such as the Eastern Glagolitic and Western Croatian Glagolitic;
  • archival collections of prominent scholars from relevant fields of Slavic and East European Studies;
  • support of and contribution to digitization projects of Slavic manuscript materials according to long-term preservation standards of microform storage;
  • Areas for future growth:
    • Acquisition of some original Ethiopic (Coptic and Ge’ez) fragments and manuscripts as representative of another Christian Orthodox manuscript tradition. Examples of such materials from a private collection have already been used in lectures and courses since 2018.
    • Oral histories of modern travelers to Hilandar Monastery and the other Eastern Orthodox monasteries on Mount Athos in northeastern Greece.
    • Image collections of faculty and students from research and travel abroad in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the 20th century.

Secondary source and reference materials

  • descriptions of Slavic Cyrillic manuscripts and early Cyrillic imprints, either singly or of entire collections;
  • dictionaries, journals and other reference tools pertaining to medieval Slavic (and Byzantine) language, history, religion, manuscript/book culture, literature, etc.;
  • materials related to the Eastern Orthodoxy (including Byzantine, Wallacho-Moldavian, etc.) inasmuch as medieval Slavic heritage developed as part of a larger Byzantino-Slavic cultural commonwealth and milieu;
  • materials related to Hilandar Monastery and the Slavic presence on Mount Athos, Greece;
  • materials related to the Old Ritualists (Old Believers) from the 17th century to the present;
  • materials related to religious and liturgical scholarship concerning Eastern Orthodoxy, including recent trends in scholarship such as the relationship between image and texts, e.g., religious art (frescoes and icons) depicting scenes from manuscript texts, iconography and icon patterns, etc.
  • gifts-in-kind of appropriate material as reflected above in this Policy.

Other Slavic material of more recent date is accepted by the HRL, provided

  • the material is related to one or more Slavic cultures supported by HRL materials and collections;
  • and, acceptance of the material may have positive development implications;
  • and, material is unique and limited in extent.


Transfers

For consideration of the transfer of general stacks materials to the Hilandar Research Library, contact the appropriate curator to evaluate the items and determine on a case-by-case basis regarding acceptance of the material into Special Collections.