Southeast European Collections

UW’s outstanding Balkan collections were established over 40 years ago and have steadily continued to grow and diversify.   Currently, the collection for all of Southeastern Europe numbers some 64,000 volumes, or about 18% of the Libraries’ total holdings for Slavic and East European studies.   Materials pertaining to Serbia-Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia, or unified Yugoslavia constitute nearly one-half of that total, or around 30,000 volumes.  The Bulgarian and Romanian collections are next in extent, at about 13,000 volumes each.   The collections of Slovenian and Macedonian materials number about 4,000 and 2,700 volumes, respectively.

The single greatest event in the development of the Southeast European collections was the Libraries’ involvement in the PL-480 plan for Yugoslavia, a Congressionally sponsored program which liquidated a part of Yugoslavia’s debt to the United States by acquiring currently published books and journals for a select number of American university libraries.  Each of the twelve U.S. libraries participating in the PL-480 Yugoslav program received every book and periodical, and many newspapers published in every republic of the country from 1967 through 1972—by lucky coincidence, one of the most liberal and fruitful periods for publishing in post-war Yugoslavia’s history.

Current collection development emphasizes materials from Serbia-Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Romania, and Bulgaria.   Since the end of the war in Bosnia, efforts are being made to revitalize UW’s Bosnian collection with fresh acquisitions of the most important publications.