Strengthening Modern Greek Collections

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The Ohio State University Modern Greek Program

Beau David Case
Head, European and Linguistics Collections

I. The Modern Greek Program

The Ohio State University (OSU) (http://www.osu.edu) was founded in 1870. Today it resides in the state capitol of Columbus, a city populated by seven hundred thousand. The university is among the largest in North America, having 170 degree programs and 50,000 students. Although OSU is best known for its agriculture, engineering, science, medicine, and athletic programs, the university is also home to many world-class arts and humanities programs. One of the rising stars of the university is the Modern Greek Program. The astrological metaphor is apt, as the Modern Greek Program has begun much the same as a Big Bang: from out of nothing, greatness was born. The university had no role in the creation of the program: rather, the Greek-American community raised money for the establishment of a Professor of Greek at the university in 1976.

Today the Modern Greek Program resides within the Department of Greek & Latin, which is one of two schools in North America that offers baccalaureate, master s, and doctorate degrees in ancient, Byzantine, and Modern Greek. The Modern Greek faculty includes ten scholars encompassing the fields of art, economics, history, linguistics (2), literature (3), music, and theatre. The Department of Greek & Latin includes an additional fifteen faculty specializing in ancient Greek archaeology, history, literature, philosophy, and religion. The Modern Greek Program is best characterized by cutting-edge, often controversial, yet award-winning scholarship and teaching. The faculty also are extremely productive: in the 1990 s alone the Modern Greek faculty authored over one hundred publications. Recently a lecture and conference series was endowed, so that each year many important scholars and Greek celebrities can deliver papers at the university and be offered a lively forum for their ideas.

II. The Modern Greek Library Collection

The OSU Library (http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/) is the eighteenth largest research library in North America, with over seven million volumes, thirty-six thousand print periodicals subscriptions, and an additional ten thousand electronic journal and database subscriptions. Despite this general wealth, the shoestring budget that characterized the creation of the Modern Greek academic program became a model for the library, which, sadly, first began purchasing Modern Greek materials in 1981 with a meager annual budget of nine hundred dollars. In 1996, the date of my arrival at the library, the budget had grown to nineteen hundred dollars. Today, through my efforts, the annual monographs budget is fifteen thousand dollars, and the serials budget is approximately five thousand dollars.

However, these sums are still inadequate to support the important and prolific scholars of the Modern Greek Program. This lack of finances to build the collection is our greatest concern. The only remedy is support from outside sources. In 1976 there was no Modern Greek library collection--merely a few English translations of Kazantzakis on the shelves. Today the collection includes eighteen thousand volumes in the Modern Greek language covering arts and humanities subject areas; seven thousand volumes in the subject of Modern Greek history; and thirteen thousand volumes in the subject of Modern Greek literature. Moreover, the library maintains nearly one hundred periodicals subscriptions relating to Byzantine and Modern Greek studies. These figures may seem small, but one must keep in mind that the library only very recently had sufficient funding to build a collection. Beginning in 1996, the OSU Libraries Modern Greek literature collection annually began to grow by over two thousand volumes. Three times in this three-year period we have run out of shelf space, and have subsequently had to transfer to storage the adjoining Germanic linguistics collections in order to make more room on the shelves (currently Germanic linguistics is not a major focus of research at the university). Also beginning in 1996 a significant portion of the budget has been spent on acquiring copies of vital out of print reference books from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Most all of these titles are not available second-hand, so the library has to make archival microfilm or acid-free photocopies: in both cases, the expense is tremendous.

Our work on this project is nearly complete, and soon we can begin to devote our entire budget to Modern Greek literature. The literature collection is already growing most rapidly relative to other Greek subjects for three reasons. First, building the literature collection is our priority. The bulk of our budget will be devoted to this area of Modern Greek studies. Second, OSU Greek faculty and students bear gifts at the beginning of each academic year--most being the latest critically-acclaimed novels and volumes of poetry. Additional small gifts also regularly come from Greek scholars abroad who appreciate the work of our program s scholars. Third, the OSU Library and the University of Cincinnati Library (UC) have begun an informal agreement, whereby OSU concentrates upon acquiring Greek language and literature, and the UC concentrates upon Greek-language imprints in other subject areas. Driving the agreement is the OhioLINK consortium (http://www.ohiolink.edu), and its user-driven interlibrary loan system. OSU and UC library users can search the collective OhioLINK online library catalog, locate Greek-language books at their sister school, and then request online that the books be delivered to their offices on their campus the next business day--all free of charge.

OSU Libraries is building two special collection relevant to Byzantine and Modern Greek studies. The first is our Cypriot collection. We participated in the Farmington Plan, collecting Greek Cypriot materials. We continue our efforts in this area. Additionally, we also began collecting Turkish Cypriot materials in the 1980 s, including monographs, serials, and special materials such as propaganda. Our second special collection is the Hilandar Research Library, the largest collection of medieval Cyrillic manuscripts on microform in the Western Hemisphere. The collection hold more than four thousand manuscripts from more than seventy-three different monastic, private and national collections in twenty countries. Of special note are the more than twelve hundred manuscripts from monasteries on Mount Athos, Greece, including the entire collection of Hilandar Monastery. For further information about the Hilandar Research Library, contact Predrag Matejic, Curator, matejic.1@osu.edu.

III. The Needs of the Modern Greek Program's Faculty and Students (Proposals for Consideration at this Conference

The faculty and students of the OSU Modern Greek program offer several suggestions for improving Modern Greek studies in the United States.

1. Financial support. There is decreasing support for foreign language area studies in American universities and libraries. We cannot expect another budget increase for many years to come; nor can we be certain that our current funding level will be maintained in the future. We thus must begin to turn to outside sources for funding. As a first step we must identify American, Greek, and other international organizations who would be willing to support the building of Modern Greek library collections in the United States.

2. Creation of an adequate book distribution system from Greece to the United States. OSU Library is not alone in expressing their frustration with vendors of Greek-language books. Only one-third of the orders we place with Greek distributors are fulfilled. Recently we turned to an American distributor, and although we are pleased with the two-thirds fulfillment rate for Greek-language materials, we would like to avoid the extra cost of using such a middleman. We thus propose that a list of reliable, inexpensive Greek book distributors be developed and approved officially by Greek and American government and library agencies.

3. National coordination of Greek periodicals acquisitions and archiving. The bulk of Greek intellectual achievement over the centuries is contained within periodicals. Few American libraries have current subscriptions to Greek journals, newspapers, and magazines; even fewer have substantial runs of back issues of periodicals. We propose: (a) that a union list of current and historical Greek periodicals be created; (b) that American libraries divide up collecting responsibility for esoteric titles, thus assuring that at least one library holds each title; and (c) that historical periodicals be microfilmed or archived in an electronic format.

4. Free access to Greek materials in the United States. There are significant Greek collections in the United States, but scholars have limited access to those materials due to non-lending policies, or to interlibrary loan charges, which often are passed on directly to students and faculty. We propose that the major Modern Greek collections in North America create interlibrary loan arrangements so that Greek-language materials be borrowed and loaned among the consortium, and be so free of charge.