Strengthening Modern Greek Collections

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Modern Greek at the Library of Congress: A Brief Overview

Harold M. Leich,
European Division, The Library of Congress

We estimate that the Library of Congress currently holds around 70,000 volumes in Modern Greek or about post-1821 Greece in other languages. The size of LC's Greek collection overall is around 175,000 volumes (books and bound serials), and includes substantial holdings relating to the Classical period and Byzantium. There are also selected areas of strength in "non-book" materials such as maps, photographs, manuscripts, sound recordings, and motion pictures. In general, the Library's collections from and relating to Modern Greece are among the most comprehensive in the United States, despite some major gaps and weaknesses.

Our Modern Greek book and periodical collections are the strongest in the social science and humanities disciplines,
particularly in the "core" areas of history, geography, anthropology/ethnology/archaeology, economics, political science, law, language, literature, linguistics, philosophy, religion, and the performing and visual arts. We collect less comprehensively in the scientific and technological disciplines, and virtually not at all in technical agriculture and clinical medicine, for which the United States maintains separate national libraries. We exclude certain categories of materials from our acquisitions intake -- children's literature, textbooks below the university level, most translations, unrevised new editions, reprints, most pamphlets, off-prints, and technical reports. Finally, in the area of belles lettres, the Library collects much more selectively than many large American libraries -- our aim is to collect the best and most significant new works of fiction, drama, and poetry that appear in Greece, although it is difficult to know ahead of time what will emerge down the road as "the best" literature (demonstrating that book selection in libraries is still more art than science).

Researchers of Greek topics at the Library of Congress also benefit from what we may term the "cumulative" or "overlap" effects of the large size and comprehensive nature of the Library's collections from virtually all countries of the world, and in practically every subject. This means simply that, because the Library has maintained comprehensive acquisitions programs on a universal, world-wide basis, researchers have access to scholarship from all over the world about their target countries, regions, and topics. So the researcher in Modern Greek history or literature has access to current and past research on Greece emanating from Western Europe, the Islamic world, China and Japan, Latin America, etc., as well as from the United States and from Greece itself.

Despite the size of our Modern Greek collection, there are some significant lacunae, particularly in periodicals and serials overall (where in a number of cases we lack significant titles completely or have only scattered holdings), in individual works of literature, and in original scholarly and literary publications from before 1945. This is primarily because the Library's collection development efforts and budgets have always focused on acquiring current publications, rather than retrospective ones -- and comprehensive collecting of Modern Greek publications in all social science and humanities fields did not begin in earnest until the post-World War II period.

To describe briefly our acquisitions methods, we have a general approval plan for current monographs with the Athens dealer Hestia and an approval plan for legal materials with Sakkoulas in Athens. We use the firm of Eleftheroudakis in Athens as our subscription agent for current Greek periodicals and newspapers. Finally, we have a special service agreement with an individual in Athens to provide Greek government publications, non-trade publications, certain categories of ephemeral publications, and the publications of local scholarly bodies such as museums and libraries. We also have direct exchanges with 67 Greek libraries, museums, and other institutions -- our largest exchanges are with the Bank of Greece; the National Statistical Service of Greece; the Aristotelian University in Thessaloniki; and the Greek Ministry of Culture. A number of institutions, including the Greek Embassy here in Washington, generously provide us gift copies of a number of important current Greek publications on a continuing basis.

The Library has not had a Modern Greek specialist since the late 1970s. Current collection development is handled by Mrs. Theresa Papademetriou of the Law Library. The actual operation and monitoring of approval plans, periodical subscriptions, and exchanges is handled by the Central and East European Acquisitions Division. Until his untimely death in late 1997, Mr. David H. Kraus, assistant chief of the European Division, coordinated the Library's Modern Greek acquisitions and reference efforts, and the existing strengths of the collections can be traced in large measure to his efforts, commitment, and support over a period of many years, 1972-1997.

Routine reference assistance and bibliographic inquiries relating to Modern Greece are handled by Mrs. Papadimitriou or by the reference and specialist staff of the European Division, which maintains a small (due to space limitations) collection of Greek reference books. In addition, the Library's General Collections in the Jefferson and Adams Buildings (our "main stacks"), which house virtually all of the 19th and 20th century Greek publications, including a number of important reference sources, are readily accessible to European Division staff.

We are literally the Library "Of Congress," and our first and overriding responsibility is to serve the informational needs of Representatives and Senators, their staffs and committees. Nevertheless, our largest single category of users are academic researchers -- professors, graduate students, college students, and independent scholars, who use the Library's collections for original research. Since we are open for use to all adults (no pre-registration, or letters of referral are required, and no fees are charged for basic library services), we also experience heavy use by the general public, particularly by persons residing in the Washington, DC area. One example of heavy use by the general public is the area of genealogy and of publications related to emigration to the U.S. from Greece and the large Greek-American community. We also, of course, welcome researchers from Greece itself, and over the years have had as readers a number of distinguished Greek scholars and bibliographers, including the former national librarian of Greece, Panayotis Nicolopoulos, a rare book specialist, and Thomas Papadopoulos, Librarian of the Library of the Boule.

Let me say a few words about accessing bibliographic information about the Library of Congress' holdings and collections. The Library introduced computerized cataloging in the mid-1960s for English-language publications, and for publications in other languages and scripts by the late 1970s. All cataloging is currently done only in computer form. In addition, the millions of publications cataloged in the pre-computer era now have brief but searchable computerized records that permit on-line searching. For several years the general Library of Congress catalog has been accessible via the LC website. Later this year the Library will introduce an entire new system (the ILS or integrated library system) which will also be accessible remotely (http://catalog.loc.gov) and which will provide greatly expanded and upgraded capabilities for searching the bibliographic data about our holdings.

We see this conference as a real starting point for greatly increased cooperation between Greek and American libraries. We hope these meetings result in concrete projects in the areas of cooperative microfilming (or digitizing); new or expanded exchanges of library materials in both directions, to enrich existing collections and fill gaps; preparation of basic lists of fundamental reference materials, periodicals, newspapers, literary collections, etc. From the point of view of the Library of Congress, we will be suggesting a few specific proposals: microfilming/digitizing the Adamantios Koraes manuscript materials held in the Jefferson collection at the Library of Congress and at the Koraes Library on the island of Chios. We will be asking some of our Greek colleagues for assistance in acquiring (whether in hard copy or via microform or digital versions) those basic general and literary periodicals and journals which we lack in our collections. And finally we hope to receive an increasing number of lists of materials offered by our Greek partners on exchange, in order to begin the process of filling in retrospective gaps in our monograph collections.

In conclusion, let me say that this conference represents an important step on the way to greater cooperation and sharing of information about Modern Greek library materials. I can assure you that, as the national library of the United States, the Library of Congress is committed to maintaining and developing its Modern Greek collections and to making them widely accessible by a variety of means both traditional (inter-library loan; in-person visits; telephone reference queries) and modern (e-mail reference queries; digitization of individual items and entire collections). The Library is also strongly committed to resource sharing and cooperation with other American libraries with important Greek holdings -- and with institutions in Greece itself. Perhaps the problematic issue of retrospective gaps in our Modern Greek collection can finally be solved in meetings such as this and by networking with colleagues around the U.S., in Greece, and elsewhere in the world where there is interest in Greece.

See also David Kraus' essay Modern Greek Collections at the Library of Congress.