The Russia Beyond Russia (RBR) Digital Library

The Russia Beyond Russia (RBR) Digital Library is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to documents and images related to the study of the Russian Diaspora. In June 2005, the University Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the creation of the Core Module of the RBR Digital Library (RBR-CM).

The RBR Core Module database provides access to the research on Russian émigré life done by the late André Savine and recorded by him on thousands of index cards and notebook pages. This information helped Savine to manage both his antiquarian bookstore and his private collection on Russian emigration. In 2002, the University of North Carolina acquired his collection and named it the André Savine Collection. It contains more than 60,000 items, including books, serials, manuscripts, and other archival material.

Materials in the André Savine Collection have not yet been cataloged, and are therefore currently unavailable to library patrons. However, the University of North Carolina has received a second grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for cataloging the more than 1,600 periodicals in the collection. This project began on January 1, 2008, and will end on June 30, 2010. An additional gift from donors Kay and Van Weatherspoon will be used to catalog approximately three-quarters of the monographs in the collection. The monographic cataloging project will begin on July 1, 2008, and will end on June 30, 2010. As soon as any item in the collection is cataloged, it will be immediately available to patrons in the library's Rare Book Collection, even before the cataloging projects are concluded.

Once materials in the collection are cataloged, records in the library's online catalog will be linked to individual RBR-CM records. Thus, materials in the collection could be located via the library's main catalog, WorldCat, the Internet, and through the RBR-CM. In the future, records from both the library's online catalog and the RBR-CM will be linked to online, digitized content of the collection. We plan to start digitization of the collection's content when cataloging is completed and funding becomes available.

The University Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill supports the Russia Beyond Russia Digital Library and the Core Module database. The Library is committed to the long-term availability of this collection and its online records as part of the Carolina Digital Library and Archives.