Description of the Russia Beyond Russia Core Module

The Core Module database serves as the foundation for the multi-modular digital publishing initiative for documenting the Russian Diaspora, the Russia Beyond Russia (RBR) Digital Library. Future modules of the RBR Digital Library are being developed as funding becomes available. André Savine's research, recorded by him on thousands of index cards and notebook pages, serves as the basis for the Core Module. The Core Module database application provides users with Russian language functionalities (search and retrieval), and employs current metadata standards for consistent resource description, discovery, navigation, and maintenance. Text can be displayed either in Cyrillic or transliterated form by selecting the RUSSIAN or ENGLISH or TRANSLITERATE ON records view, located in the upper right corner of the screen. Transliteration follows the Library of Congress transliteration scheme for the Russian alphabet, with the exception of three letters: in the system used here, Ё is transliterated as E", Й as I', and Э as E'. Search functions are available in both Cyrillic and transliteration.

André Savine's Records

Savine's records contain detailed bibliographic descriptions of each title that passed through his hands. These descriptions accompanied by extensive annotations, often including biographical information on the authors, illustrators, and translators of the works, and sometimes on people mentioned in the works. Savine gathered this information from various sources, including published bibliographies, newspaper and journal articles, obituaries, and interviews with members of the Russian Diaspora. In many instances, Savine also preserved oral histories by recording information he received in conversations about both famous and ordinary Russian émigrés.

During the time in which Savine operated his bookstore, there were only a few bibliographies published on Russian emigration, and probably the only relatively comprehensive one was Liudmila Foster's Bibliography of Russian Emigrant Literature, 1918-1968. Many of Savine's sources are rare, and thus his bibliographic descriptions, biographical information, and bibliographic citations are particularly valuable. Savine thought that these cards would serve as a basis for the encyclopedia of Russian emigration he hoped to someday publish.

Core Module Records

Savine used information recorded on the index cards for the annotated catalogs that he distributed to libraries. He recorded more extensive information on standard typing paper sheets, which he compiled in three-ring notebooks along with photocopies of title pages and, sometimes, photocopies of illustrations. Because there are many more index cards than notebook pages, similar records, though not necessarily identical ones, may exist for any given title. In addition, Savine in some cases had multiple cards and/or notebook pages for a particular work. In the Core Module database, information about a title found in these different sources is combined and presented in one record. Some of the sources contain inconsistencies that could impair searching, such as old orthography or typos and other mistakes. In most cases, these inconsistencies have been corrected in the database, to assure users of the most reliable searching functionalities available.

Core Module database records consist of three parts:

Part 1 - Description

For a title that has more than one of Savine's records available, information from them is combined and presented in the Description area as it appears in the original, except that typos are corrected and orthography is modernized. If recognized, any other inconsistencies such as incorrect birth or death dates are documented in the RBR Notes (Примечание RBR) field of Part 1. This aids in information retrieval, as both Part 1 and Part 2 are full-text searchable.

Part 2 - Related Indexes

The Related Indexes portion of a Core Module record consists of index terms defined by the database creators, which are accessible in the browsing ("Index") mode. Numeric values next to an index term indicate the number of occurrences in the database of that particular term. Index terms are linked to individual Core Module records. Each record has a stable URL for citation purposes and for future linking to the University of North Carolina Library catalog records. In the future, we will link these records to digitized full-text content.

Part 3 - Savine's Notebook Pages and Index Cards

The third part of a Core Module record displays images of Savine's notebook page(s) and/or index card(s). On these images, one can see any handwritten notes that are not included in Part 1 of the Core Module record.