There are a number of innate challenges and problems when dealing with Slavic materials, and the internet and digital technology have only exacerbated these challenges. This book provides access to a number of essays that provide case studies for converting the Cyrillic alphabet in the digital environment, as well as current digital projects and archives available electronically.
There are a number of Slavic digital projects represented: the Comintern archives (as both a stand‐alone product and as an online product), a spatial database for large Russian cities, and The Fundamental Digital Library of Russian Literature & Folklore. In addition there are chapters on frequently asked questions regarding Cyrillic multilingual computing as well as selected resources, the Central Eurasian Interactive Atlas Project, copyright law related to Slavic resources, user testing for organizing interpretive texts in the digital arena, guidelines for setting up a Cyrillic OPAC, how to add value to digitized Slavic electronic texts, the grants process in relation to Slavic digitization projects, and digital reference for Slavic and East European Studies looking at current practice at the University of Illinois and the Library of Congress.
Overall, this book fills a large gap in current digital literature regarding a growing and challenging area of the digital environment, that of lingual digitization projects and resources. The Cyrillic language is one of the more challenging of these, as are CJK (Chinese, Japanese and Korean). It is hoped that more of these types of projects will be given greater focus and attention in coming years.
