Petro Jacyk Bibliographer for Ukrainian Collections apppointed at Harvard (12/10/06)

Petro Jacyk Bibliographer for Ukrainian Collections apppointed at Harvard

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute's (HURI) director and Oleksandr Potebnja Professor of Ukrainian Philology, Michael S. Flier, announced the appointment of Olha Aleksic as the new Petro Jacyk Bibliographer for Ukrainian Collections.

In making the announcement Prof. Flier said, "Our library holdings in Ucrainica are extraordinarily rich and varied, attracting scholars from all over the world to work on Ukrainian topics. Currently, the institute's library has 110 serial titles in Ukrainian and Slavic studies, and a reference collection of about 3,300 volumes that help support Ukrainian studies courses offered by the departments of History and Slavic languages and literatures, as well as the Harvard Summer School."

"In addition to the print collections, the library also houses archival and manuscript collections, microfilm and microfiche editions of rare publications, audio and visual material, and ephemera that bear witness to the Ukrainian experience at home and in emigration throughout the 20th century," Prof. Flier continued. "The Ukrainian Collection housed in the Harvard College Libraries consists of 80,000 individual book and serial titles in the humanities and social sciences. Most of the collection is housed in Widener Library, Harvard's main research library."

"Olha Aleksic is a bibliographer of proven talent with more than four years' experience working with acquisitions and collections in Widener Library's Slavic Division and in Technical Services," Prof. Flier said. She will divide her time between the institute's reference library and archival materials, and the ever-expanding Ukrainian collection in Widener Library.

Ms. Aleksic noted the valuable work of her predecessors. "The institute's first librarian, Edward Kasinec, worked untiringly to begin our collection and was able to gather an amazing amount of archival material." "Our second librarian and my immediate predecessor, Ksenya Kiebuzinki, spent more than 15 years reviewing the material as well as adding to it, recording, cataloguing and cross-referencing it within the Harvard system. My job will be to continue the work already undertaken, and, more importantly, to help popularize the collections and make them available both to scholars and the general public."

Ms. Kiebuzinski explained that, "Currently the institute has arranged, described and catalogued all of its archival and manuscript collections including documentary and photographic sources for the study of 20th century Ukrainian history from World War I and the revolutionary years 1917 to 1921, to Ukrainian refugee and émigré life in Europe and the United States following the second world war."

"There is material in the library's archival holdings for the study of the Ukrainian National Republic, the Makhnovite and Hetmanite movements, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the 1932-1933 Famine, Ukrainian displaced persons, Ukrainian American local history, and all aspects of Ukrainian culture," she noted.

Ms. Aleksic is a Lviv native. She graduated from the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv with a degree in English language and literature. Following graduation she worked as an instructor and translator at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. After coming to the United States, she earned a Master of Theological Studies degree from the Harvard Divinity School and a Certificate in Eastern Christian Studies from St. Paul University in Ottawa. She is currently completing an M.S. at the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science in Boston.

"One of the early major projects that I will be tackling and that I am very excited about," Ms. Aleksic said, "is the research, preparation and mounting of a special exhibit in Widener Library in 2009 commemorating the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Poltava and Hetman [Ivan] Mazepa. Harvard's collections are unique on the American continent in that they hold several original documents signed by Hetman Mazepa, which will form the centerpiece of the exhibit."

The Petro Jacyk Bibliographer for Ukrainian Collections position at HURI was funded by a gift from Petro Jacyk in 1979, which he increased in 1998. Currently the holder of the position works half-time on the collections at HURI and half-time at the Slavic Division at Widener Library. Ms. Aleksic's responsibilities include collection development, acquisitions, preservation, reference services, bibliographic instruction and management of special collections, as well as the technical processing of materials, including cataloguing.

Ms. Aleksic is also responsible for acquiring materials in all formats in Ukrainian and other languages published in Ukraine; imprints of the Ukrainian émigré communities and the Ukrainian diaspora. Finally, she advises on Ukraine-related material published outside Ukraine and the diaspora communities; and fills in lacunae of older and out-of-print materials.

All of HURI's collections, as well as those housed in Widener, are accessible either online or via the Internet through the Harvard OnLine Library Information System (HOLLIS) and by the end of this fiscal year will be fully searchable in the Online Archival Search Information System (OASIS). Researchers may also learn about the history and scope of the collections by visiting the library's web pages on the institute's homepage at http://www.huri.harvard.edu/library.html. A Guide to Ukrainian Special Collections at Harvard University will be published in the pages of the Harvard Library Bulletin within the next few months.

Ms. Aleksic will be available at the institute's library on Mondays at 1 to 5 p.m. and on Thursdays and Fridays at 9 a.m.-5 p.m. She can be reached at 617-496-5891 and at [email protected].

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