Current National Bibliographies in the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Baltic States

Abstract

The dissolution of the USSR created 15 new nations, which are struggling to gain national identity. Twelve are now members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan); the remaining three are the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Many of these former republics had established a regional bibliography but these bibliographies were neither visible nor available to a wide audience. Since independence, ethnic interests are re-emerging and these countries are publishing their current national bibliographies in the language of the country. Titles within the national bibliographies also are appearing in these languages. The national bibliographies still need greater visibility and availability. This article identifies and briefly describes the scope, arrangement, classification scheme and indexes included in the current national bibliography within each country in an attempt to make this information more accessible and available to librarians and researchers.