This guide has benefited from the generous cooperation and assistance of numerous individuals who work in the archives and repositories listed. Without their help the project could not have been completed.
For funds to support the research and writing of the book, we are grateful to the International Education Division of the Office of Education (Department of Health, Education, and Welfare) and especially to the National Endowment for the Humanities, which supplemented its original major grant with additional funds.
For timely advice throughout the project we are deeply indebted to our consultants Dr. Patricia Kennedy Grimsted and the late Dr. Sergius Yakobson. In particular we must thank Dr. Grimsted for her help in preparing our data sheet and for her extremely helpful critical reading of portions of the manuscript.
In the early stages of the project, much research on the spot was performed by Dr. Gilbert S. Doctorow (in the areas of New England and New York City) and especially by Dr. Michael Shaw, on the West Coast.
Several people have assisted with various tasks at different times in the project: Mr. Christopher Crowner, Ms. Susan Eget, and Ms. Nina Beck.
Although it would be impossible to thank individually all those on whose help we relied, we owe special debts of gratitude to the following: Nancy Sahli, George Voght, and the staff of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission; Harriet Ostroff of the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections at the Library of Congress; Stephen Corrsin, Elizabeth Valkenier, and the staff of the Bakhmeteff Archive at Columbia University; Charles S. Palm and the staff of the Hoover Institution Archives; Ronald D. Landa, Charles S. Sampson, and others at the Historical Office of the Department of State; J. Dane Hartgrove and others at the National Archives; and, for information about various ethnic groups, Edward Kasinec, Lubomyr Wynar, Mrs. V. Valaitis, Endel Aruja, and Halyna Myroniuk.
Finally, our greatest debt is to Nancy Nawor Blanpied, who prepared the index, and to William Bruce Pitt, who edited her work. The Stakhanovite effort which Nancy gave to this laborious task deserves more thanks than these few words can convey. Molodets!
The two main guides used for locating collections were the Library of Congress's The National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (1959- ) and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission's Directory of Archives and Manuscript Repositories (1978). Also consulted were Philip M. Hamer, A Guide to Archives and Manuscripts in the United States (1961), and the various guides prepared in the 1930s and 1940s by the Historical Records Survey, a unit of the Uorks Projects Administration. Most information on Armenian manuscripts was taken directly from Avedis K. Sanjian, A Catalogue of Medieval Armenian Manuscripts in the United States (1976). Seymour de Ricci and William J. Wilson, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada (1935, 1962) was also helpful in finding materials. Lubomyr Wynar and Lois Butler, Guide to Ethnic Museums, Libraries, and Archives in the United States (1978) and Philip P. Mason, Directory of Jewish Archival Institutions (1975) provided information on ethnic organization archives. For music manuscripts, the basic reference work was Otto E. Albrecht, A Census of Autograph Music Manuscripts of European Composers in American Libraries (1953)—revised edition in preparation. Steven A. Grant, Scholars' Guide to Washington D.C. for Russian/Soviet Studies (1977) was used for research in the Washington area and contains information not included in this book. Many of the other guides used in this book are cited in Frank B. Evans, Modern Archives and Manuscripts: A Select Bibliography (1975).
The database version of the guide is being maintained by the Slavic Reference Service with significant contributions by Erika Weir. The current web-based interface was developed by Tom Habing and is hosted by the Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
