General References: Machine‐Readable Bibliographies and Data Sources

Abstract

This article reprints selected excerpts from Wojciech Zalewski's contribution to the first volume in the Bowker‐Saur's short‐lived Area Studies Guides series. This volume summarized recent research on the former Soviet Union in ten broad subject areas, such as land and people, history, the economy, society and culture, government and politics, science and technology, business, and general reference. International specialists in each field reviewed key titles and authors and provided extensive, annotated bibliographies. This excerpt omits Zalewski's list of “general reference” works, concentrating instead on the author's prescient comments about the transformative effects of computerization on the field of bibliography in general, and Soviet area studies in particular. In the conclusion to his brief survey of the state of the field on the eve of the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union, Stanford's Slavic curator adumbrates the necessity of developing “new bibliographical skills” and notes (but does not expand upon) the link between this enumerative bibliography and the class on Slavic bibliography that provided its actual raison d'etre.