Working to ensure availability of Ukrainian catalog records.

Libraries in occupied areas have become spaces of “Information Warfare” - where books are deliberately destroyed, particularly books about Ukrainian history. The targeting of Ukrainian libraries and publishing houses is indicative of Russia's determination to destroy Ukrainian identity by targeting Ukraine's national treasure: its literature. Our presentation covers the history of Ukrainian book collections, information destruction in war, and the recovery efforts of today.

Our primary data source was OCLC, a global library organization that compiles standardized library catalog and holding data for its members. We used it to obtain catalog records for books in the Ukrainian language, library holdings data for the books, and library type and location data (geographic coordinates). We used Tableau software to create the visualization. Note that holding data does not guarantee that books are available to the public for reading or checkout.

This poster highlights our early findings about the availability of Ukrainian language books in libraries across the United States. Presented at the 2024 Washington State University Academic Showcase and the 2024 WSU Everett Research Showcase.

Ukrainian advocacy groups have tried to encourage collecting at U.S. libraries but have been met with resistance, and continued efforts are slow. Many US libraries don't know where to order Ukrainian books, which ones to choose from, or how to catalog them, especially if they don't have Ukrainian speakers on staff.