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Slavic and East European Studies Collection at IU

Chronology

1953: Dr. Andrew Turchyn arrives at Bloomington as the library's cataloger

1955: Acquisition of the Nicolaevsky collection.

1956: IU President Herman B Wells orders to commit annually $25,000 for the development of the Slavic collection.

1960s: Acquisition of Czech limited bibliophilic editions supplied by the Slavic-born book dealer Israel Perlstein.

1963: Dr. Fritz Epstein arrives at Bloomington as faculty member of History Dep't & Curator of the Slavic and East European Collection of IUL

1970: Dr. Andrew Turchyn appointed as the second Slavic librarian after Dr. Epstein's retirement in 1969.

1974: REEI Director Professor Robert Byrnes travels with Dr. Turchyn to Eastern Europe for strengthening the library's international exchange of materials with Eastern European libraries. 

1980: Mr. Murlin Croucher arrives at Bloomington as the third Slavic librarian of IUL after Dr. Turchyn's retirement in 1979.

1993: Murlin Croucher's seminal work, Slavic studies: a guide to bibliographies, encyclopedias, and handbooks, published by Scholarly Resources.

2006: Mr. Wookjin Cheun appointed as the fourth Slavic librarian of IUL after Mr. Croucher's retirement in 2005.

Helpful Readings

"Slavic studies at I.U...." Indiana Alumni Magazine 11, no.6 (March 1949): 5-7.

Russian & East European Institute at Indiana University: Celebrating 50 Years 1958-2008 (Bloomington, Indiana [2008]), 16 p.

Robert F. Byrnes, “Fritz T. Epstein,” in A History of Russian and East European Studies in the US, ed. Robert Byrnes (Lanham: University Press of America, 1994), 217-224.