Introduction
The Karachay-Cherkess Republic, a federal subject of the Russian Federation, is located in the North Caucasus region of Southern Russia. Karachay-Cherkess Autonomous Oblast was formed in 1922. In 1991 it was transformed into Karachay-Cherkess SSR and in 1992 received its current name. Administrative center of the Republic is in the city of Cherkessk. The official languages are Abaza, Cherkess, Karachay-Balkar, Nogai and Russian. Abaza and Cherkess belong to the family of Northwest Caucasian language family; Karachay-Balkar and Nogai are Turkic languages. Written system of these languages went through a similar pattern of script changes: from Arabic to a short period of Latin alphabet then to the Cyrillic alphabet in 1936-1939. Abaza and Cherkess have a character that does not exist in Russian: I.
The main newspapers are: Den’ respubliki (since 1918; 3 times a week; in Russian), Cherkes kheku (since 1924; 2 times a week; in Cherkess), K’’arachai (since 1924; 2 times a week; in Karachay-Balkar), Abazashta (since 1938, 2 times/week; in Abaza), Nog’’ai davysy (since 1928; 2 times/week; in Nogai).
Sources: Bol’shaia Rossiiskaia entsiklopediia, v. 13 pp. 89-96; official website of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic; Ethnologue.
Below is a preliminary guide to available resources dedicated to the region:
Library Catalogs
Rossiiskaia natsional’naia biblioteka. Otdel literatury na natsional’nykh iazykakh
The Russian National Library’s Department of Literature in National Languages (also known as the Department of National Literatures) of the Russian Federation, Commonwealth of Independent States, and the Baltic countries has reproduced holdings catalogs in microfiche format. The imprints catalogs diffuse most of the difficulties associated with transliteration in the vernacular languages, spelling, forms of entry, and uncertainties with the entirety of the collection. Researchers can access the entire holdings for a specific language at the Russian National Library through the microfiche set; conveniently exporting selected titles via PDF scans.
There are catalogs for literature in Abaza, Cherkess, Karachay-Balkar and Nogai. They contain holdings of all national language imprints located in the National Library of Russia and are arranged in alphabetical order by author/title. The following scans reflect some of the holdings from the catalog.
Katalog literatury na abazinskom yazyke [microform].
Rossiĭskai︠a︡ nat︠s︡ionalʹnai︠a︡ biblioteka. Otdel literatury na nat︠s︡ionalʹnykh i︠a︡zykakh. New York : N. Ross, 1998. U of I Library Call Number: MFICHE 016.94743 R736k1 International and Area Studies Library. U of I record. OCLC Accession Number: 47151451.
Katalog literatury na cherkesskom yazyke [microform].
Rossiĭskai︠a︡ nat︠s︡ionalʹnai︠a︡ biblioteka. Otdel literatury na nat︠s︡ionalʹnykh i︠a︡zykakh. New York : N. Ross, 1997. U of I Library Call Number: MFICHE 016.94752 R736k11 International and Area Studies Library. U of I record. OCLC Accession Number: 702845983
Katalog literatury na karachaevo-balkarkskom yazyke [microform].
Rossiĭskai︠a︡ nat︠s︡ionalʹnai︠a︡ biblioteka. Otdel literatury na nat︠s︡ionalʹnykh i︠a︡zykakh. New York : N. Ross, 1997. U of I Library Call Number: MFICHE 016.94752 R736k3 International and Area Studies Library. U of I record. OCLC Accession Number: 702846092.
Katalog literatury na nogaiskom yazyke [microform].
Rossiĭskai︠a︡ nat︠s︡ionalʹnai︠a︡ biblioteka. Otdel literatury na nat︠s︡ionalʹnykh i︠a︡zykakh. New York : N. Ross, 1997. U of I Library Call Number: MFICHE 016.94752 R736k7 International and Area Studies Library. U of I record. OCLC Accession Number: 39971859.
Online Resources
The Russian National Library has an online catalog of books in national languages of Russia and Commonwealth of Independent States. It contains records for the materials acquired by the Library after 2000. In the future, the database will be expanded by materials from before 2000. The catalog can be searched by all the standard options (author, title, subject, ISBN etc) and by language of the document. The following search returned 388 titles in Cherkess:
Other Resources
Gosudarstvennaia natsional’naia biblioteka Karachaevo-Cherkesskoi Respubliki im. Kh. B. Bairamukovoi
The library houses a collection of more than 407,000 items in a variety of formats, a collection of rare books (more than 1,000 titles), keeps issues of all local newspapers, has an extensive collection of local materials in all official languages and serves as a national depository of print materials.
Upravlenie Karachaevo-Cherkesskoi Respubliki po delam arkhivov
Provides information about the archival services in the Republic.
