National Bibliography of Ingushetia – Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies

1. Introduction
2. Language and Keyboard
3. Online Resources
4. Library Catalogs
5. Archives

Introduction

The Republic of Ingushetia (also: Ingushetia), a federal subject of the Russian Federation, was officially established in 1992. It is located in the south of the European part of Russia, in the North Caucasus region, and borders with North Ossetiia-Alania and the Chechen Republic. In 2000, the capital was moved from Nazran to Magas.

Language and Keyboard

Ingushetia’s official languages are Russian and Ingush. The latter belongs to the Nakh branch of the Northeast Caucasian language family and is intelligible with Chechen. The Ingush written language emerged in 1917. Initially, it was based on an Arabic script, then on a Latin alphabet (1923) and in 1938 it turned to the Cyrillic script. National publishing began to develop after 1917. There are two republic newspapers: Ingushetiia (published since 1993, 3 times a week, in Russian; currently available online), Serdalo / Svet (published since 1923, 2-3 times a week, in Russian and Ingush; currently available online) and two district newspapers: Golos Nazrani (published since 1939, before 1993 under different names: Kolkhoznik, Put’ Lenina, Nazranovets, in Russian and Ingush), Narodnoe slovo (Malgobekskii district, in Russian and Ingush).

The Ingush alphabet has a character that does not exist in the Russian alphabet: Ӏ. Users who are interested in working with vernacular languages, can download a Cyrillic extended keyboard that can be used for Ingush and many other languages of the Russian Federation. For transliteration purposes, consult the Library of Congress romanization tables for Non-Slavic languages in the Cyrillic script.

Sources: Bol’shaia Rossiiskaia Entsiklopediia (V. 11, pp. 187-191, 193, 195-196); official website of Ingushetia; Ethnologue, Ingushskaia pis’mennost’.

Below are preliminary guides to the resources available at the National Library of the Republic of Ingushetia, the Russian National Library and the National Archive of the Republic of Ingushetia.

Natsional’naia biblioteka Respubliki Ingushetiia im. Dzh. Kh. Iandieva

The library, contemporary with the Republic, opened its doors to the public in 1995. Today its collection consists of more than 150,000 items with more than 230 periodical titles. It runs various projects to collect and preserve Ingushetia-related materials.

Online Resources

The National Library of Ingushetia has an online catalog (note that it has limited hours; can be accessed only when the library is open: 9am – 6pm Mon-Fri, 10am – 6pm Sat, GMT+3). There are several options for searching the catalog:

Standard search can be done by keywords, author, title, and year of publication. The search bar has a pop-up keyboard with different language/script options. Below are screenshots of a standard search main page and search results page:

Advanced search allows to limit search by keywords, topic, type of print material, ISSN/ISBN, and date limits.

Distributed search allows to select specific catalogs from a list of other libraries available for online search:

There are also several search dictionaries (navigator) that provide standardized search terms that can be expanded and scrolled to facilitate use of the catalog and choosing precise search terms.

Additionally, the Russian National Library has an online catalog of books in national languages of Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. It contains records for the materials acquired by the Library after 2000, with plans to expand the database in the future to include materials 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 95 titles in Ingush.

Library Catalogs

Letopis’ pechati Respubliki Ingushetiia

This is a comprehensive bibliographic index to published materials related to Ingushetia and its people. Started in 1992, Letopis’ is published annually and includes indexes of books, periodicals, articles and an index of Ingushetia in Russian and foreign press. Indexes from 1992 to 2006 are available in .doc format on the National Library of Ingushetia website. Here is an example from a 2006 index:

Katalog izdanii Natsional’noi biblioteki Respubliki Ingushetiia (2015)

The catalog reflects publishing initiatives of the library, such as The Republic of Ingushetia: Events and Dates (Calendar of Important Dates), Scientific Thought of Ingushetia, Spiritual Leaders of Ingushetia, Political Figures of Ingushetia, Joint Ethnographic Catalog of the Republic of Ingushetia (see more below), bibliographic indexes “Libraries of Ingushetia on the pages of the Republic and Russian press”. Available in .pdf format on the National library of Ingushetia website. Below is the first page of the table of contents:

[Elektronnii] Svodnyi kraevedcheskii katalog Respubliki Ingushetiia (“Pamiat’ Ingushetii”)

This is a comprehensive catalog of print resources on the history of the Ingush from 16th century (1565) until present. All three volumes (Volume I: 1565-1955, 1186 titles; Volume II: 1956-1991, 2347 titles; Volume III: 1992-2011, 1574 titles) are available in .pdf on the National Library of Ingushetia website. Each entry includes the following information (if known): author, title, place and year of publication, number of pages, location of the physical item. Below is an example of the catalog’s entry:

Ingushskii iazyk i literatura: katalog izdanii iz fondov NBRI (2017)

The resource provides information about published works on Ingush language and literature. The catalog comprises 5 parts: Ingush Literature (period of coverage: 1939-2015), Ingush Language (period of coverage: 1941-2015), Literary Studies (period of coverage: 1954-2013), Folklore (period of coverage: 1967-2013), Education (period of coverage: 1995-2007). Available in .pdf on the National Library of Ingushetia website. Here is an example of the catalog’s entry:

Katalog literatury na ingushskom yazyke [microform].

Rossiĭskai︠a︡ nat︠s︡ionalʹnai︠a︡ biblioteka. Otdel literatury na nat︠s︡ionalʹnykh i︠a︡zykakh. New York : N. Ross, 1997. U of I Library Call Number: MFICHE 016.94752 R736k1 International and Area Studies Library. U of I record. OCLC Accession Number: 702570171.

The Russian National Library’s Department of Literature in National Languages (also known as the Department of National Literatures) of the Russian Federation, the 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. The catalog of literature in Ingush contains holdings of all Ingush imprints located in the National Library of Russia. It is arranged in alphabetical order by author/title. The following scans reflect some of the Ingush-language holdings from the catalog.