1. Introduction
2. Library Catalogs
3. Online Resources
4. Archives
Introduction
The Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, located in the North Caucasus, is a federal subject of the Russian Federation. Diplomatic relationships with Russia were established in 1740s and by the 19th century Ossetia was under complete Russian control. In 1936, North Ossetia became an autonomous Soviet Republic. It went through several name changes in the 1990s and received its current name in 1994. The capital is the city of Vladikavkaz. Official languages are Russian (used as lingua franca) and Ossetian. The latter, an Indo-European language, belongs to the East Iranian group. Ossetian started using the Cyrillic script in 1844; Latin script was used in the 1920s-1930s. The alphabet has a character that does not exist in the Russian alphabet: Æ.
Users who are interested in working with vernacular languages, can download a Cyrillic extended keyboard that can be used for Ossetian and many of the other languages of the Russian Federation. For transliteration purposes consult the Library of Congress romanization tables for Non-Slavic languages in the Cyrillic script.
There are several main periodicals (all published in Vladikavkaz): nationwide newspaper Narody Kavkaza (since 1997; 2 times per month), republic newspapers Severnaia Osetiia (since 1917; daily; currently available online), Pul’s Osetii (since 2001; weekly), Slovo (since 1920; daily), Rastdzinad (since 1923; daily; in Ossetian).
Sources: Bol’shaia Rossiiskaia Entsiklopediia, V. 29, pp.622-627), official website of North-Ossetia-Alania, Ethnologue, Osetinskaia pis’mennost’.
Below is a preliminary guide to bibliographic tools for researchers of North Ossetia-Alania available through the National Scientific Library of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, National Library of Russia and Archive Service of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania.
Natsional’naia nauchnaia biblioteka Respubliki Severnaia Osetiia-Alaniia
The National Scientific Library of North Ossetia-Alania is one of the oldest libraries in the North Caucasus. Its history dates back to 1895 when the first public library was opened in Vladikavkaz. The collection started with just 50 books but by 1911 it already had 7000 volumes and today it counts more than a million items. The website might be somewhat cluttered but has a lot of useful resources.
Library Catalogs
Kraevedcheskie i mestnye izdaniia [Glavnaia → Resursy →]
This is a list of local resources: about the Republic and/or published in Vladikavkaz. Each title is provided with a short description. Period of coverage: 2002, 2004, 2008-2018.
Knizhnye pamiatniki Severnoi Osetii
The web page provides information about titles and locations of significant for North Ossetia print materials and collections.
Katalog literatury na osetinskom yazyke [microform].
Rossiĭskai︠a︡ nat︠s︡ionalʹnai︠a︡ biblioteka. Otdel literatury na nat︠s︡ionalʹnykh i︠a︡zykakh. New York : N. Ross, 1997. U of I Library Call Number: MFICHE 016.94752 R736k8 International and Area Studies Library. U of I record. OCLC Accession Number: 702846615.
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.
The catalog of literature in Ossetian contains holdings of all Ossetian imprints located in the National Library of Russia. It is arranged in alphabetical order by author/title. The following scans reflect some of the Ossetian-language holdings from the catalog:
Online Resources
Katalogi [Glavnaia → Resursy →]
There are separate electronic catalogs for books and periodicals at the National Library of North Ossetia-Alania . They are supplied with a short description of how to use them. Basic book catalog search can be done by author, title and year of publication. A list of newspapers and magazines is provided. Below is an example of an advanced book catalog search (by keywords):
Elektronnaia biblioteka
The electronic library provides full text access to different historical materials about the region, such as Sbornik svedenii o Kavkaze, Terskii kalendar’ (issues from 1890s until 1915), Terskii sbornik, Kavkazkii kalendar’ (issues from 1860s through 1916), a literary journal Makh Dug (content of issues from 1934 to 2017; full text of issues from 1939 to 1989) and many others:
Natsional’naia bibliografiia Osetii
Since 1959, the Library serves as a Book Chamber whose goal is to register all materials published in the Republic. A list of these materials, known as Letopis’ pechati Severnoi Osetii, is published annually and consists of 5 parts: book index, journal and newspaper article indexes, review index and Severnaia Osetia in Russia and abroad index. The indexes from 2000 to 2018 are available online.
Proekty [Glavnaia → Proekty →]
Regional and local online projects dedicated to cultural phenomena of Ossetia in art, literature, music. For instance, Mansarda khudozhnika is a multimedia project that gives access to the art heritage of the Republic. It comprises four parts (painting, drawing, sculpture, crafts) and provides a summary of the artist’s life and work, bibliography and examples of artworks. Another project (in progress), Literaturnaia karta Osetii maps out authors, their travels, literary places, museums and publishing houses to create a picture of history of literature and literary life in Ossetia.
Russian National Library Online Catalog
Additionally, 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 289 titles in Ossetian:
Archives
Arkhivnaia sluzhba Respubliki Osetiia-Alaniia
The Archival Service has a collection of more than 1 million 430 thousand archival materials which provide unique information about the history of the region since the 18th century. It comprises two institutions:
Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Respubliki Severnaia Osetiia-Alaniia dates back to 1920 and houses more than 879 collections structured chronologically: pre-revolutionary period (1786-1920) and Soviet and post Soviet period (1920-2001). The Archive webpage contains several guides to its collections, for instance, a list of documents related to the liberation of Ossetia during the World War II, a thematic list of collections, a list of oral folk art materials of peoples of North Caucasus and several others:
It also provides access to a short guide to archival collections in two parts (in .pdf format). Kratkii spravochnik po fondam ch.1, published in 1974, covers Soviet period from 1917 to 1966 and provides information on place and title of collection location, number of documents in the collection, dates of the documents and short annotations. Here is a sample entry:
Kratkii spravochnik po fondam ch.2, published in 1990, is structured similarly to the first part and provides information about materials acquired by the archive after the publication of the guide in 1974.
Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii Respubliki Severnaia Osetiia-Alaniia houses Communist party documents as well as information about liquidated organizations and companies (lists of documents as of 2016, 2017, 2019).
