Harvard Library's Slavic Blog

The Literary Authors from Europe and Eurasia Web Archive brings together web sites related to literary authors (of both fiction and non-fiction essays), translators, critics and publishers from Europe and Eurasia.  The project launched in May 2019 aims to preserve the history of the contemporary literary process as reflected in the non-print publishing activity of important literary figures and organizations. Their websites represent a key addition to the traditional literary archives and by preserving them the curators strive to assure the continuing availability of this potentially ephemeral content to researchers and scholars.

Since the advent of web publishing many authors have taken their texts to the new media, often maintaining online diaries, commenting on literary and political events, and simply having personal websites complete with biographies, schedules of appearances, audio and visual materials as well as literary and critical texts. It is not unusual for poets and prose writers alike to test out their new texts on their social media audiences. All these sources serve as key additions to the traditional archives and are of great value for researchers. At the same time due to the nature of the internet, political pressures in Eastern Europe and Eurasia and brevity of human life these materials are fragile and will perish if not preserved.

The project archives the following types of sites:

1. Personal websites,
2. Social media accounts and blogs (LiveJournal only at this point),
3. Sites of literary organizations and awards.

The Literary Authors from Europe and Eurasia Web Archive is an initiative developed by librarians at Columbia University, Harvard University, Princeton University, and Yale University, under the auspices of the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation. The collection is curated by Anna Rakityanskaya (Harvard), Thomas Keenan (Princeton), Robert Davis (Columbia) and Anna Arays (Yale).

As of March 25 2020 the archive lists 83 sites in 11 languages from 13 countries. The archive content can be accessed directly from its Archive-It page or from Worldcat.

Anyone can recommend a web site for archiving by following this link and answering a simple questionnaire.