With the collections at the Library of Congress, Harvard, and Columbia, Illinois' Slavic collection ranks among the largest in the country. The Slavic and East European Library Room houses major reference works, current issues of about 900 important newspapers and journals, many microforms, and a small circulating collection. Choldin, M. T. and L. H. Miller. Leich, H. M. and June E. Pachuta. In addition, works concerning all other countries of the world published within the Soviet Union in Russian and English are acquired.
Emphasis is on scholarly treatment rather than popularization, textbooks, and children's literature.
The Undergraduate Library normally collects more popular treatments and the Education and Social Sciences Library collects children's literature for its School Collection. The Slavic Library selects and acquires materials with primary focus on some aspect of the languages, literatures, cultures, peoples, and societies of the Soviet Union, Russia, and Eastern Europe. Appropriate primary and secondary works, and bibliographic, and reference materials are acquired. Ordinarily, dissertations, theses and translations are selectively collected. Audio-visual materials are normally collected selectively.