Collections Descriptions of GDJA institutions

Centre for Asia Minor Studies, Athens

The Centre for Asia Minor Studies is a scientific institute involved since 1930 in the collection, research and documentation of information of oral and written historical tradition, as well as the publication of scientific studies and monographs related to Asia Minor Greeks.

The Centre for Asia Minor Studies was created when, following the 1922 disaster, Greece became conscious of the need to preserve the cultural heritage and history of the Asia Minor homelands through the memory of the refugees.

At that point in time, the musicologist Melpo Logotheti-Merlier and her husband, the Hellenist Octave Merlier initiated a truly monumental project for the recording and preservation of Asia Minor history. Systematic research began during the interwar period, with the collection of popular songs all over Greece: music was the original nucleus of the research collections of CAMS. For that reason, it was originally named Musical Folklore Archives (1930-1933). As the institute extends the scope of its research from folklore to history, it changes names and forms; its institutional status, name ("Centre for Asia Minor Studies – Melpo and Octave Merlier Institute") and professional character were finalized after the war.

The institute's research interests were directed towards the expatriated from the beginning. For a number of years (1930 – 1975) field research was conducted in refugee settlements in the region of Attica and beyond. The oral accounts of 5,000 refugees from all parts of Asia Minor were collected, 1,375 settlements were investigated and more than 100 researchers have been employed in this endeavour. The testimonies constitute the Oral Tradition Archive, which is made up of 300,000  handwritten pages.  

This material provides valuable information on the peaceful pre-disaster period describing the complete life cycle of the Greek populations of Asia Minor in their homelands. It also covers in detail the dramatic events of the 1919-1922 Greek-Turkish war, the traumatic exodus of the Greek Orthodox population from Asia Minor as well as the period of their settlement in Greece after the "Catastrophe".

The resource has been classified by province (Aeolis, Ionia, Caria, Lycia, Pamphylia, Cilicia, Pisidia, Phrygia, Galatia, Lycaonia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Pontus, Bithynia, Lydia, Mysia, Eastern Trace, Countries of Tigris and Euphrates, and Caucasus). This classification system makes it possible to study the Asia Minor settlements within the framework of the broader geographical and social units to which they belong. Asia Minor has been divided in 20 provinces and around 120 districts. Although the setting of the boundaries of these regions has been based on empirical criteria set in the 1930s, it was deemed important to associate them with the roman division system of Asia Minor while using the ancient Greek names. Research for each settlement, originally conceived on folklore principles, covers a wide range of subjects including: language, geography, economy, social and religious life, education, local history.

The photographic material, in the beginning, formed part of the Oral Tradition Archive; as the number of photographs increased, they were separated from it and now constitute a distinct archive.

Around 7,000 photos depict the area of Asia Minor before the expatriation, presenting images of the social and everyday life of the Greeks since the end of the 19th century until 1922. After the 1922 exodus, the place and subject change: photographs of the refugees' settlement in Greece take over.

The material is classified along chronological and regional criteria as follows:

life in Asia Minor settlements before the expatriation (1922/1924);

photographs from the Asia Minor campaign (1919 – 1922);

pictures after 1922/1924 depicting the refugees' settlement in Greece;

photographs of CAMS researchers during their missions for the collection of material in Asia Minor and Greece;

photographs of CAMS informants along with their CVs. 

The Centre for Asia Minor Studies (CAMS) Library, with approximately 17,000 titles of books and periodical editions (in Greek and other languages), is the only library in Greece specializing in Asia Minor studies. Classified according to the geographical system used for the Oral Tradition Archive, its resources include rare, old books, covering the whole area of Asia Minor, Karamanli publications, special book collections, as well as periodical publications, published before 1922, during the Ottoman Empire in Greece.

The Karamanli books (written in Turkish while employing the Greek alphabet), published by Orthodox Turkish-speaking people of Asia Minor and printed at the big printing houses of Venice, Smyrna (Izmir) and Constantinople (Istanbul), have nowadays attracted the interest of Greek and foreign experts.

The Centre has shown considerable interest in the production of publications of the Turkish-speaking Orthodox, since the 1950s. Under its aegis, the publication production of five centuries has been  recorded. Eugenio Dalleggio and S. Salaville, working with CAMS, have published: Karamanlidika. Bibliographie analytique d’ouvrages en langue turque imprimés en caractères grecs (1584-1900), vols. Ι-ΙΙΙ. During the 1980s, Evagelia Balta has published three more volumes in the series of the publications of the Centre. Thanks to this contribution, the recording of Karamanli books now reaches the first decades of the 20th century.

The Karamanli library of the Centre, holds 320 titles, after the purchase of the Iordanis Pamboukis Collection, constitutes today one of the most important collections of this type of books on an international level.

Special Book Collections

The main bulk of the Library is supplemented with special collections:

The Athanassios D. Hatzidimou Collection, consisting of editions of the 19th c. in Smyrna, was purchased in 1980.
The Chr. I. Christidis Collection, donation of Ms. Ioanna Agianoglou, his niece includes Greek and foreign-speaking publications published in or related to Istanbul, as well as an important number of Turkish books and journals;

Around 500 statutes of associations and organizations from Istanbul and Asia Minor have been collected through donations.

Archive of Maps & Cartographic Sketches

Geography has been a valuable tool for the study of Asia Minor ever since the foundation of the Centre of Asia Minor Studies. The Cartographic Service of the Centre, which was founded in 1935 by Melpo Merlier and staffed by field experts, has drawn and classified the maps according to geographical areas. Apart from the unpublished handmade sketches, which were requested by the Centre, the Archive includes an important number of published maps.  

Centre for Hellenic Studies, King's College London

King's holdings in Modern Greek are founded on a collection amassed by the Philhellene and Principal of King's College London, Ronald Burrows, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ronald Burrows, together with Eleftherios Venizelos, was instrumental in establishing Modern Greek & Byzantine Studies at King's. This was the first significant university collection of its type in the United Kingdom.

The collections are internationally recognised and contain rare and unique works. They are the premier collections in the UK of books and periodicals in the fields of Modern Greek language, literature and history, and also contain rich Byzantine holdings. The collections contain a considerable number of rare first editions of nineteenth and twentieth century works.The development of the collections closely reflects the teaching and research of King's department of Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies encompassing the full chronological remit that stretches from late Antiquity to the present and has, increasingly, an interdisciplinary focus: modern Greek poetry; modern Greek literature; the emergence and development of modern Greece; Greek history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Cretan renaissance drama; modern Greek society and politics; the rise of Christendom; iconoclasm; the cultural history of Byzantium; discourse analysis and sociolinguistics of modern Greek; modern Greek sociolinguistics; Cypriot studies.The College Archives hold the records, 1935-1992, of the League for Democracy in Greece and associated bodies. Pre-1945 material includes a set of the Balkan Herald, 1935-1940, and surviving papers, 1943-1945, of the League's predecessor, the Greek United Committee, and one of its supporters, E Athanassoglou. Notably there are proofs of Sir Compton Mackenzie's The Wind of Freedom (published in London, 1944) and a photocopy of a telegram from Winston Churchill prohibiting favourable mention of EAM-ELAS by the BBC, 1944. The papers of the League itself date from 1945 to 1975 and include a large collection of press cuttings covering all British and some foreign press references to Greece during the period of the League's activity, with some later cuttings concerning Greece to 1992.The College Archives also include the records, 1947-1984, of the League for Democracy in Greece Relief Committee and its successor the Greek Relief Fund, including minutes; administrative, legal and financial material; correspondence with donors and with organisations including branches of the Red Cross, relief funds, and pro-Greek democracy organisations in various overseas countries; material relating to appeals for funds for relief work; press cuttings on the visit of Queen Frederika of Greece to Britain, 1963; papers relating to visits to Greece and to conferences on Greece, including a draft paper, 1979, by Diana Pym on 'The British Philhellenic Movement, 1944-1974'; correspondence concerning the archives of the League for Democracy in Greece; and winding up of the Greek Relief Fund, 1984. The bulk of the material pertains to recipients of aid, including correspondence, and the papers are relevant to the resistance activities and prison records of individual Greeks opposed to the regime in Greece.

Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens

History and Description

The Gennadius Library is a historic library founded in Athens in 1926. At the core of the collection are 26,000 rare volumes donated to the American School of Classical Studies by diplomat and bibliophile, Joannes (John) Gennadius.

The Gennadius Library now holds a richly diverse collection of over 120,000 books and rare bindings, archives, manuscripts, and works of art illuminating the Hellenic tradition and neighboring cultures. Its Archives hold the personal papers of important politicians and literary figures as well as artists, such as the Dragoumis family and Konstantinos Tsatsos, the papers of archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, the papers of Odysseus Elytis and George Seferis, the two Nobel laureates of Greece, as well as papers of many representatives of the Generation of the 30’s (Elias Venezis, Angelos Terzakis, Stratis Myrivilis, etc). The latest additions to the Gennadius Archives are the archives of Vassilis Vassilikos and Vangelis Raptopoulos, as well as the papers of Constantinos Vovolinis compiler of the Great Biographical Dictionary.

Located in an architecturally significant building across the street from the main American School campus, the Library has become an internationally renowned center for the study of Greek history, literature, and art, from ancient to modern times. In addition to its role as a library and research institution, “the Gennadeion” is also an active participant in the Athenian and international community through its public lectures, seminars, concerts, exhibitions, and publications.

Harvard College Library

The Modern Greek collection of the Harvard College Library dates back to the early 19th century and is one of the largest and richest collections of its kind outside of Greece. It is difficult to give an accurate estimate of the number of volumes that comprise the Modern Greek collection since they are integrated within the enormous holdings of the Harvard College Library, which is comprised of nine major libraries and together hold in excess of ten million volumes.

Evro Layton (d. 2005), former Harvard librarian, published two important works on the history and description of the Modern Greek collection at Harvard which offer the scholar much in terms of the research potential of the collection, the first a thorough analysis of the history and strengths of the collection and an exhibit catalog featuring a representative sampling of the many treasures housed in Harvard’s renowned rare books and manuscripts library, the Houghton Library (see references below).

The collection’s uniqueness is credited to notable Harvard scholars Cornelius Conway Felton, Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles, Cedric Whitman, and later to Professor George Savidis, the first incumbent of the George Seferis Chair of Modern Greek Studies. Later bequests of funds for the purchase of Modern Greek books such as the Raphael Demos Fund (1964), the Harry Knowles Messenger and Ada Messenger Fund (1968), the President Cornelius Conway Felton Fund (1966), the Anna Maktos Vance Fund (1982), and most recently, the Charles Demakis Fund (2004) the Kallinikeion Foundation Fund (2007) and annual support from the Costas and Mary Maliotis Foundation, have ensured the continued growth of the Modern Greek collection.

The collection offers an array of resources needed to support research and teaching at Harvard and to the greater scholarly community. Harvard’s holdings in the major areas of Greek bibliography are impressive. They include manuscripts and rare printed editions of liturgical and vernacular texts of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries from Rome, Venice, Constantinople, Bucharest, and Jerusalem. Materials covering the history and dogma of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Greek Enlightenment, western travelers to Greece and the Levant, and source materials relating to the Philike Hetaireia, the Greek War of Independence, and the Greek Civil War, are numerous.

The collection includes early twentieth century Greek imprints from Alexandria and rare nineteenth-century periodicals from Asia Minor, such as Ho Philokalos Smyrnaios, Εphemeris Konstantinopoleos, and Ho Mentor. The Houghton Library boasts first editions of major poets and prose writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries including Laskaratos, Palamas, Cavafy, Sikelianos, Kazantzakis, Seferis, Ritsos, and Elytis.The Greek section of the Harvard College Library Woodberry Poetry Room’s Tape Archive contains tapes of Modern Greek poetry read by their authors, including recordings by Nobel laureates Seferis and Elytis. The section also includes readings of Constantine Cavafy, Takis Papatsonis, Nikephoros Vrettakos, Miltos Sachtoures, Nikos Engonopoulos, Eleni Vakalo, Yannis Ritsos and many other Modern Greek poets.

Funding to preserve and digitize these recordings and make them internet accessible is currently underway.Folklore is strongly represented in the collection with virtually complete set of first editions of folksong and folklore publications (including periodicals) in Greek, French, Italian, German and English. The unique Whitman/Rinvolucri recordings of Karaghiozes (Greek Shadow Theater), the Notopoulos archives of folk music and folk poetry, and the Milman Parry Collection have drawn the attention of scholars worldwide.

The Milman Parry Collection has been the fortunate recipient of funding by Harvard University’s Library Digital Initiative and the Center for Hellenic Studies, to preserve, digitize and make available to the world through its web site. The Whitman/Rinvolucri recordings and the Notopoulos archives have not yet received funding for preservation and digitization. Unfortunately, portions of these collections are not accessible due to their fragile condition. As in the case of the poetry recordings, efforts are also being made to secure funding for the preservation and reformatting of these rare and valuable materials.

The growth of the Modern Greek collection over the past thirty years has been steady. The establishment of a Modern Greek Section in Widener Library in the late 1970’s, with a small staff dedicated to the acquisition, cataloging and processing of Greek materials, has ensured its continued growth. The bibliographer’s goal is to capture Greek civilization in all its aspects, including current political, social, and cultural issues, and strives to be as complete as possible. The Library subscribes to a wide range of scholarly journals in the above described subject areas of the collection. Serial subscriptions also include small press periodicals and newspapers, rich in local history, folklore, literature and linguistics. Our goal as a research library is to collect for current scholarly needs, but more importantly, we acquire what we believe will be of interest to scholars in the future. As such, the collection is never weeded, never defined or limited in any way, by personal or political views. The above merely highlights the many strengths of Harvard’s Modern Greek collection.

Immigration History Research Center Archives, University of Minnesota

The Immigration History Research Center Archives (IHRCA) is a renowned collection for source material on the multi-ethnic immigrant experience in North America. Since its establishment in the 1960s, staff, affiliated scholars, and communities contributed toward the collections. Print and archival holdings reflect the experience of immigrants and ethnic communities in the forms of personal papers and organizational records, books and newspapers. The Greek American holdings contain several extraordinarily rich collections documenting Hellenic immigration on multiple levels. The cornerstone of this collection is the extensive body of personal and professional papers compiled by the eminent historian of Greek immigration, Theodore Saloutos. Also available are the papers of leading journalists Kostis Argoe and Demetrios Callimachos, and records of organizations such as the Order of AHEPA and the Daughters of Penelope, including their oral history project. The rich library of books, pamphlets, and newspapers are largely written by and for Greek Americans and increasingly fully searchable through the library's discovery system. These include a number of titles understood to be rare or unique. Selected digital versions of originals are available through our UMedia portal.

The collections are used by scholars and community members for a great variety of reasons including comparative study, and travel awards are offered to support research visits. The IHRCA engage with community, and produce and support award-winning digital projects and exhibits. 

Related material at the University of Minnesota Libraries include the Basil Laourdas Modern Greek Collection of Greek literature within Special Collections and Rare Books, and the general collection provides thousands of books on Greek topics that support the study of Greek culture and immigration.

John Miller Burnam Classics Library, University of Cincinnati

The Byzantine and Modern Greek Collections at the University of Cincinnati include some 1,000 journal titles covering all aspects of Byzantine and post-Byzantine Greece, with special strengths in 19th c. and early 20th c. journals, such as Έρμῆς ὁ λόγιος (1811-21), the journal of the Greek intellectuals dispersed throughout Europe during the pre-Revolutionary period and an important source for the intellectual background to the Revolution as well as the first journal published in modern Greek. Other historical periodicals include: 

Βυζαντίς (1909-12), Έλληνικά (1928), 
Ἐπετηρὶς Ἑταιρείας Βυζαντινῶν Σπουδῶν (1924), Δελτίων τῆς Ίστορικῆς καὶ Ἐθνολογικῆς Έταιρίας Ἑλλάδος (1883), Ἠπειρωτικὰ χρονικά (1926), Θρακικά (1928), Χιακὰ χρονικά (1911), Μικρασιατικὰ χρονικά (1938-), and Ἀθηνᾶ (1889-), the journal of the Έπιστημονικὴ Έταιρεία in Athens. Further holdings include review publications such as Ἑλληνισμός (1898-), Ἑστία (1876-94), Νέα ἑστία (1927), Νουμᾶς (1903), and Παναθήναια (1901-), the most important organ of the Demoticists.

The collecting of Greek materials at the University of Cincinnati began in earnest with archaeologist Carl W. Blegen, Professor of Classical Archaeology from 1927 to his death in 1971. Blegen excavated extensively in Greece and served as Assistant Director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and was able to acquire many publications for the UC classics library on his frequent stays in Greece, but also on visits to Istanbul, Paris, London, and New York.

The collection focused initially on standard editions of ancient texts published by modern Greek scholars as well as on Greek works in ancient history and archaeology. It subsequently expanded to include also modern Greek linguistics and “the language question,” Byzantine and modern Greek history, geography and topography, as well as Philhellenism.

At that time there were even plans to make the University of Cincinnati the center of medieval and modern Greek studies in the United States and to enable the acquisition of rare books such as first editions and special elegant publications through its Friends’ program to illustrate the history of modern Greek typography and book-making.

In 1953, the University, under the Farmington Plan of the Association of Research Libraries, took responsibility for the preservation in the United States of all scholarly publications originating in Greece. Under this plan, Professor Blegen began the acquisition of contemporary materials in nearly every field of knowledge except for law, medicine and agriculture. Peter Topping in a survey of “Modern Greek Studies and Materials in the United States” in the early 1940s (Byzantion 15 (1940-41): 414-442) referred to the UC modern Greek collection at that time as “the finest and largest” in the United States.

The acquisition of modern Greek journals and monographs at the University of Cincinnati is still comprehensive for titles dealing with the Byzantine period, Frankokratia, Venetokratia, Tourkokratia, Enlightenment Era, the War of Independence, WWII (as it relates to Greece's involvement), the Junta (the Greek military dictatorship 1967-1974), Anglo-American literary philhellenism, western travelers to Greece and the Levant, the language question (Katharevousa vs. Dimotiki), the Eastern question (diplomatic history during the Ottoman reign), and historiography. The coverage is more selective in the areas of general history, politics, language and literature, religion, folklore, music, theater, and the Greek diaspora.

The modern Greek collection also contains hundreds of Greek, U.S., and British Army maps from WWI and WWII detailing the geography of Greece and the entire Mediterranean and Aegean areas, Asia Minor, the Black Sea region as well as thematic maps covering socio-economic, industrial, commercial, and demographic factors, as well as natural resources

The rare 19th century modern Greek journal collection comprises some 120 titles and those from the first half of the 20th century more than 280 titles.  In most cases, the UC Classics Library possesses all volumes published of each journal.

The Classics Library’s modern Greek holdings also greatly benefit from the many Greek scholars in the Classics Department, including faculty, Tytus fellows, and graduate students and from the support of Jack L. Davis, the Chair of the Department and Carl W. Blegen Professor of Greek Archaeology since 1993 and Director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2007-2012.

Modern Greek Literature Collection at the U. of Cincinnati
Modern Greek Journals, 1800-1899
Modern Greek Journals, 1900-1950

Library of Congress, European Division

General Evaluation and Size

The Modern Greek collection comprises about 65,000 volumes of books and bound periodicals, as well as non-print materials such as music scores, maps and atlases, prints and photographs, manuscripts, motion pictures, and sound recordings. For this paper we consider Modern Greece to begin in 1453, with the end of the Byzantine Empire. The European Division's responsibility for building the Modern Greek collection begins with 1821, the onset of the War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire. The collection from or about the period 1821-present amounts to about 50,000 volumes of books and bound periodicals, with about 70% in the Greek language and the remainder primarily in West European languages.

Systematic collecting of materials from or about Greece began in 1969 with the appointment of a specialist for Greece in the Slavic and Central European Division (now the European Division). Before that, materials were received primarily on exchange with Greek academic, governmental, and professional organizations; transfers from other U.S. government agencies; and purchases through various agents. The results were quite good, abetted by events such as the acquisitions trip by Jennings Wood, Assistant Chief of the Exchange & Gift Division to Athens in 1959 to improve official exchanges, and the recommendations for additions to the literature collection made in 1960 by consultant Andonis Decavalles, a Greek poet who reported favorably on the Library's holdings in this field. The acquisitions situation proved volatile in the 1970s, with several changes of blanket-order dealers and unreliable receipts from exchange partners in the Greek government, and from academic and professional organizations. A reliable book dealer for commercial publications was engaged in 1984, following an acquisitions trip by the Assistant Chief of the European Division to Greece, and in 1988 a reliable supplier of non-commercial publications, in the form of a bibliographic services contractor, was employed. Currently, the Library's coverage of Greek publications may be considered excellent.

Strengths

The strength of the general collection in both quality and quantity by subject, is approximately as follows, in descending order: literature, history, philosophy and religion, language, fine arts, politics and government. The strong special collections are to be found in rare books, law, maps and atlases, prints and photographs, and music. In addition, the Library holds about 1,000 Greek serials and 100 newspaper titles, including 12 current newspapers, representing the major political or social forces.

In general, the strength of the Modern Greek collection rests in the strength and extent of its holdings, rather than in rarities. The history collection comprises more than 10,000 volumes; the law collection more than 3,000 volumes; the literature collection about 15,000 volumes; and there are more than 3,000 maps and charts.

Highlights

The Library of Congress' Greek collections are perhaps the largest and most diverse in the United States, and are capable of supporting advanced research in practically all fields of human endeavor. The exceptions are clinical medicine and applied agriculture, which are the domains of the National Library of Medicine and the National Agricultural Library.

Some items of special note in the Library's collections are the exchange of correspondence in 1823 between the Greek scholar, Hellenist, and patriot Adamantios Koraes, and Thomas Jefferson, in which Koraes sought advice on the best constitution for Greece, and Thomas Jefferson responded.

Language and Literature

The Library's collection of works on Modern Greek philology, language, and literature approaches the comprehensive, with all the major Modern Greek authors and literary movements well-represented. The Philhellenism that renewed patriotism in Greeks, and that drew international attention and support for Greek independence from Ottoman rule in the first quarter of the 19th century, was inspired to a considerable extent by Greek literature, for example, the poetry of Dionysius Solomos (1798-1857), the commentaries on classical Greek literature by Adamantios Koraes (1748-1833) that raised the pride of Greek in their heritage. In independent Greece a language controversy prevailed for decades, whether Greek literature should be written in katharevousa, a "high" literary language, the heritage of the ancients in modern form -- or in demotike, the spoken language, and, if in spoken language, then which spoken language in a country that had strong regional dialects and had suffered disunity under 450 years of Turkish rule... Athenian demotike and the descendants of the Ionian school finally prevailed, but not until the 20th century, and demotike did not replace katharevousa in the official press until 1970. To illustrate the emotions that the language controversy raised, the publication of a vernacular translation of the New Testament led to a riot in Athens in 1901.

The Library's literature collection represents all the literary movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. Alexandros Rangabe (1810-1892) and the aforenamed Koraes were outstanding proponents of katharevousa, and Dionysios Solomos and Andreas Kalvos, of the Ionian School, of demotike. Solomos' Ode to Liberty became the Greek national anthem. Statistics for the number of works held by the Library of or about some of the leading Greek authors will give an idea of the strength of our collection: Andreas Kalvos (1792-1867), 23 works; Konstantinos Kavaphes (1863-1933), 34; Kostes Palamas (1859-1943), 80; Angellos Sikelianos (1884-1951), 59; Nikos Kazantzakes (1883-1957), 137.

Two outstanding representatives of the golden age of Greek poetry in the late 20th century are the 1963 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, George Seferis (1900-1971), and the 1979 Nobel Prize winner, Odysseus Elytis (1911- ). The Library holds 110 works by or about Seferis and 68 by or about Elytis.

The monograph collection of Greek literature is supported by literary periodicals.

History and Political Science

All periods of Modern Greek history are well covered in both Greek and Western works, with approximately 15,000 volumes. The Library's collections are strong in 15th to 19th century Western accounts of travel to Greece under Ottoman rule. These are important sources of information on many aspects of Greek life, customs, political and economic status for that period of history. An element of strength of the collections for the period of independence (1821+ ) is local and regional history, covering the traditional regions of Greece such as Crete, the Cyclades, Epirus, the Ionian Islands, Macedonia, the Peloponnesos, and Thrace. In the past decade, there has been a flurry of Greek publishing on Macedonia, as the Slav-Greek rivalry in that area has heated up, particularly since 1989 when the newly-independent Yugoslav republic of Macedonia has sought world recognition under that name.

Rare Books

The Library's sizable collection of rare Greek books pertains principally to Ancient Greece, including incunabula produced in Italy after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Among the Library's holdings one must also mention the first book to be printed entirely in Greek, Konstantinos Lascaris' Epitome ton okto tou logou meron [Summary of the Eight Parts of Speech], published in Milan in 1476, although it concerns Ancient rather than Modern Greek.

Manuscripts

The Library limits its collection of manuscripts to those that have an American connection. Therefore, its papers relating to Greece are mainly those of American statesmen or travelers. The correspondence of President Jefferson and Adamantios Koraes has already been mentioned. President Martin Van Buren's Second Annual Message to Congress (December 3, 1838) contains a copy of the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between the United States and Greece, ratified in 1837. The papers of Nicholas Biddle contain an account of his travels to Greece in 1806. The papers of President Woodrow Wilson and his Secretary of State Robert Lansing for 1919 include reports on Greek claims in Eastern Thrace. The papers of Henry Morgenthau, senior, Chair of the Greek Settlement Commission in 1923 are particularly important. They describe the tragic transfer of more than one million Greeks from Asia Minor to Eastern Thrace, following the disastrous Greek invasion of Anatolia. The papers of Cordell Hull, Secretary of State during the Franklin Roosevelt era, contain numerous memoranda on Greece during the period 1933-1944.

Prints and Photographs

Perhaps the most interesting Library of Congress holding in this area is the collection of stereographs, 600 in number, showing Greece at the turn of the 20th century -- buildings, archaeological sites, churches, monasteries, street scenes from Athens, views of other towns, localities, and areas. The views of Athens are particularly interesting today because they show the city's historic landmarks before their devastation by atmospheric pollution. Another collection showing the progression of Athens is the Holland (Leicester B. Holland, Chief of the Fine Arts Division of the Library) Views of Greece, 1919-1921. Collections with a noteworthy Greek component are the Riggs and Carpenter collections that are geographical in character. Mention is also due Joseph Pennell's 27 lithographs and eleven etchings showing Greek temples and the monasteries of Meteora. The Greek poster collection amounts to several hundred items dating from 1930 to the present.

Geography and Maps

The first separate map of Greece, Hellados perigraphe [Description of Greece], drawn by Nikolaos Sophianos in 1543, is held by the Library in a 1545 edition issued by Johannus Oporinus in Basel with a descriptive commentary in Latin by Nicolaus Gerbel, and Sophanos' table of ancient and modern place name equivalents. This was part of the Melville Eastham gift presented to the Library of Congress in 1958. The Library's single sheet maps include 16th, 17th, and 18th century maps of mainland Greece and the islands, as well as modern maps that depict regions, provinces, cities, islands, and harbors, and thematic maps that cover economics, weather, natural resources, industry, commerce, demography, in all more than two thousand maps.

The multi-sheet map collection includes official maps made periodically following Greek independence, covering the expansion of Greek territories in its struggle with the Ottoman Empire, and, ironically, the maps of German and British forces in Greece and Crete during World War II, as well as those of the U.S. Army Map Service.

The nautical, that is, hydrographic charts, include all the important Greek harbors -- Piraeus, Saloniki, Patras -- and coastal charts include gulfs, bays, straits, and canals. Once again, the Greek surveys are supplemented by British Admiralty charts of Greek waters.

The Library has a substantial collection of atlases, including industrial and economic atlases as well as geographic ones.

Additional Greek resources at the Library of Congress

 European Division Online Publications by Country/Region

 Greece Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture

National Documentation Centre, Athens

The mission of EKT (Εθνικό Κέντρο Τεκμηρίωσης) is to collect, document, manage, disseminate and preserve quality digital content and data produced by the Greek scientific, research and cultural communities. 

Greek Reference Index for the Social Sciences and Humanities: http://grissh.gr/
Metadata harvester/access point for Greek scientific content: https://www.openarchives.gr/
Aggregator for Greek cultural content (with links to collections that include digitized journals and magazines): https://www.searchculture.gr/
Information system for semantic vocabularies: https://www.semantics.gr/
Publishing platform: https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/

Princeton University Library

History and Description

The growth of the Modern Greek Collection at Princeton University parallels that of the Program in Hellenic Studies, which was established in 1979 to strengthen teaching and research in all aspects of Byzantine and modern Greek civilization, including their relation to the Classical tradition and the Late Antique world. The current level of collecting is high in order to meet the needs of scholars in Classical, Byzantine, and Modern Greek studies at both the graduate and post-doctoral levels. Most books and bound periodicals are housed in the Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library (which has open stacks and houses the Rare Books and Special Collections division) with additional materials in branch libraries—Marquand Library of Art and Archaeology, Architecture Library, Mendel Music Library, and the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library. Current periodicals are displayed in the Hellenic Studies Reading Room which also holds a reference collection.

For more information, see "The Modern Greek Collections at Princeton University, JMGS 26:1 (May 2008), 1-17 (requires access to Project Muse to view on-line).

Strengths

The collections in the Firestone Library  at Princeton University, supplemented by the Marquand Library  in the areas of ancient and Byzantine art and archaeology, are particularly strong in Byzantine manuscripts; Byzantine art, history, literature and culture; history of the Greek book; 20th-century modern Greek literature (in Greek); Anglo-American literary philhellenism; 19th- and 20th-century travel to Greece; Greeks in the Ottoman Empire; the Greek Enlightenment; and United States-Greek relations in the 20th-century.

Holdings in the Manuscript Collection include, among others, George Seferis' manuscripts of works that he wrote in residence at Princeton, his personal library of his own works (annotated) in Greek and other languages, and his correspondence with T.S. Eliot, Henry Miller, and Edmund Keeley; Odysseas Elytis' unpublished manuscripts and correspondence with the Italian critic and translator Mario Vitti; Kimon Friar's correspondence with Nikos Kazantzakis; an almost complete collection of the self-published pamphlets from Alexandria by C.P. Cavafy; the letters and manuscripts of Demetrios Capetanakis contained in the Lehmann Family Papers; and the archives of the Modern Greek Studies Association and the Journal of Modern Greek Studies.

In addition, the Manuscript Collection has significant holdings of ancient Greek and Byzantine texts. It collects codices of texts of classical authors and Greek papyri and Greek Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts from the 9th-16th centuries. It also maintains a Greek and Roman coin collection of some 10,000 coins.

Access to classics-related materials is further strengthened by the libraries of the Princeton Theological Seminary for patristic Greek and the Institute for Advanced Study. Moreover, the University Art Museum possesses a fine collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, including early ceramics, small bronzes, coins, and mosaics.

Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection, California State University, Sacramento

Consisting of the holdings of the former Speros Basil Vryonis Center for the Study of Hellenism, the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection, part of the Donald & Beverly Gerth Special Collections and University Archives, is an internationally significant resource for the campus and Sacramento regional communities, as well as for scholars around the globe. The Vryonis Center was initially established in Los Angeles in 1985 by Prof. Speros Vryonis, Jr., a scholar of Byzantium and Ottoman Studies, in memory of his late son Speros Basil. This early collection formed the core of the Vryonis Center Collection that would in 1989 come to reside in Rancho Cordova, California. There the Collection was further enhanced under successive directors until its donation to Sacramento State in 2002 as the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection.

Currently numbering approximately 75,000 volumes, the Collection comprises a large circulating book collection, journal holdings, electronic resources, non-print media, rare books, archival materials, art, and artifacts. With its focus on the Hellenic world, the collection contains early through contemporary materials across the social sciences and humanities relating to Greece, its neighboring countries, and the surrounding region. There is a broad representation of languages in the collection, with a rich assortment of primary source materials. This multidisciplinary collection supports various campus programs and facilitates research by external scholars through a grant-funded Library Research Fellowship Program inaugurated in 2012. The collection curator, George I. Paganelis, is responsible for its overall management and growth.

Some highlights of the collection include:

The libraries/archives of distinguished Greek Americans Dr. Basil Vlavianos, Prof. John P. Anton, Dr. Steve Demakopoulos, and Pyrrhus J. Ruches

An exceptional array of materials on Byzantine and Modern Greek history and culture

A comprehensive collection of government documents from Greek, American, British, and other sources

Robust holdings on Greece’s regional and local history

An extensive range of Modern Greek literature, including signed editions by major literary figures

A sizable corpus of Greek and Greek-American musical scores

Oral histories of Greek Americans in the Sacramento region and beyond

A significant collection of rare books, scarce pamphlets, and other ephemera

For more information, see "The Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection at Califotnia State University, Sacramento: A Beacon of Hellenism in the Western United States," Journal of Modern Greek Studies 26 no. 1 (2008): 19-27. Visit the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection .

University of Patras, Library and Information Centre

The Library and Information Center of University of Patras holds three (3) collections of digitized periodicals. Up to the present day, 76 periodicals have been digitized, processed bibliographically and scientifically, and are now freely available to the public (some under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License). The aim was not only to allow open access to these rare and valuable historical resources, but also to promote new research challenges in Greek literature and history. The oldest periodicals date back to the first decades of the 19th century, and the more recent ones are of the late 20th century. The collections Kosmopolis and Pleias hold mainly literary periodicals of special interest to the researchers of Modern Greek Literature, Language and History, whereas Daniilis has a broader discipline cover, with a special focus on the region of Patras.

The indexing covers the title and the name of the contributor -author and/or translator- as they appear on the periodical's page (authority control was used for the newly added periodicals only). For that reason, it is advised to use both the Latin and Greek alphabet for the search query, and to be aware that an alternative name might also be used (for example, a pseudonym).

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) processing was not used during digitization, therefore full text search is not available.

U. of Patras journals

Kosmopolis (14 journals of the 19th century)
Pleias (36 journals and magazines, 19th and 20th century)
Daniilis (26 journals, newspapers and magazines of local interest (Achaia Prefecture)