Karen Rondesvedt's article on collecting Central Asian Publications examines the reasons for the dearth of Central Asian titles in American libraries and comes to the conclusion that it's not a vendor problem, it's a publication problem. In most cases, it is due to strict governmental regulations on publishing and lack of funds that prevent more materials from being published and exported.
Her essay begins by defining Central Asia as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyszstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan and giving a brief history of collecting in this area. As of now, between fifteen and twenty libraries collect publications from this area. In the past, libraries could only acquire materials from a specialized vendor or receive them through exchange plans with international libraries or educational institutions. Only a few libraries could afford to collect "on the spot," in which the American librarian or an agent went on special buying trips within the host country.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, most of the previous vendors went out of business, with new vendors taking their place. Exchange partners provided some materials during this time of transition, until they stopped receiving Central Asian books themselves. Currently, there are a handful of vendors that provide U.S. libraries with titles from the area.
Rondesvedt then describes a survey she conducted asking area studies librarians which countries presented the most collecting challenges. Most mentioned Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, but some stated that all were equally problematic. She then examined the state of publishing within each country and realized that the vendors were not the problem, the simple fact is that materials are just not being published. I should note here that this article was written in 2006, so I am not sure about changes since then. In Turkmenistan, President Niyazov emptied or closed most libraries during his time in office. State bookstores only sold books that supported the president's ideology. Tajikistan's civil war from 1992 until 1997 severely crippled its economy and its government tightly held the reigns of the publishing industry. Although Uzbekistan has a much larger population, the same is largely true. Tight regulations and a struggling economy make publishing difficult, with many private publishing houses struggling to make ends meet. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyztan show the most promising figures. Kazakhstan's economy has seen steady growth and enjoys a government that has thus far not discouraged publishing. The author states that several international book fairs have been held there since 2001. Kyrgystan managed to overthrow its authoritarian government and at the time this article was written, had nearly 145 publishing organizations. This explains why it enjoys the highest publishing figures of the five countries.
I selected this article because I personally don't know much about Central Asia, much less collecting materials from the area. I will admit that I did not know it was this challenging, but after reading the profiles of each country, it is not surprising. Unfortunately, it seems that not much can really be done regarding this issue until the situations within each country becomes more stable. The only thing that librarians can really do at this point is share what works for them. This article must have been difficult for the author to write because some of these countries offer no statistics on publishing whatsoever. It seems that she relied heavily on the catalogs of the fifteen to twenty schools that have collections in the area, which is about all that she could have done to conduct the study. Although I didn't necessarily find her conclusion surprising, I found her country profiles to be incredibly informative.
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