Joel Sumner Smith, 1830-1903: American Pioneer of Slavic Librarianship

The article describes the contributions of Joel Sumner Smith to the development of the Slavic collections at Yale University Library; his translation of Nikolai Nekrasov's poetry; his correspondence with W. R. S. Ralston, British promoter and translator of Russian literature; and his compilation of a catalog of the Lowell Mason Library of Music.

An earlier version of this paper was presented November 5, 2005, at the AAASS Annual Convention in Salt Lake City, at the panel “Noteworthy Collectors: Some Founders of Slavic Collections in American Libraries.” Another earlier version was published in Russian: T. Lorkovich, “Osnovnopolozhnik slavianskikh bibliotechnykh kollektsii v SShA” [The founder of Slavic library collections in the United States], Bibliografiia 3 (2006):150–155.