GSD3451W/RUSS 3311W: Major Project Seminar

What is transliteration?  Transliteration is the conversion of a text into a different alphabet. To effectively research topics on Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia, you'll need to convert Cyrillic letters into Latin ones. For example, цензура ("censorship" in English) would be transliterated as t͡senzura. 

Transliteration systems can vary by country and time period. Transliteration styles are also not always consistent between books, periodicals, and online resources. For this reason it can be useful to try a variety of searches if you're not getting the results you think you should. You might see different results, for example, if you search for Dostoevsky, Dostoevskii, Dostoevskij. 

The most common transliteration system used in library catalogs and databases is the ALA-LC Romanization system. You can consult this ALA-LC transliteration table for Russian.  

Tips for searching:

- Search first with Latin characters in library catalogs. Many catalog records do not have Cyrillic terms. 

- Some databases have virtual keyboards which allow you to converts letters. 

- To find what you need, you may need to use both transliterated terms and terms in Cyrillic.