SEEMP (Slavic and East European Materials Project) has embarked on a multi-year project to microfilm a collection of newspapers from the immediate post-Soviet period (ca. 1991-1998). The newspapers to be preserved were published in cities across the former Soviet Union, and the collection comes to SEEMP from the holdings of Columbia University and Harvard University.

During the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, publishing of often short-lived titles produced by various political parties, organizations, and interest groups proliferated. Yet the means by which such materials could be collected and preserved by research libraries were virtually non-existent. The bulk of the titles in this collection arrived in the United States via returning graduate students and faculty, in a non-systematic way. The titles in this collection are invaluable—coming from a fragmentary source base that represents one of the only ways the upwelling of opinions, movements, and interests are documented during this turbulent period.

Titles in the first set, which are already available, include:

• Ădăbii̐i̐at găzeti (Baku, Azerbaijan)  Holdings:  1991-1992
• Äripäev (Tallinn, Estonia)  Holdings:  1992-1996
• Atgimimas (Vilnius, Lithuania)  Holdings:  1988-1993
• Azadlyg (Baku, Azerbaijan)  Holdings:  1992-1994
• Biznes i Baltii︠a︡ (Riga, Lativa)  Holdings:  1991-1995

Additional titles are in process, including a second set of titles recently approved.

This project was proposed by Robert H. Davis (Columbia University) and Anna Rakityanskaya (Harvard University).