Editorial

Welcome to Volume 24, Number 4 of Slavic and East European Information Resources (SEEIR), a special issue dedicated to book culture, information resources, library development, the ongoing evolution of the profession of librarianship, and the preservation of cultural heritage in Central Asia, the region that includes the modern states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

This special issue forms part of what is called the Central Asia Research Cluster, an initiative that originated at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2021. Exploring the theme, “Knowledge Production & The Periphery Revisited: Decentering Cultural Heritage, Public Histories and Memory in Soviet and Post-Soviet Central Asia 1917-Present,” the initiative provides a “transnational platform for scholars, librarians, and archivists from Central Asia and other parts of the world to work on joint publications.”¹ The project consists of three components: 1) a special issue of Slavic Review; 2) a special issue of Slavic and East European Information Resources, and 3) a forthcoming collective monograph. This issue of SEEIR features three research articles, followed by a book review, and preceded by an introduction that contextualizes the contents of the issue within modern history of Central Asia and the parameters of the Central Asia Research Cluster.

The first article, by Marat Rakhmatullaev and Anne Hedrich, explores the challenges and development of academic libraries in Uzbekistan; the second article, by Dilafza Haydaraliyeva, discusses conservation of cultural heritage in Samarkand and Shakhrisabz, which fall within the boundaries of modern Uzbekistan; and the third article, by Gulshat Masalimovna Abikova and Ashirbek Kurbanovich Muminov, reviews the history of collections of manuscripts and rare books in the Arabic script in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The issues closes with Akram Habibulla’s review of Nuryoghdi Toshov’s book Po sledam dvortsovoi biblioteki: rukopisnaia kul’tura v Khorezme pri Kongratakh (In the footsteps of the palace library: manuscript culture in Khorezm during the reign of Qungrat dynasty), which attempts to reconstruct the royal library in Khiva [in modern Uzbekistan],” and thereby add to the “history of libraries and manuscript tradition in Central Asia, particularly in Khwarizm.”

SEEIR is proud to participate in the Central Asia Research Cluster initiative to bring the work of more Central Asian researchers into North American scholarship dedicated to Slavic and Eurasian studies. I offer congratulations to all the authors for their exceptional work and to the guest editors, Joseph Lenkart, Katherine Ashcraft, and Eva Rogaar for their exceptional work in leading the Central Asia Research Cluster, editing these three research articles, and introducing this special issue.

Looking ahead to 2024, I encourage readers to consult with SEEIR’s regular editorial team about ideas for new articles and column pieces that would be appropriate for journal. Whether you are working on an analytical research article, have an idea for a shorter narrative piece, or would like to review a book, your contributions to SEEIR help form the scholarly record of our field. For the full range of submission options and guidelines, please refer to the SEEIR website at the following URL: https://sites.google.com/site/seeirjournal.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data, Open Materials and Preregistered. The data and materials are openly accessible athttps://doi.org/10.25949/20188298.v1

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in the SEER

database at https://seer.cancer.gov/seerstat/

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. https://sites.google.com/view/centralasiaresearchcluster/about-us