This private library collection consists of over 20,000 books and serials dating from the 17th century to the present that deal with the history, language, and culture of Carpatho-Rusyns in all regions where they reside in the European homeland as well as in the diaspora (especially the United States and Canada). Studies about other peoples who have interacted with Carpatho-Rusyns in their homeland are well represented--Magyars, Jews, Slovaks, Germans, Roma, and Czechs among others. The material is published in the various local Rusyn dialects, as well as in Latin, Hungarian, Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, German, Yiddish, French, English, etc. Included are works in the fields of bibliography, demography, history, biography, religion, language, ethnography, literature, art, and architecture. Among them are encyclopedic and statistical guides, church schematisma, school texts, original literary works, atlases, maps, and complete runs of serials dating from the late 19th century to the present.
Highlights include first editions of Ioanykii Bazylovych's two-volume Brevis notitia Fundationis Theodori Koriatovits (1799-1804); Mykhail Luchkai's two-volume Tserkovnyia besidy (1831) and Grammatica Slavo-Ruthena (1830); Ivan Dulishkovych's three-volume Istoricheskiia cherty ugro-russkikh (1874-77); and works by the group's "national awakener," Aleksander Dukhnovych, including the first Carpatho-Rusyn literary anthology (Pozdravlenie Rusynov, 1850), the first Carpatho-Rusyn almanacs (Misiatsoslov, 1854, 1857), and his studies on the history of the Eparchy of Presov. The collection also contains a 1698 catechism by Bishop Joseph De Camellis printed for Uniate Catholics, including Carpatho-Rusyns, living in the Hungarian Kingdom. This volume is the oldest printed book published with vernacular elements of the Carpatho-Rusyn language incorporated into the Church Slavonic text. Other 17th- and 18th-century books are written either in the vernacular Rusyn sppech, in Latin, or in Church Slavonic. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Carpatho-Rusyn writers continued to use Rusyn vernacular and also began to use Russian and Ukrainian for their literary language. The collection includes many first edition literary works from the interwar years of the 20th century as well as virtually all titles in the newly codified variant of the Rusyn language published since 1989.