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Day 5: Russian books and Searching

I began this morning attending a presentation at a day seminar at the IJB about Russian and German children’s books. Vitalij Berogov discussed some of the ABC books published in Berlin to provide reminders of Russian culture to the children of the Russian community in Berlin who hoped one day to return.

After that, I returned to the study library, to my little desk number 8 where I began looking through a range of multilingual book websites searching for possible titles which I then ordered from the IJB library. Once that was finished, I then went on to begin a methodical search of the library catalogue to find more multilingual picturebooks. I am first searching by the tag plurilingual and country of origin. Many of the books that turn up are bilingual but every now and then I find another multilingual book. I spent the rest of the day searching and ordering new finds. I estimate this will be my job for the next few days. Then I can get back into some more analysis (my favourite bit). 

We had a lovely meal of fish and potatoes for lunch in beautiful sunshine. We (the ‘stippis’ as we are known- this is a shortening of stipend which we receive as part of our fellowship) were discussing Jose’s search for picturebooks featuring scientists. Like my own search, identifying these books in a catalogue is not easy, so if you know any, do send me an email so I can pass the title on.


So my first weekend is coming up, and I am hoping to visit some art museums and bike out to the concentration camp Dachau which is 12 km away. I hear the weather will turn for the worse soon, so I must make the most of the good weather.

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