The Yale University Library Slavic & East European Collection was created in 1896 with the donation of 6,000 volumes acquired by Joel Sumner Smith, the Associate Librarian of the Yale College Library. This foundational collection was carefully curated and brought to Yale a strong core of 19th century Slavic books and serials. Smith's original collection has been digitized.
More detailed overviews of the history of the collection can be found in: