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Dr Catherine Cooke was an expert on Russian and Soviet architecture and design and a fellow of Clare Hall. Following her tragic death in a car accident in 2004, her outstanding collection of Russian books, journals, posters and ephemera came to the University Library. All items from the collection are within the classmark range CCA.54 (for large books) to CCE.54 (for small books), plus CCF.54 (for folios).

Detail from 'Skol'ko millionov golodnykh? Desiat'!' by Vladimir Maiakovskii in 'Russkii revoliutsionnyi plakat' (Polonskii, 1925). CCA.54.27

Searching within the collection

The advice here refers to the University Library's Catherine Cooke collection and not to the related visual archive.

The electronic catalogue, iDiscover, does not allow the reader to browse the whole collection. It is possible, however, to browse within each size specification. To do so, please go into the Browse search on iDiscover, select "Browse by classmark", and enter eg "CCD.54" as the classmark stem.

Browsing can also be done through the physical class catalogues for the collection. The class catalogue contains classmarks next to basic bibliographical data: author, title, place and date of publication. It does not contain subject headings. Please enquire in the Rare Books Reading Room if you would like to look at the class catalogues.

Specific searches, rather than browsing, can also be done through iDiscover. All items in the Cooke collection contain in their records a provenance note which names Dr Cooke. This means that more targeted searches can be run on the electronic catalogue by combining a search term (eg Tatlin) with the search term "Catherine Cooke".

Cooke visual archive

A separate visual archive of photographs, slides, and postcards was housed after Catherine's death by the Slavonic Studies Department. Several of the exhibits in the exhibition detailed above come from this extraordinary archive. A detailed catalogue of the material in the archive was created through the expertise and very hard work of Slavonic Studies postgraduates and can be found here. The archive is now housed in the University Library, with a view to partial or full incorporation of the material into the Library's collections. Please address any queries relating to Catherine's visual archive to Mel Bach, whose contact details are available here.

Cooke written archive

The Library gratefully received Catherine's written archive which had been housed since her death by the University of Sheffield.  Its cataloguing is a work in progress.  Please contact Mel Bach if you are interested in this archive.

Exhibition

Material from the Catherine Cooke collection has featured in the following exhibitions: