Besides descriptions and catalogues of real libraries and archives, you can find on the Internet numerous virtual libraries, that is, numerous websites containing the transcriptions of entire texts. We suggest that you should have recourse to them only for the first reading, or in order to search for particular words or phrases. If you need to quote those texts in your thesis or papers, it is preferable for to refer to printed editions, whose philological accuracy is more easily verifiable. On the other hand, the Internet offers you several other research tools, such as:

• META-OPACs: these are search engines that allow you to scan materials of several library catalogues at once.
• humanities portals and sites, that is, portals/sites devoted to different aspects and fields of humanities
• digital works and authors, that is, web-sites devoted to individual authors or works
• e-journals, that is, periodicals published only, or also, online.

Other essential digital sources of information are the:

• MLA International Bibliography which is the best resource for secondary literature, especially articles and chapters in books. It will be available on CD-ROM (or in print) in your University Library. The MLA International Bibliography provides a listing and subject index for books and articles published on modern languages, literatures, folklore and linguistics. It indexes over 50000 books and journals each year.
• Russian Archives Online consists of collections of photographs and films, audio, clips and transcripts from the 15 republics of the former Soviet Union.