Playing Soviet

Playing Soviet is a database of illustrations drawn from the collection of Soviet children’s books in the Cotsen Children’s Library. The images have been selected and annotated by a diverse group of scholars and students of Russian and Soviet culture. The site’s metadata structure and searching and browsing interfaces allow researchers to group images according to thematic, chronological, as well as visual and stylistic criteria. Planning is in progress for interactive data visualizations that will allow users to map relationships between thematics, artists, materials, techniques, color, style, and publication information.