Source Base of Ukrainian Studies in the Contents Indexes of Periodicals

The bibliographic indexes of the contents of periodicals (magazines, newspapers, collections) which are the form of support index to edition, are examined in the article. The research is aimed at historical and bibliographical generalization and determination of the role and place of magazines contents indexes as an important source base of Ukrainian studies; review of the historiography, problems and source base of the study of the specific genre of bibliographic manuals. Both printed and electronic retrospective indexes of the periodicals contents that reflect publications in Ukrainian magazines in Ukrainian and Russian languages on the territory of Ukraine and abroad during 1844–2018 have been systematically investigated. The metabibliographic manual Contents Indexes of the Ukrainian Magazines in the Collection of the V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine (compilers T. Dobko, V. Shkarina, V. Radchenko) is among the results of historical-bibliographic research of contents indexes of Ukrainian periodicals, conducted in V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, and is prepared for publishing. The bibliographic and other scientific methods are applied: system and historical approaches; empiric methods of description and design; thematic analysis method, source analysis. It has been proved that, bibliographers focus their attention at the periodicals which are public sources of information, reflect certain historic epoch, describe social, political, and cultural life in Ukraine, and the most important issues in various areas of science. With the development of new information technologies, ways of access to information are changed, its formats become various, and part of periodicals available in the electronic form is growing. Nowadays, modern means of navigation and integration of information resources with access to different text documents, give users opportunity to find necessary information quickly with the searching instruments of the Internet. But indexes of periodicals content didn't lose their value. Professionally arranged, such an indexes are important and informative bibliographic researches, chronicle of Ukrainian periodicals and bibliography, part of Ukrainian nation history and culture.