Mr. Peter de Ridder (Lisse), formerly director of the publishing house Mouton & Co., lent several items that have been printed as illustration in this publication. In addition he provided information that was used in writ ing this book. For this we are very grateful to him. The University Library owes much thanks above all to Professor C.H. van Schooneveld himself for donating his collection. At the same time we thank him and his wife, Mrs. Dorothy van Schooneveld-Abel, for the generous help and hospitality that they repeatedly extended in the course of the prac tical realization of this project. We are especially grateful to Professor Van Schooneveld for the extensive comments that he wrote on the first draft of this publication. This commentary is cited in the introductory contribu tion; the manuscript itself has been added to the collection. The C.H. van Schooneveld Collection contains an exceptionally large amount of unique material in the fields of Slavistics and linguistics. I there fore express the hope that the collection, introduced and made public by this publication, can contribute to education and research in these fields.

P.W.J.L. Gerretsen Chief Librarian of Leiden University