Researchers who use the European Reading Room at the Library of Congress are up in arms over rumors that it is about to be shut down to make way for exhibition space. They have begun a grass-roots campaign to urge concerned scholars to write protest letters.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Chronicle of Higher Ed Citation
Scholars Question Library of Congress's Plan to Relocate a Reading Room
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The story is starting to get out to the press! Supposedly a New York Times article is in the works. The scholarly associations are taking action, too. Dmitri Gorenburg, Executive Director of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) said in a mass email to the AAASS membership on 26 March that the organization and its library committee was expected to take an official stance in support of the European Reading Room by the next day. A number of Slavists have noted the irony that the European University in St. Petersburg was recently saved from closure in no small part because of the activism of the international community of scholars, while at the same time the LC, headed by the distinguished Russian historian, Libraian of Congress James Billington, planned to downgrade the reading room containing the priceless Slavic reference collection.
The European Reading Room means just as much to many other fields.
Scholars from other areas, please help by getting your networks and scholarly associations involved too.
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