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Henrique Balbino Coelho, Technical Services Library Assistant in the Spanish/Portuguese Division, was selected as a 2007-08 Spectrum Scholar by the ALA’s Office for Diversity. Coelho, who is working toward his degree at Simmons, will receive $5,000 in scholarship funding for his studies. The annual Spectrum Scholarship Program's major drive is to recruit applicants and award scholarships to American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander students for graduate programs in library and information studies. (February 2008)

Laura Farwell Blake and Elizabeth McKeigue, Research Librarians in Widener Library, presented a paper at the 6th Annual Columbia University Libraries Reference Services Symposium in March entitled "Get Out There, But Don’t Close the Desk Yet: Librarians in the Classroom, on Campus, on the Street, and, Yes, Even in the Library." (April 2008)

Raymond Lum, Librarian for the Western Languages Collection in the Harvard-Yenching Library and Asian Bibliographer in Widener Library, wrote a biography, "Ko K'un-hua: Brief Life of Harvard's First Chinese Instructor, 1838-1882," that appears in the Vita section of the March-April 2008 issue of Harvard Magazine. Lum drew on materials in the Edward Bangs Drew collection of the Harvard-Yenching Library and in the Harvard University Archives to compose the article. Drew was a Harvard graduate (A.B. 1863, A.M. 1868) who was instrumental in selecting Ko K'un-hua to teach Chinese at Harvard.  (March 2008)

Nicola Mantzaris, Stacks Assistant in Widener Library, spent 10 days in Nicaragua in January volunteering at the San Juan del Sur (SJSD) Biblioteca Móvil, a lending library and book mobile that provides books to the townspeople as well as smaller outlying communities. Nicaraguan libraries typically do not loan out books, so the program's purpose is to encourage lending, especially to children. As one of five Simmons students on the trip, Mantzaris spent time in the village of San Juan del Sur, visited other libraries, and traveled with the book mobile. She helped encourage children to use the library by reading to them as well as playing games and doing arts and crafts projects. Mantzaris also visited communities currently without a library program to promote the setup of one using SJDS Biblioteca's carefully packaged "library in a box" that includes basic items to begin a lending program. Mantzaris is working toward her MLIS at Simmons. (March 2008)

Leah Orent, Littauer Hebraica Specialist in the Harvard College Library Judaica Division, has had a book published recently by Hakibuts Hameuchad Press in Jerusalem:

Ratso va-shov : yesodot etiyim u-mistiyim be-torato shel R. Shneur Zalman mi-Ladi : iyun hashva'ati [Running and Returning: Ethical and Mystical Elements in the Teachings of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyady: A Comparative Study]

The book deals with the conflict between ethical and mystical values in a religious context, comparing Chabad Hasidism to other religious traditions, specifically Christian and Hindu. (January 2008)

Anna Rakityanskaya, Slavic Librarian in Widener Library, presented the talk "The Slavic collections at Harvard University libraries" at the Council for Slavonic and East European Library and Information Services (COSEELIS) annual conference in Oxford, UK. The trip also included visits to the European Collections of the British Library, the Library of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at the University College of London, and the Russian collection at the London Library. (April 2008)

András Riedlmayer, Bibliographer in Islamic Art and Architecture, Fine Arts Library, recently published two articles: "Ottoman Copybooks of Correspondence and Other Miscellanies as a Source for Political and Cultural History" [Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 61.1-2 (2008): 201-214] and "Crimes of War, Crimes of Peace: Destruction of Libraries during and after the Balkan Wars of the 1990s" [Library Trends, 56.1 (2007): 107-132].

At the November 2007 annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Riedlmayer, as president of the Turkish Studies Association, organized a joint panel with the Society for Armenian Studies entitled “On Hrant Dink and Armenian-Turkish Relations.” In another session at the MESA conference, he presented a paper, "Conversion Stories, Tales of Viziers, and Ribald Anecdotes: Multiple Layers of Narrative and Language in a Bosnian Manuscript." (March 2008)

Janet Steins, Associate Librarian for Technical Services and Collections in Tozzer Library, has been appointed Subject Editor for Anthropology for Resources for College Libraries (RCL). RCL in print and the electronic resource RCL Web, jointly produced by ACRL and Bowker, are successors to the 1988 multi-volume Books for College Libraries. A highly selective core list of titles in all subjects, RCL identifies works supporting a traditional liberal arts and sciences curriculum at colleges and small universities.  (February 2008)

Jeffrey Spurr, Islamic and Middle East Specialist in the Fine Arts Library, published an article "Iraqi Libraries and Archives in Peril" that appears in the volume The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq, edited by Peter Stone and Joanne Farchakh Bajjaly.

At the annual meeting of the College Art Association (CAA) held in Dallas in February 2008, Spurr presented a paper, "Devastation and Revival: The Story of the Iraq National Library and Archive following the 2003 Invasion."

Spurr was also invited to organize a special session, "Iraqi Libraries and Archives in a Time of Invasion, Chaos, and Civil Conflict: Status and Prospects," at the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) conference in Montréal in November 2007, where he gave a talk entitled "Good Intentions, Stymied Attempts, and Dimmed Hopes: Efforts to Rehabilitate Damaged Iraqi Libraries and Archives." (March 2008)