Dear friends,
A colleague just forwarded this to me. I am in a state of
disbelief! Has anyone heard anything further?
Deb
________________________________
From: AAASS [mailto:aaass@fas.harvard.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2008 2:39 PM
Subject: European Reading Room Closing at LOC
Dear AAASS members,
I have been informed that the Library of Congress decided last
Wednesday to close the current European Reading Room space and convert
it into an exhibit area. Closure of the reading room may occur as early
as a month from now. Many of you are familiar with this reading room. It
is an invaluable resource for scholars studying Russia and Eastern
Europe, with unique reference materials and finding aids, not to mention
some of the most highly qualified librarians working on the region that
we study. If the reading room is closed, we fear that these librarians'
positions will be eliminated or cut back along with the sharp downsizing
of the reading room. In any case, those who remain will b e far less
accessible to readers in the future.
Apparently, the timing of this is driven predominantly by a
Congressman's request for a six-month exhibit on Abraham Lincoln, and
his insistence that the exhibit be displayed in the Jefferson Building
rather than in the Madison Building. The one-month notice is clearly an
attempt to sneak this through and avoid the kind of protest that blocked
a recent attempt to close the African & Middle Eastern Reading Room for
the same reason.
The AAASS is actively working on this issue. We expect to make
an official statement on the issue by tomorrow. Actions by individuals
would be even more helpful. If this is an issue that concerns you,
please write your Senator and/or Representative. Letters to James Billi
ngton, the Librarian of Congress, would also be very helpful. A letter
template is appended below, together with a list of the members of the
Joint Committee on the Library, which is the Congressional committee
that supervises the Library of Congress. If you are a constituent of one
of the members of this committee, a letter to him or her would be
especially important.
Activism by scholars played a key role in saving the European
University at St. Petersburg. We hope that similar activism will achieve
a similar result for the European Reading Room.
Sincerely,
Dmitry Gorenburg
Executive Director, AAASS
------
Letters can be sent to the following addressees:
The Joint Committee on the Library
1309 LHOB
Washington, DC 20515-6157
The Joint Committee on the Library Chair
Senator Dianne Feinstein
United States Senate
331 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Committee Members:
Senate: Dianne Feinstein (CA); Christopher J. Dodd (CT); Charles
E. Schumer (NY); Robert F. Bennett (UT); Ted Stevens (AK)
House: Bob Brady, Vice Chair (PA); Zoe Lofgren (CA); Debbie
Wasserman Schultz (FL); Vernon Ehlers (MI); Daniel Lungren (CA)
The Librarian of Congress:
Dr. James Billington
Office of the Librarian
The Library of Congress
LM-608
101 Independence Ave, S E
Washington, DC 20540-1000
202-707-5205 (voice)
202-707-1714 (fax)
libofc(a)loc.gov
------
Letter Templates
POSSIBLE LETTER TO CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEES AND LINCOLN
COMMISSION:
I write to urge you to protect the core mission for which the
Library of Congress was created -- to serve as the world's greatest
research facility. The immediate issue is a decision announced quietly
to Library staff on March 18, 2008 to permanently close the European
Reading Room at the Library of Congress.
The European Reading Room is one of the most heavily used rooms
in the Library. It provides essential access to reference materials and
to expert reference librarians without which the largest lib rary c
ollection in the world -- acquired and maintained at a cost running into
the tens of millions of dollars per year -- would be far less accessible
to scholars.
The immediate cause for the closure is the desire to use the
room for a six-month exhibit in 2009 on the bicentennial of Abraham
Lincoln's birth. There has been a great deal of secrecy surrounding this
decision and we are sure that you and members of the commission would be
a appalled to hear that this noble celebration is being used as part of
a broader agenda of permanently closing reading rooms and cutting back
on services to readers who use the Library's unparalleled collections
for original research.
While exhibitions have an important role in educating the
public, the Library's core mandate is to provide open and efficient
access to its priceless materials. There is no reason for the former to
come at the expense of the latter when other options exist.
We urge you to intervene with the Library to sa ve the European
Reading Room. We also urge you to make clear to the Library that
Congress stands strongly in support of the Library's core mission and
therefore opposes any attempt to sacrifice reading rooms and research
services in order to expand exhibition space.
LETTER TO LIBRARY OF CONGRESS LEADERS:
We write to ask you to reconsider the decision announced to
Library staff on March 18, 2008 to close the European Reading Room.
Students in our classes and our colleagues from all over the
country rely heavily upon access to the reading room's reference
materials, finding aids, and consultations with multilingual specialist
librarians who are intimately familiar with the unparalleled collections
of the Library. The reading room is particularly crucial to helping
foreign researchers navigate the complexities of the closed stack
collections.
Please save the existing European Reading Room! More generally,
we urge you to support the Lib rary's core mission by opposing any
attempt to sacrifice reading rooms and research services in order to
expand exhibition space. It does not make economic sense to spend the
millions required to maintain and build the world's greatest library
collection without doing everything possible to make that collection as
accessible to scholars as possible. Closing the European Reading Room
would be a serious blow to the core mission of the Library.
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