Russian-American Library Cooperation in the Pacific Rim: A Chronology

In 1993 IREX Special Projects in Libraries and Archives awarded Patricia Polansky (U Hawaii) a grant for a proposal entitled Slavic Librarianship in the Pacific Rim. This was a six-week program that brought four librarians and one archivist from the Russian Far East to the University of Hawaii for an introduction to American librarianship. They attended a one-day conference entitled Access to Russian Far East Collections in which American West Coast Slavic Bibliographers participated. The sessions introduced our collections to each other and covered bibliographic control, access issues, joint projects, and Pacific Rim cooperation. The group also attended the AAASS in Honolulu that year.

IIn 1994 IREX Special Projects in Libraries and Archives awarded Patricia Polansky (U Hawaii) funds for a project entitled East Siberian and Russian Far East Library Assessment Project held in Irkutsk and Khabarovsk. Michael Neubert and Eric Johnson (Library of Congress) led four-day session in Khabarovsk on developing ties between libraries of the RFE and USA that covered librarianship in the US, exchanges, e-mail, internet, CDRoms, inter-library loan, automation, joint Russian-American library programs, and sources of funding in the library field. Over fifty Russians attended — including four of the five librarians that were in Honolulu.

In 1997 Michael Biggins (U Washington) and Patricia Polansky (U Hawaii) invited nine librarians and one archivist from the Russian Far East for a twelve-day visit to the University of Washington as a result of grants from IREX Special Projects in Libraries and Archives and the Open Society Institute Regional Library Program (Budapest). American West Coast Slavic Bibliographers will again meet with their RFE colleagues for a two-day conference entitled Countdown to the 21st Century

The group will attend the AAASS in Seattle, as well as a three-day intensive seminar on issues in librarianship and library school development at the UW campus. From the Russians in this group, three were in Hawaii and eight were in Khabarovsk; from the Americans, eight were in Hawaii and three were in Khabarovsk.