July 26, 1993

Contact: Helen Dalrymple (202) 707-1940
Jill Brett (202) 707-2905

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1993 Visiting Fellows Selected for Soros Program at Library of Congress

The Library of Congress and the Soros Foundation have made the final selections for the 1993 class of the Visiting Fellows Program for librarians and information specialists from Central and Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union.

The three-month program, funded by the Soros Foundation, will introduce the visiting fellows to the mission, organization, and operations of the Library of Congress. The program, now in its second year, begins September 13.

This class of visiting fellows represents nine countries in Central and Eastern Europe, and includes eleven librarians and one professor of information science. The class of 1993 also represents different types of libraries (national, university, public, and special) as well as the different functions within them.

The twelve 1993 visiting fellows are Katica Acevska Garoska, National and University Library, Skopje, Macedonia; Vladimir Belousov, Library of the Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia; Cornelia Bucur, Academy Library, Bucharest, Romania; Nora Deak, Lajos Kossuth University Library, Debrecen, Hungary; Boris Kosorok, National and University Library, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Anu Nestor, Library of the Academy of Sciences, Tallinn, Estonia; Dzidra Perceva, Ministry of Industry and Energy Library, Riga, Latvia; Isabella Popescu, Brasov County Public Library, Brasov, Romania; Marija Prokopcik, Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania; Ursula Roosmaa, National Library, Tallinn, Estonia; Olga Sivac, National Library, Chisinau, Moldova; and Maria Toropygina, Library of the Institute of Oriental Studies, St. Petersburg, Russia.

The first month of the program will consist of general orientation, followed by five weeks of specialized work assignments within the Library designed to meet the visiting fellows' professional needs and to coincide with the goals of the Library. In November, the class will visit the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where they will be the guests of the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs, and Marianna Tax Choldin, its director. There they will have an opportunity to learn about the University of Illinois Library. Their return trip will include a stopover in Columbus, Ohio, made possible by OCLC, to visit the Online Computer Library Center.

The Library of Congress-Soros Foundation Visiting Fellows Program was initiated in 1992 by James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress, and George Soros, president of the Soros Foundation, located in New York City. Application materials for the third class of visiting fellows will be available in late 1993 at local Soros Foundation offices throughout Central and Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States. The initial screening, including interviews and an English proficiency examination, is done by the local Soros Foundation offices. The final selection of 12 visiting fellows is made by a Library of Congress selection team. All applicants must be librarians or information specialists, Central and Eastern European citizens (including all of the former Soviet Union), and fluent in English.

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PR 93-098
7/28/93
ISSN 0731-3527