August 18, 1994

Contact: Jeanne Smith (202) 707-4337

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Library of Congress To Welcome 1994 Soros Fellows

The Library of Congress and the Soros Foundation have made final selections for the 1994 class of the Visiting Fellows Program for librarians and information specialists from Central and Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union. This is the third year for the program, funded by the New York foundation to promote intercultural relations.

The group includes two residents of Croatia and one each from 10 other countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and is made up of nine librarians, one library director, one university student, and one professor of information science. The class of 1994 also represents different types of libraries-- national, university, public, and special--as well as different functions within them.

The fellows will arrive September 12 for the three-month program introducing them to the mission, organization, and operations of the Library of Congress. A month devoted to general orientation will be followed by five weeks of specialized work assignments within the library designed to meet the fellows' professional needs and to coincide with the goals of the library. In November the class will visit the Online Computer Library Center in Dublin, Ohio, as guests of OCLC and meet with the director of OCLC Europe.

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. The collaborative effort has already had an impact on fellows who have completed the program, enabling them to play leading roles in their countries in encouraging open access to information essential for democratic societies.

The competitive selection process begins at the local Soros Foundation offices throughout Central and Eastern Europe and the newly independent states, where staff members initially screen applications from librarians and information specialists of the region who are fluent in English. Local staffs also conduct interviews and English proficiency examinations. The final selection of 12 visiting fellows is made by a Library of Congress selection team.

The 1994 visiting fellows are Temenuga Chakarova, Scientific-Technical Union, Stara Zagora, Bulgaria; Olena Garaschenko, Regional Universal Research Library, Kirovograd, Ukraine; Mimoza Hoxha, Public Library of Fier, Albania; Snjezana Ivanovic, Institute for Development and International Relations, and Andrea Lovric, National and University Library, Zagreb, Croatia; Olga Isayenko, Central Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrghyz Republic, Bishkek, Kyrghyzstan; Dunja Kalcic, National and University Library, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Lyubov Katz, Voronezh State University Library, Russia; Anita Komlodi, Kossuth Lajos University, Debrecen, Hungary; Agnieszka Krawczynska, Warsaw University, Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies Library, Poland; Marika Liivamagi, Tartu University Library, Estonia; and Jela Steinerova, Comenius University, Department of Library and Information Science, Bratislava, Slovakia.

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PR 94-132
8/18/94
ISSN 0731-3527