American Friendship Library Project
"Recycles" Medical, Professional Journals
Get the latest information on CCI in the US-NIS Organizations section of the Website.
As the story on the Civic Education Project's Book Donation Study indicates, international book donation programs don't always donate the right books, and the best donated materials sometimes are not publicly available.
One organization that makes special efforts to avoid these mistakes is the American Friendship Library Project (AFLP). Since AFLP started four years ago, 450,000 books and journals have been shipped to Russia and Eastern Europe under various gift donations and grants, including from the National Endowment for Democracy and the Eurasia Foundation. Shipments have been closely accounted for and the items shipped have been current, useful books and scientific journals.
AFLP work breaks down into five major areas:
- The V. V. Mayakovsky Central Public Library in St. Petersburg, which received AFLP's first book shipment in October 1992. Since then eight 40' containers of books and journals have been shipped to the Library, where they are counted, sorted and redistributed. Between February and October of this year, Mayakovsky staff showed their donated collection to 1,000 individuals representing 132 regional organizations, and transferred to them 46,000 books and journals that they selected.
- AFLP collects medical books and journals, e.g. the Journal of the American Medical Association, and donates them to libraries and hospitals in Vladivostok, Kyiv, Ulan Bator and elsewhere.
- Working together with the ABA's Central and East European Law Initiative (CEELI) and the Virginia Bar Association, AFLP is leading a model project designed to strengthen Sister Law Schools and Commercial Law Centers in the region. Under this program books and journals have already been shipped to Tartu, Estonia, and Warsaw, Poland.
- At the request of the Russian Embassy and the Russian Committee for Higher Education, AFLP has embarked on the first stage of a 5-year effort to provide core collections of U.S. books to all 500 higher education institutions in Russia.
AFLP also helps other U.S. organizations--Rotary Clubs, sister city groups--to conduct book drives of their own.
AFLP ships books and journals in other areas besides those mentioned, e.g.:
- business, economics and management
- history and biography
- reference
- literature, old or new, of high quality
- natural science and engineering
- journals--professional and scientific
- children's story books and text books
Books may be new or used, and hard back or paper back. They should be in good condition, not more than 10 years old, and "in current use in their field or of enduring value." Those with items to donate may ship them directly to the AFLP warehouse in Virginia at the US Postal Service Library Rate, about $7.80 for 40 lbs. of books. The address is:
- P. O. Box 160
Richmond, VA 23201
Or contact:
- Nadia Jenkins, M.Sc.
AFLP Contributions Coordinator
13618 Hull St. Road, Suite 112
Midlothian, VA 23112
Tel. (804) 739-0930
Fax: (804) 739-7293
E-mail: [email protected]
This article is from the November 1994 issue of
Civil Society ... East and West
For more information or to order a
subscription, see our publications page.
The URL for this document is: http://solar.rtd.utk.edu/~ccsi/csew/94-11/am-libr.html
Last updated: December 1995
