HELP NEEDED - seeking YU telephone directories (fwd)

Tue Jun 22 15:26:09 UTC 1999

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 10:40:27 +0100 (BST)
From: Mieko Yamaguchi <m.yamaguchi at bangor.ac.uk>
To: lis-link at mailbase.ac.uk
Subject: HELP NEEDED - seeking YU telephone directories (fwd)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:48:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: Andras Riedlmayer <riedlmay at fas.harvard.edu>
To: Middle East Librarians Assn List <melanet-l at cornell.edu>
Subject: HELP NEEDED - seeking YU telephone directories
Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.4.04.9906212208170.21075-100000 at login1.fas.harvard.edu>

Dear Colleagues,

        It is a rare occasion when the answer to a bibliographic query
has the potential to make a difference in the lives of tens of thousands
of people. This is such an occasion and the reason I'm posting this query
to this list. Please pass it on to potentially interested colleagues and
to other library-related lists.

        What we are urgently seeking is libraries or other institutions
that have holdings telephone directories from the former Yugoslavia,
dating from 1969 to the present.  We are especially asking colleagues
in European libraries to check their collections to see if they have
any holdings.

        These phonebooks are needed to help us complete a set of such
directories, for a project designed to assist refugees returning to Kosovo
who have been deprived of other forms of personal identification.  Our
project is described in article in this week's issue of the Chronicle
of Higher Education:  "Using Phone Books, Scholars Build a Data Base
for Resettling Kosovars," by Kelly McCollum.

        Norman Ross Publishing Inc. ( http://www.nross.com ) has
undertaken to film these phonebooks.  The entries for Kosovo are being
scanned from the microfilms and will be turned into a searchable database,
using OCR and other software.  Microfilming and preserving a series of
telephone directories for all of the former Yugoslavia will also assist
researchers in tracking demographic changes in a region that has been
radically transformed by war and "ethnic cleansing."

        We have located about 20 vols. of directories in North American
collections, but need more to complete our series.  Our hope is that
libraries we have not contacted so far (esp. in Europe) will have holdings
that can help us to fill crucial gaps. Below is a list of phone books we
have identified that we do not yet have for this project:

* 1970-1978 for all republics of the former Yugoslavia
* 1981-1982 for all republics of the former Yugoslavia
* 1985-1986 for Macedonia and Montenegro only
* 1987-1988 for all republics of the former Yugoslavia
* 1989-1990 for all the republics except Bosnia
* 1991+     for all republics of the former Yugoslavia

If you know of the location of any of the above telephone directories,
please notify, as soon as possible:

Norman Ross Publishing Inc.
330 West 58th Street
New York, NY 10019  USA
tel: 1-212-765-8200 / fax: 1-212-765-2393
e-mail <inquiry at nross.com>

        The resulting database will be of use not only in facilitating
returns of refugees who currently hold only provisional identification
documents issued by UNHCR, but may also assist in the process of
rebuilding a functioning civil society in Kosovo (in matters such as
settling the inevitable disputes about property and inheritance, and
drawing up electoral rolls for the first postwar elections).

        As you are no doubt aware, the recent crisis in the Balkans has
resulted in the exile of as many as a million people driven from their
homes in Kosovo. Before being pushed across the border most refugees
were systematically deprived of their identity documents.

        Within Kosovo, there was also widespread destruction of archives
and registry offices that held the vital statistics and property records
and other documentation of the people who had been expelled. (see the
Society of American Archivists resolution on archive destruction in Kosovo
on the SAA website).

        Hundreds of passports and other documents confiscated by Serbian
forces from expelled Kosovar Albanians were discovered last week by NATO
troops, who found them stuffed into trash bags piled on a rubbish tip.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/061499kosovo-graves.1.jpg.html
British intelligence has promised to turn over the found documents to
UNHCR for return to the owners, if they can be located.  However, tens
of thousands of people still have no documents of any kind other than
those issued by refugee agencies.

        United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata
explains the rationale behind this destruction of records in an article
published last week in the International Herald Tribune (14 June 1999)
 http://www.unhcr.ch/news/pr/ht990614.htm

       In the past two months the Yugoslav authorities have made
       a well-organized effort to erase the identity, and thus the
       residency and return rights, of Yugoslavia's ethnic Albanian
       citizens.

       And in recent days some Yugoslav officials have insisted
       that they be given a say in deciding who is allowed to return.
       The international administrators in Kosovo must ensure that
       those who were responsible for the mass expulsions are not allowed
       to reap the harvest of the inhumane policy of expulsion by being
       able to block ''undesirable'' refugees from returning.

The Yugoslav authorities have made their position chillingly clear:

      The Serb position is that any Albanian with documents, who can
      prove that he or she is a citizen of Kosovo, can return, the
      diplomat said. He noted, however, that Serb officials carefully
      destroyed the documents of many refugees as they left Kosovo.

      Asked about a demographic remaking of Kosovo, Goran Matic, a
      Serb cabinet minister, denied it. "We would like all the Albanians
      to come back," he said, "all those who can prove that they were
      citizens of Yugoslavia."
                                (New York Times, April 25, 1999)

Our hope is that UN High Commissioner Ogata's warning will be heeded by
the international authorities in Kosovo, and that refugees will face
no bureaucratic obstacles as they exercise their right of return.

We also hope that this project will make a real contribution to the
rebuilding of communities and people's lives in Kosovo.  By tracking down
these publications, and by preserving and making available the information
they contain, we will have put our skills as librarians to use in the
service of that goal.

Please feel free to contact me, or Norman Ross Inc. <norman at nross.com>
if you have any questions or need further information.

Andras J. Riedlmayer
Fine Arts Library
Harvard University
<riedlmay at fas.harvard.edu>
tel. 617-495-3372 / fax 1-617-496-4889

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