Kamkin books

[Donald Jacobsen]

As requested, Cheryl...

Perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel for Kamkin might not be an
incinerator flame after all.  I just got off the phone with my boss, Peter
Reddaway, after urging him to call Daniel Billington, the Librarian of
Congress (which he did, at home on a Sunday).  Billington, as some of you
may know, has a vital interest in things Russian (in fact, he gave the
graduation address -- in Russian -- last year at RGGU, the Russian State
University for the Humanities, where Yuri Afanasiev is the rector.  I was
pleased to be on hand for my wife's graduation as a specialist in
philology.)

Apparently, the office of Rep. Connie Morella (R-but-just-barely-MD) has
been in contact with Billington, and there is a plan in the works to save
the Kamkin inventory exactly along the lines of the one I outlined
earlier.  LOC has an already-existing mechanism to deacquisition books to
libraries all over the country, and some of our libraries may get to
benefit from the Kamkin khalyava (pardon my use of bad Russian slang!)

The only problem is that the Kamkin folks are apparently at war with their
landlord (not unusual in cases of eviction), and it will take some
convincing for cooler heads to prevail in the interests of saving such a
huge inventory of valuable material for the sake of posterity.  Let's all
keep our fingers crossed.  David Johnson is posting the stories from the
Washington Post as they are published on his very valuable Johnson's
Russia List, which many of us in the political science community follow.
If people on this list do not subscribe to JRL and would find it helpful,
drop me a line at jacobsen at gwu.edu, and I'll be happy to repost the
stories here.

Hope to see at least some of you at the Southern Conference on Slavic
Studies next week in Daytona Beach, where many of us who study Russian and
Slavic issues from all different disciplines will be gathering.

Regards,

Donald Jacobsen
Ph.D. Student and Teaching Assistant
Department of Political Science
Research Assistant to Professor Peter Reddaway
Elliott School of International Affairs
The George Washington University
Washington, D.C.

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