Haitian library book restoration project

Although we'll have a lot to say this week on the dire economic condition of our state and its potential impact on UNLV and its faculty, its worth a moment to think of those faculty and students in far greater distress than we are.

I received over the weekend a circular from a group called "Bibliotheques sans frontieres" which is working to salvage archives and libraries in Haiti, which were very badly hit by the earthquake.

Among the projects they are working on, in addition to the obvious emergency evacuation of injured personnel and fundraising for reconstruction, is to solicit donations of books to help reconstitute the university library collections.

BSF has compiled a list of books which were destroyed, which are in a wide range of disciplines. Needless to say, they need books in French. Any member of the UNLV faculty or student body, or at any other NSHE institution who might be reading this post, who has books they might want to contribute, please contact me and I'll cross-check your offers with their list of requests. (They are also asking for monetary donations to accompany the book donations, to defray the cost of processing the books.) If it turns out that the UNLV community has a sufficient number of French books to offer, the NFA would organize an effort to collect and ship them and raise the appropriate donation to cover for processing costs.

In the meantime, our thoughts and hopes go out to the impacted faculty and students of Haiti's universities.