March 1, 1999 Seventh Class of Library of Congress - Soros Foundation Fellows Announced

On March 1 the seventh class of Library of Congress - Soros Foundation Visiting Fellows will arrive in Washington. The three-month program designed to introduce foreign librarians to libraries and librarianship in America is sponsored by the Network Library Program of the Open Society Institute, Budapest, Hungary. Regional Soros foundations affiliated with the Budapest office expect to use the Fellows as trainers and speakers upon their return home.

At the Library of Congress, the Fellows will receive general orientation on the Library and intensive Internet training, and will participate in a management skills institute and trainer workshop. They will attend a library conference in Arlington, Va. An additional week of orientation and training will be held at the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Each Fellow will then spend seven weeks at one or more host institutions in the Washington metropolitan area. These institutions provide training, work experience and Internet access. The Fellows will observe firsthand how national, public, academic and research libraries in a democratic society operate and serve their patrons. The network of host institutions includes high school libraries for the first time this year.

Prospective candidates submitted their applications to their regional Soros foundation offices in October. The local offices administered Teachers of English as a Foreign Language examinations to test the applicants' knowledge of English and conducted interviews with the applicants. A total of 50 applications from qualified individuals were forwarded to the Network Library Program Board and the Library of Congress for final selection. A 10-member committee at the Library selected the group of 12 librarians. The selection was based on each librarian's professional merits, essay content, recommendation from his or her library director and potential to influence and promote change within their own institution or in the library community at large or both.

The 1999 Library of Congress-Soros Foundation Visiting Fellows are:

Alexandra Alexandrova, The American College of Sofia, Sofia, Bulgaria (host library: Gonzaga College High School); Ludmila Dubinkina, Aleksandr Hertsen Regional Research Library, Kirov, Russia (host library: Alexandria Library); Ieva Hermansone, Gymnasium No. 1, Ventspils, Latvia (host library: Montgomery Blair High School); Olga Iastrebova, National Library of Russia, Saint Petersburg, Russia (host libraries: Freer Gallery of Art/Arthur M. Sackler Art Gallery Library; Library of Congress, African and Middle Eastern Division and Geography and Map Division); Stanka Jelenc, Central Medical Library, Ljubljana, Slovenia (host library: Georgetown University Medical Center, Dahlgren Memorial Library); Agnieszka Koszowska, Library of Silesia, Katowice, Poland (host library: Smithsonian Institution Libraries); Tunde Lepp, Central European University Library, Budapest, Hungary (host library: Library of Congress, Cataloging Directorate); Monika Mindosova, Presov University, University Library, Presov, Slovak Republic (host libraries: Library of Congress, Special Materials Cataloging Division; Catholic University of America, Mullen Library); Nora Skaburskiene, Vilnius Pedagogical University Library, Vilnius, Lithuania (host library: Catholic University of America, Mullen Library); Jadranka Slobodanac, Fran Galovic Public Library, Koprivnica, Croatia (host library: Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library); Lenka Sukova, International Baptist Theological Seminary, Prague, Czech Republic (host library: Library of Congress, Cataloging Directorate); and Marje Tamre, Concordia International University Estonia, Harjumaa, Estonia (host library: Catholic University, Judge Kathryn J. DuFour Law Library).