ANN ARBOR—The paper felt uncommercial, not like that a vendor would be mailing. And the letter inside? It was anything but commercial and a complete surprise to Slavic Librarian Janet Crayne at the University of Michigan who, like most of us, had never before had an invitation to the White House.

The occasion for the First Lady’s invitation was to celebrate the U-M’s participation in supplying Bosnia with books. The U-M, along with Harvard, Yale, MIT, and the University of Chicago, has been supplying materials to help establish library collections to replace those destroyed by shelling and fire during the nearly four years that Sarajevo was under siege. Not only have the books been destroyed but the library buildings themselves. An old army barracks along “Sniper Alley” has been pressed into service to house the materials shipped into the country. The U-M Library has been sending books for more than three years. At least three boxes of withdrawn duplicates were sent during October with transportation furnished by the Sabre Foundation of Cambridge, Mass.

“With support from the Working Group on Southeast European Studies, we are also completing work on a bibliography of U-M Bosniaca holdings,” said Crayne. “These will provide The National and University Library of Bosnia and Hercegovina with a list on which to base rest oration of its collection.”

The working group, based at U-M’s Center for Russian and East European Studies, also collaborated with Crayne to provide training to a Bosnian librarian early this year.

“Sarajevo is unique in its desire for materials written about Bosnia-Hercegovina or by people born there in its attempt to document their national heritage,” Crayne said.

Two new projects were inaugurated at the White House celebration last month. One involves hospitals and the other a socially responsible Superman comic book designed to promote land mine awareness among Bosnian children. Three versions of the comic (English, Bosnian Cyrillic, and Bosnian Roman) are being donated to U-M’s Labadie Collection.

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