ANN ARBOR—It’s a first step, but a big step in rebuilding the collections at Bosnia’s National and University Library in Sarajevo. The University of Michigan Working Group on Southeast European Studies has supplied the library in Sarajevo, destroyed by shelling in 1992, with a bibliography of more than 2,700 works contained in U-M’s libraries that pertain to Bosnia and Hercegovina.

Facing formidable obstacles in shipping and receiving replacements for its collections, Enes Kujundzic, director of the National and University Library, emphasized to U-M staff, faculty and students during a 1994 visit to the Ann Arbor campus that building a comprehensive bibliography was an essential first step in reconstituting his library’s holdings.

“Bosniaca: A Bibliography of University of Michigan Library Holdings” was produced by Janet Crayne, an associate librarian in the U-M Library’s Slavic Division, and Donna Parmelee, a program associate at U-M’s Center for Russian and East European Studies (CREES). The project employed several student assistants, was aided by an advisory committee of librarians and Southeast European area specialists and was delivered to Sarajevo last month by John Fine, a professor of history, and Robert Donia, a visiting assistant research scientist at CREES.

“This bibliography is a model for establishing relations between the [Sarajevo] National and University Library and other libraries,” said Kemal Bakarsic, an assistant professor of library science at the University of Sarajevo.

While in Sarajevo, copies of the bibliography were also given to a member of the University’s Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for History. “The bibliography will assist faculty members and scholars in these institutions in meeting their immediate research needs,” said Donia. “We hope that other libraries and universities in America and Europe will provide similar listings to aid Bosnian librarians in reconstituting one of the most important collections in the Balkans.”