Posted by Ingo on November 29, 1999 at 23:48:36:
Based on a project we develped for a small Italian village we wrote a proposal for the re-construction of the Sarajevo Library. The text can be found at http://bosnia.net/library.html and has been absorbed by the Soros Foundation's site in Bosnia: http://www.soros.org.ba/~cuprija/articles/phoenix.htm Ironically a day or so (Nov 11) before Nik died we both received this e-mail, (which he apparently did not answer): >Hello, I am librarian at Phoenix Public Library and am preparing a presentation for the Arizona Library Association Conference - International Librarianship Roundtable (November 17-19 this year) on projects that have been undertaken to help destroyed National and University Library in Sarajevo. Is there any chance to find out some information about Phoenix Project, besides those at http://www.soros.org.ba/~cuprija/articles/phoenix.htm ? I will highly appreciate your kindness to provide any information - even if nothing has happened in realization of your project will be a precious information to me. Thank you very much. Hana Kapic Hana Kapic 1221 N. Central Ave. Phoenix, AZ 85004 hkapic@lib.ci.phoenix.az.us 602 262-6353 fax 602 495-5841My response (quoted here in order to explain the project a bit further) Dear Ms Kapic, Thank you for your interest. Our project was a response to a proposal which originated through the San Francisco Public Library. Somebody there involved with the electronic library project suggested to run a fat internet pipe into Sarajevo and to then consider the case solved. We took exception to the simplistic idea to replace a library with the internet. None of us has been to Sarajevo but we have been involved and working with people from Sarajevo and at the time of the writing of the Phoenix Project we were collaborating on several Tele-Community projects, notably in Italy, and in general for societies and cultures non-American. At that time the internet was not yet in the mainstream and as commercialized as it is now. We undertook no concrete steps to implement the proposal but tried to offer it as a contribution to a concerted effort of recreating the library. Yale and other organization appeared to be well funded and positioned to do the actual work. Sincerely yours, Ingo Gunther
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