ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries May 1989 / 381 R efu g ee a n d exile p u b lish in g in W estern E urope By Michael W. Albin Chief, Order Division Library o f Congress A report o n fie ld research fu n d e d by A C R L ’s W ESS/M artinus N ijh o ff grant. T his paper summarizes the results of field work on refugee and exile publishing in certain Western European countries. Using the opportunity pro­ vided by a grant from ACRL’s W estern European Studies Section, w ith funds from the Martinus Nij­ hoff Com pany of The Hague, I attem pted to make tw o modest contributions to the study of an off-the- beaten-track aspect of library acquisitions from Europe. First, I w anted to form some generaliza­ tions about acquisitions in U.S. libraries of this kind of fugitive publishing (I use the double m ean­ ing intentionally). Second, I w anted to ground these generalizations on field work in Western E u ­ rope. The remarks th at follow are based on th at field survey, completed in M arch 1988. I studied Surinamese publishing in the Netherlands and Af­ ghan and Ira n ia n refugee publishing in W est Berlin and Switzerland. I also called on various in­ ternational organizations in G eneva.1 11 wish to acknowledge the help of several col­ leagues in providing access to special collections and giving other extraordinary assistance: Agnes Peterson and E dw ard Jajko of the Hoover Institu­ tion, Carol Armbruster and Robert Schaaf of the L ibrary of Congress, and Ruth Baache of the Mid­ dle East Institute, W ashington, D .C . Views ex­ pressed in this report are solely my own. There is a type of European publication so ob­ scure th at its presence is barely detectable in Amer­ ican research libraries, even though its sponsorship and subject m atter are of utmost contem porary concern. I refer to the literature of T hird World migrants to Western Europe. This body of publish­ ing is difficult to identify in bibliographic sources, unstable and im perm anent in organization and du­ ration, extremely difficult for libraries to acquire, and troublesome to preserve because it comes in cheap and insubstantial form at. Yet these works contain the raw m aterial for the study of popula­ tion movements on a grand scale. In some cases mi­ grations can be term ed reverse colonization, th at is, large-scale movements of peoples from former colonies to the metropole; in others, migration to European countries appears to occur more ran­ domly. In either case m igration has momentous hum an rights, cultural, political, legal, economic, and even military dimensions. It became clear to me th at a problem existed while I was working on techniques for improving acquisitions from Africa and the Middle East at my library. I became aware of a category of publishing existing outside the tra ­ ditional geographic guidelines for selection used by research libraries. The phenomenon of Third W orld m igrant pub­ lishing in Europe as a whole could not be covered 382 / C&R L News w ithin the scope of a short research grant. It was impossible to cover groups which had been in E u ­ rope for decades or guestworkers, who make up the most numerous category of migrants. I limited con­ sideration to refugees in the strict definition estab­ lished in the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Proto­ col Relating to the Status o f Refugees. According to this definition, a refugee is a person who “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a p a r­ ticular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, ow­ ing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of th a t country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his form er habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to re­ tu rn to it.” Refugee pu b licatio n s have been ignored by American academic libraries for several reasons. First is the difficulty of access to lists, bibliogra­ phies, catalogs, etc. Second is the unwillingness of most E uropean booksellers to bother w ith this m a­ terial. T hird is the unwillingness of most area stud­ ies libraries in the U.S. to pay attention to this diffi­ cult field at the expense of accom plishing their other duties. Finally, the publishers themselves are often unaw are th a t American research libraries may be interested in their publications and there­ fore make no effort to prom ote them beyond the n arrow confines of the m igrant com m unity for whom they are published. Goals W ith this as background I proposed to undertake the following tasks while in Europe to study refu­ gee publishing. I had been in touch w ith numerous area studies specialists in the U.S. regarding the size of the research task and had compiled a long list of refugee organizations and refugee support organizations to canvass. After discussion with col­ leagues and a review of the meager literature on the subject I set out to accomplish the following objec­ tives. 1. To make a beginning at docum entation and description of refugee publishing in W estern E u ­ rope in order to form estimates of the size of the publishing phenomenon, the types of m aterial be­ ing published, distribution patterns, and to recom­ mend improvements for bringing this m aterial to American research libraries. 2. To discover booksellers and other vendors willing and able to supply m aterials to American libraries. 3. To discover w hat institutions exist among ref­ ugee groups themselves for purposes of research and docum entation and which are likely to supply in fo rm atio n concerning refugee pu b lish in g to American librarians. 4. To discover w hat refugee support groups exist whose function is to collect, preserve, and dissemi­ nate inform ation about refugees. Methods 1. Because refugees to Western Europe come from all areas of the T hird W orld and are found in every W estern European country it was clearly im­ possible for me to cover all ethnic groups in each country. I proposed to visit the offices of selected refugee organizations to learn of their publishing activities and distribution methods and to discuss ways to bring their publications to libraries in this country. Specifically I intended to concentrate on the Surinamese in the Netherlands, the Iranian and Afghan refugees in West Berlin, and international organizations in Switzerland. 2. In each host country there are several institu­ tions w ith an interest in refugee affairs. In some cases these institutions m ay include research li­ braries which receive refugee newsletters, pam ­ phlets, books, etc. There are international agencies as well as private organizations working w ith refu­ gees. I visited as many of these institutions as possi­ ble to determ ine their perspectives on the acquisi­ tion of this material. 3. One of the barriers to acquisition is th a t few if any mainstream booksellers are willing to supply refugee publications on a regular basis. I called on vendors and exporters to learn how this situation could be improved. I called on less well-known vendors to determ ine w hether they might be inter­ ested in providing acquisitions service. 4. The questions I asked during calls on the orga­ nizations mentioned above revolved around the following points. a. History and present scope o f publishing. Are there lists of current titles or retrospective bibliog­ raphies and lists? b. Identification o f publications. How does one find out w hat a given group or association is p ub­ lishing? c. Nature o f publishing activity. Is it native lan­ guage publication only? Are certain titles issued for the benefit of host country readers? Is publishing popular, scholarly, political, intended for refugee children? d. Distribution. W hat are the distribution chan­ nels: gift, subscription, membership in the organi­ zation? e. R e c o m m en d a tio n s. H ow is it possible for A m erican lib raries to im prove th e ir coverage? W hat costs are involved? Preliminary observations Because the field work covered such a small sam ­ ple of groups in a limited num ber of countries I am chary of making even tentative generalizations on the points listed immediately above. Instead, I pre­ fer to use the term “observations” in referring to the prelim inary results of the study. May 1989 / 883 1. Names and numbers. There are m any ways of studying the phenomenon of expatriate com m uni­ ties, of which the refugee com m unity is a subset. There are as m any names for the m igration of peo­ ples as there are studies. The O rganization for Eco­ nom ic C ooperation and D evelopm ent calls this mass movement North-South m igration and in­ cludes in it guestw orkers, asylum seekers, and other categories of expatriate. As fraught w ith oc­ casion for m isinterpretation as the nom enclature is, statistics can be even more confusing. The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Ref­ ugees (UNHCR) is most conspicuous in collecting facts and figures pertaining to the w orld’s refugees. T he UNHCR Fact Sheets published for the past tw o years attem pt to keep track of the size of refu­ gee populations in each country of the world. This is not an easy task because statistics are subject to change w ith the changing international political environm ent. The annual figures issued by the UN­ HCR do not show subdivisions by country of ori­ gin. Rather, figures are available only for the num ­ ber of refugees, undifferentiated by nationality, for each country. Estimates for the num ber of refu­ gees in some E uropean countries for 1988 are: France (179,300) West Germ any (146,100) Sweden (130,000) United Kingdom (100,000) Switzerland (30,200) D enm ark (30,000) Netherlands (24,000) Norway (15,000) Italy (10,600)2 2. Literature vs. Publishing. In surveying the groups of Surinamese, Iranians, and Afghans in the three countries I visited I found almost no reference to a stable com m unity of writers in exile. Perhaps my sample was too small or too poorly tim ed to re­ veal such trends. Certainly in the past m ajor Ira ­ nian authors in exile have contributed im portantly to Persian literature. Examples th a t come im m edi­ ately to m ind are Buzug ’Alavi (1904- ) w riting in East G erm any and Sadeq H edayat (1903-1951) w riting in France and Switzerland. Nor should we neglect to mention the influential Kaviani Press es­ tablished in Berlin in 1922. O ther exile groups, no­ tably th e Palestinians and South Africans, have had a m ajor im pact on their respective literatures, and in some cases have attained international stat­ ure. In the Netherlands one can point to a couple of success stories among the Surinamese, namely the feminist author Astrid Roemer and E dgar Cairo th e n o v e list. N o n e th ele ss, th e c o n te m p o ra r y groups have not in general m ade a literary nam e for themselves. 3. Political Groups. Relative to the foregoing point is the fact th a t exile w riting among the groups 2Source: UNHCR “ 1988 W orld Map Figures in Alphabetical O rder,” typescript provided by the UNHCR office in W ashington, D .C . I have studied has been confined in large p a rt to po­ litical pam phleteering. It is in the nature of politi­ cal tracts th a t they are produced on the spur of the m om ent and are aimed a t specific audiences in the context of specific issues. As pertains to the Suri­ namese this was confirmed to me by the staff of the D utch Social Science Inform ation and Docum en­ tation C enter where I learned th a t the spate of po­ litical publications issued by Ronnie Brunswijk’s opposition party in exile dried up w hen elections w ere called at home in November 1987. A few ad ­ ditional examples collected recently in Europe and th e U.S. underline the point: • Iran Liberation, issued by the People’s Mo- jahedin, an anti-Khom eini group. This periodical is issued in numerous languages and distributed worldwide. •E n q ila b -i Islami, issued in Paris by Abu Hasan Bani Sadr, form er president of Iran. • A fghan Jihad News, issued in W ashington, D .C ., by Jam iat-i Islam i, one of th e principal groups opposing the regime in Kabul. • Afghanistan Tribune, a bim onthly issued by the Federation of Afghan Students (FAS), a Com ­ m unist organization based in Aachen, West G er­ m any. This is not, strictly speaking, a refugee p u b ­ lication. It is issued by FAS to counter refugee propaganda in Europe. • Afghanistan: Passato e Presente, published six times per year in Florence by a group supporting h um anitarian assistance to refugees. 4. Collecting Refugee Publications. Since by for­ m at and content political tracts usually fall outside the scope of the collecting canons of research li­ braries, it is unlikely th a t researchers will find them in these collections. For instance, my research has sh o w n t h a t th e S ta a ts b ib lio th e k P ru e ssic h e r Kulturbesitz in West Berlin has turned aw ay from its once lively interest in Iranian exile (especially Kurdish) publishing. The L ibrary of Congress has recently drafted a policy statem ent recognizing the existence of this sort of m aterial under the draft policy for collecting foreign ethnic publications. According to the draft policy, ephem era, including refugee publications, should be acquired selec­ tively for tem porary use or for possible microfilm­ ing as a collection. In Geneva, a city I m ight call the refugee capital of the world, libraries such as those of the International Com m ittee of the Red Cross and the UNHCR have little interest in m ate­ rials published by refugees themselves. My visit to Geneva revealed th a t the libraries of such private and intergovernm ental organizations serve as ref­ erence centers for statistics and documents as well as p e rfo rm in g th e fu n ctio n of in stitu tio n a l a r ­ chives. Collecting then becomes the responsibility of in­ dividuals or libraries w ith special interests. Acqui­ sition of refugee and exile newsletters, pamphlets, tracts, broadsides, posters, cassettes, and videos is difficult in the extreme. Recognizing this, most li­ brary adm inistrators hesitate to com m it their re­ 384 / C&RL News sources. Undoubtedly the task requires an expert knowledge of language and area studies combined with a strong personal or institutional willingness to identify, correspond w ith, and purchase from an unstable group of publishers. Outstanding collec­ tions are few. Hoover Institution is making a name for itself in collecting Iranian exile publications, thanks to the acquisition of the Hitzelberger collec­ tion now in the Institution’s archives. The Univer­ sity of Texas at Austin has also m ade an effort to build a strong collection of Iranian exile publica­ tions.3 In Europe one can point to the excellent col­ lection of Afghan materials at Stiftung Bibliotheca Afghanica in Liestal, Switzerland. To refine access to this enormous library of Afghanica, director Paul Bucherer-Dietschi has cooperated w ith the University of Nebraska at O m aha in preparing a subject thesaurus or “Key to the Systematic Classi­ fication of the Subject Catalog of the Bibliotheca Islam ica.” 5. Taxonomy. A full description of the kinds of m aterial I identified or collected on my trip would be too long to recapitulate in this report. In addi­ tion to the political titles cited above, I should like to give a few examples of other groups I found in Europe and the U.S. •F o u n d a tio n for Iran ian Studies, Bethesda, M aryland. Publishes Irannam eh, a scholarly- literary journal. •U N H C R . In 1985 it published the Interna­ tional Bibliography o f Refugee Literature (W ork­ ing Edition). This, and other UNHCR bibliogra­ phies, concentrates on works about refugees rather than works by them. •C o m ité Afghan d ’Aide H um anitaire. This is one of several Afghan refugee or refugee-support groups operating in Europe and the U.S. to provide medical and other help to Afghan refugees, most of whom are in Pakistan. Publishes an annual report. • Afghanistan Forum. This individual initiative offers an im portant source of political, cultural, and social information on Afghanistan and the sta­ tus of refugee groups. It is published six times per year in New York City. • Kitab-i Sal-Iranian (Iranian Yellow Pages) is issued in the U.S., but with international coverage of business, political, and social organizations. •U .S . Committee for Refugees. Issue Papers published irregularly since 1982 review the condi­ tion of certain large groups of refugees. To date the papers have covered Poles, Cambodians, Afghans, Vietnamese, and Iranians. O ther countries have similar organizations, such as the British Refugee Council which publishes an accessions list of docu­ m en ts receiv ed in its lib r a r y . T h e lib r a r ia n , W arwick Harris, informed me th at his collection contains books, reports, periodicals and newspaper 3See, for example, Abazar Sepehri, “Contempo­ rary Non-Serial Persian Publishing in Exile,” Mid­ dle East Librarians Association Notes, no. 45 (Fall 1988): 6-22. clippings as well as a small collection of photos and other audio-visual m aterial. Also in Britain is the Queen Elizabeth House at Oxford University. Its ambitious programs are listed in detail in its A n ­ nual Report. 6. Considerations fo r Collections Development. The few libraries collecting this material do not have to be told of its importance to research. A body of scholarship using refugee publications as prim ary source documentation is slowly develop­ ing.4 However, most librarians, even area studies specialists, are unaw are of the existence of refugee groups and the value of their publications to re­ searchers. W ho would not have been a better polit­ ical scientist had he had access to the tapes and other materials Khomeini smuggled into Iran from exile in France? Anyone who does not refer to the political program (and propaganda) of groups as disparate as the People’s Mojahedin or the Afghan Communist fronts in discussion of current politics is shallow and uninformed. I wonder if library administrators may be for­ given their indifference to refugee publishing. Al- 4Recent scholarly articles and books have relied heavily on this “ephem eral” m aterial. A few exam­ ples include H anna Herzog, Contest of Symbols: The Sociology o f Election Campaigns through Is­ raeli Ephemera. (Cambridge: H arvard University Library, 1987); Valerie Hoffm an-Ladd, “Polemics on the Modesty and Segregation of W omen in Con­ tem porary E g y p t,” in International Journal o f M iddle Eastern Studies, vol. 19, n o .l (February 1987); and Nozar Alaolmulk, “The New Iranian L eft,” in the M iddle East Journal, vol. 41, no.2 (Spring 1987). Library design award for Annenberg Research Institute T he P h ila d e lp h ia a r c h ite c tu r e firm of Geddes Brecher Qualls Cunningham (GBQC) has been granted an Award of Excellence for Library Architecture from the American Insti­ tute of Architects. The winning library design is the Annenberg Research Institute in Philadel­ phia. George Qualls, architect of the design, stated th a t his goals were to “provide the director and his staff w ith the most convenient arrangem ent of space for their work, to express this organiza­ tion in a m anner th a t reflects the scholarly im­ portance of their pursuits, and to place the structure comfortably into its historic Philadel­ phia setting.” The architectural firm is currently at work on the Futures Center Addition to the Franklin Institute Science Museum. Recent projects in­ clude Trexler Library of Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania, and the new wing of the J. B. Speed Museum of Art in Louisville, Kentucky. May 1989 / 385 though the study of im m igration to E urope has captured the attention of political scientists, sociol­ ogists, cultural historians, hum an rights groups, so­ cial workers, and politicians such th a t a large cor­ pus of literature has grown up on the subject, we librarians have done next to nothing to weigh in w ith our particular expertise. W e have not identi­ fied, collected, or m ade available through bibliog­ raphies these fugitive publications of fugitives. W e owe a w ord of thanks to our colleagues w ho have chosen not to ignore this literature. ■ ■ Unfriendly takeover attempted U n frie n d ly ta k e o v e rs a r e n o t a n ew sto ry . L ately, how ever, freq u en t targets are scholarly journals issued by nonprofit publishers, most often university presses. Typically, these journals are un­ derpriced w hen com pared to sim ilar publications by commercial houses. The potential income from increased subscription rates makes these journals attractive takeover candidates for large publishers. Over the last few years W ayne State University Press has fought off several attem pts to take over H um an Biology, w hich the press has published for thirty-five years. Science-related journals issued by com m ercial presses often com m and high subscrip­ tion rates. W ayne State charges institutions a m od­ est $80 per year; the com m ercial publisher ex­ pected to increase th e rate to $300 w ithin three years. W ith the full support of WSU, press adm inistra­ tors Robert A. M andel and Alice M. Nigoghosian fought the attem pted takeover. They viewed the actions of the commercial publisher not only as a Call for manuscripts Library A dm inistration and M anagem ent, as a m atter of association policy, is a them e-driven p eri­ odical. Themes are selected far enough in advance to allow for the solicitation of appropriate articles. In addition, th e editor accepts articles unrelated to specific themes, b u t of general interest to the read ­ ership of LA & M . Unsolicited m anuscripts are sub­ m itted to th e refereeing process and, if accepted for publication, are included in a section “E ditor’s Se­ lection.” Following are the themes for the rem aining is­ sues of 1989 Library Adm inistration and M anage­ m e n t: • T i n k e r , T a ilo r , L i b r a r i a n , A rc h iv is t— Summ er 1989 (discusses the variety of professions in libraries and people w ho w ork in libraries but who are not librarians, e.g., archivists, business m anagers, conservators, systems analysts, PR ex­ perts, etc.). • C ru n c h in g N um bers C reatively—F all 1989 (addresses use of quantitative techniques of m an ­ agem ent to develop decision support and m anage­ m ent inform ation systems, including practical ap ­ plication of statistics, d ata gathering, and potential innovations in MIS/DSS using computers). th re a t to H um an Biology, b u t ultim ately to other journals published by university presses as well. Libraries, of course, bear the cost in increased rates. In recent years librarians have witnessed sky­ rocketing rates for serials and they have found themselves making painful choices about renewals. They have been forced to cancel subscriptions to exorbitantly priced publications. The u ltim ate losers in this fin an cial cru n c h are researchers, scholars, faculty, and students. Resolved to do w h at was necessary to save H u ­ m a n B io lo g y, M an d el a n d N igoghosian have worked almost a year to fend off the im m inent th reat. D evoting long hours to develop their strate­ gies, they compiled d a ta and projections to insure the viability of the journal at WSUP. They even prepared docum entation in the event th a t a legal suit m ight occur. T heir efforts m et w ith success— the commercial publisher retreated and decided to begin a com peting journal. ■ ■ In 1990 for the first tim e Library A dm inistration and M anagem ent will have an annual them e— Com passionate/H um anistic M anagem ent—which will be woven into the themes for the individual is­ sues. T h is e x p e rim e n t, using an o v e r-a rc h in g them e, should provide continuity for th e y e ar’s work. The themes for th e individual 1990 issues of L A &M are as follows: • T e a m D e v e lo p m e n t a n d M a n a g e m e n t— W inter 1990 (discusses the appropriate applica­ tions of the use of the “team ” approach to improve operations, services, and productivity). •B uildings and equipm ent—Spring 1990 (dis­ cusses anew the issues related to space and facility planning and use, and the recent innovations in equipm ent for both staff and p atro n use). •A u to m a tio n and th e W orkplace—Sum m er 1990 (discusses th e ways in w hich autom ation has transform ed library training, work, and services, albeit not library organizations). •R ew a rd Systems, C arrots or Sticks—Fall 1990 (explores th e m ethods for im proving individual and staff perform ance by explicit intervention and th e use of m anagem ent systems aim ed at changing th e w ork environm ent). ■ ■