CMES newsFall 12_3_web.pdf - Center for Middle Eastern Studies ...

News of the Library
Middle east/north Africa Collection
The spring of 2012 included many activities for the Middle East/ North
Africa Collection . As a member of the Free Speech Movement Education
Program (FMSEP), Shayee Khanaka, librarian of the collection, helped
organize an event titled “A Portrait of Afghan Women’s lives: Challenges and
Opportunities” held on April 10, 2012 . Featured panelists included Dr . Ashraf
Zahedi, author of Land of the Unconquerable: the Lives of Contemporary
Afghan Women, and Amina Kator-Mubarez, research Associate for the
Program for Culture and Conflict Studies (CCS) at the Naval Postgraduate
School in Monterey, CA . They shared their knowledge and concerns over the
situation of women in Afghanistan in light of U .S . policies and the imminent
withdrawal of the international forces . This event was co-sponsored by the
Afghan Student Association at UC Berkeley . Members of the audience,
numbering well over fifty, engaged the panel in lively discussion .
The FSMEP also sponsored four posters depicting the events in the Middle
East and North Africa entitled “The Arab Spring .” The first poster highlights the
events in Tunisia which resulted in toppling the government; the second poster
focuses on Egypt and the change of regime in that country; the third poster
highlights the events in libya and Yemen, where despite the brutal crackdown
on demonstrators, both governments lost their grip on power; and, the final
poster depicts revolutions in progress in Syria and Bahrain . These posters
were installed in exhibit cases in the Free Speech Movement (FSM) Cafe in
May and will remain on display at least through December 2012 . For more
information about the FSM educational program and event schedule, please
visit http://www .lib .berkeley .edu/news_events/fsmprograms/upcoming .html
other collection development news:
The library received a $5,000 grant from the Al-Falah Foundation to partially fund three sets of primary sources
based on documents from the British Archives, published by Cambridge University Press: King Abdul Aziz,
Diplomacy and Statecraft 1902–1953, King Abdul Aziz: Political Correspondence 1904–1953, and The Slave
Trade into Arabia 1820–1973 . These acquisitions will enhance the collection and its user’s research in the fields
of history, politics, and other sociology of the MENA region . The library is grateful to the Al-Falah Foundation and
the CMES for their continued support for the collection . Enhancing the Middle Eastern primary sources benefits
scholars on campus and the community at large and helps sustain the library’s commitment to excellence .
The general agreement for the Berkeley-Stanford Cooperative Collection Development Program has been
finalized . The combined Islamic & Middle East-North African collections of the library systems at the University
of California, Berkeley and Stanford University offer an extraordinary intellectual resource of major research
value not only to their students and faculty but to the scholarly community in general . Berkeley is known for its
long-standing commitment to Middle Eastern studies and to the important research contributions of its faculty .
This agreement aims to extend and deepen the collecting strengths of the libraries by focusing acquisitions and
development efforts in complementary areas as much as possible . This cooperative undertaking is intended to
allow the libraries to build more extensive collections, more systematically .
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Article contributed by shayee Khanaka, Librarian for the middle east & north Africa Collection.