U of Ideas of General Interest -- September 2000University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact: Andrea Lynn, Humanities/Social Sciences Editor (217) 333-2177; [email protected]
RUSSIAN STUDIES
Scholar wins prestigious Pushkin Medal from Russian government
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- For her extraordinary contributions in the sphere of Russian culture and education, a University of Illinois professor has won Russia's prestigious Pushkin Medal.
Marianna Tax Choldin, the C. Walter and Gerda B. Mortenson Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois Library, received notification of the honor on July 28, during the Fifth International Slavic Librarians' Conference in Tallinn, Estonia.
"The news of the award was the crowning event of the [conference's] recognition ceremony," Choldin said, "and a surprise" for her.
The Pushkin Medal, given by the Russian government, was established in 1999 by (former) Russian president Boris Yeltsin to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Pushkin. The award previously went to Dmitry Likhachev, a renowned scholar of the humanities, and to George Soros, an American philanthropist. Pushkin is widely considered to be Russia's greatest poet.
As founding director of the UI Mortenson Center for International Library Programs, and as chair of the Soros Foundation's Network Library Program, Choldin has worked closely for the past decade with Russian libraries and librarians, addressing such issues as access to information, intellectual freedom and the history of censorship.
Established by two generous gifts from C. Walter and Gerda B. Mortenson, the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs seeks to strengthen international ties among libraries and librarians, regardless of geographic location or access to technology.
"The Mortenson Center has hosted more than 100 librarians from Russia, and I've visited numerous libraries throughout Russia," Choldin said. "Through the Soros program, we've helped dozens of libraries in many areas of library development, including automation, collection development, preservation and Internet access and training."
Choldin, who became the founding director of the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs in 1991, has traveled all over the world to work with librarians, promoting improved library services, new technologies and, especially, freedom of information. In conjunction with her activities as the Mortenson Distinguished Professor, she chairs the library program of the Soros Foundation, which has distributed millions of dollars to libraries and librarians in more than 30 countries.
Choldin recently was selected as one of the first UI President's Distinguished Speakers, an outreach program through which the university offers its top experts as guest speakers to Illinois-based organizations. In 1995, she was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. The Mortenson Center Web site is at http://www.library.uiuc.edu/mortenson.
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