Looking to assist the rebuilding of Kosovo, the Brothers' Brother Foundation, which organizes book donations to countries in need, organized a shipment of approximately 20,000 books to the war-ravaged region earlier this year.
BBF's first shipment of books to Kosovo included children's story books, preteen literature, high school textbooks and college and medical textbooks. Among the donating publishers were McGraw-Hill, Simon & Schuster and Lippincott-Williams & Wilkins. The books are valued at more than $500,000, and the shipment was made in collaboration with the U.S. Information Agency and its Kosovo Information Assistance Initiative, which includes a library revitalization project in Prishtina.
The Sabre Foundation, which organizes book donations to Eastern European nations, is currently assessing the region's needs. Sabre project director Tania Vitvitsky told PW that she has visited the region to assess library needs. "We have done nothing on a big scale yet," she said. However, she noted that a shipment of more than 400 World Book materials--including dictionaries, encyclopedias and medical encyclopedias--was made at the request of the USIA for distribution in the region.
