Movie stars, sports heroes, foreign leaders and librarians all hold at least one thing in common: Each profession has had members invited to the White House.
University Slavic librarian and south Slavic bibliographer Janet Crayne received an invitation to an Oct. 12 conference on Bosnia in Washington, D.C.
The gathering celebrated the ongoing humanitarian efforts in aiding the recovery and stabilization of Bosnia.
Crayne was invited by first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to represent the University because of Crayne's intense involvement in a University program to send books to Bosnia.
"I thought it was wonderful that they recognized the librarians' efforts in these times of uproar," said Margaret Crist, library administration assistant director for public relations.
The ceremony kicked off two new projects to help Bosnian citizens - a special Superman comic book and a joint hospital program.
Crayne said the purpose of the comic books is to keep children from playing in areas that have not yet been checked for land mines.
"There are a lot of other initiatives underway as a result of that meeting," Crayne said. "We're doing a lot."
"These things were not done out of a sense of professionalism," Crayne said. "It's just a matter of showing them we care."
Crayne said she shook the first lady's hand and thanked her for inviting the group, which also included two Harvard librarians.
"Librarians do this kind of thing a lot," said Library Administration Program Director Yvonne Wulff. "But it's rare that someone says thank you in that official Washington way."
University libraries are involved in several "mutually beneficial book exchange programs with educational institutions around the world," Crist said.
She said that exchanging duplicates of books the libraries already own is one way it increases its vast collection of materials, especially in the foreign language sections.
"One of the exchanges we had was with the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This exchange was flourishing when the National Library was burned to the ground," Crayne said.
Crayne said this especially upset her not only because it was a form of ethnic cleansing, but also because "it goes to the heart of what libraries are about."
"We collect materials without discrimination for the purpose of education - period," she said.
"We maintained relations as much as possible," Crayne said. "We're hoping eventually we'll be able to re-establish our trade relationship."
The University, along with several other academic institutions, has been sending books for more than three years, and have other initiatives for aiding the restoration in the works.
One of these involves sending a database of books the University has sent to Bosnia before the destruction of the library. "They will be using this as a sort of 'wish-list' to aid in reconstruction," Crayne said.
"It's been a sustained effort by a few of the University's people," Wulff said. "But if there's one person on this campus that sort of kept things alive, it's Janet (Crayne) ... at least with the libraries."