Editorial Note

My delight in introducing these essays is a special one, not just because I am the editor of the journal in which they appear for the first time in published form for a wider community, but also because I was a participant in the extraordinary conference that they document. The conference--"Books, Libraries, Reading, and Publishing in the Cold War/Livre, Edition, Bibliothèques, Lecture durant la Guerre Froide"--took place during early summer, 11-12 June 1998, at Centre Sèvres in central Paris, where we shared Paris streets with visitors to the first round of the Coupe du Monde.

A unique conference like this one does not materialize without the efforts of many people. The planning committee for the conference included Martine Poulain of Médiadix-Université de Paris and the IFLA Section on Reading; Pamela Spence Richards of Rutgers University and the IFLA Round Table on Library History; and Marie-Noëlle Frachon of the École nationale supérieure des sciences de l'information et des bibliothèques (ENSSIB), the local sponsor. Between fifty and sixty people heard presentations of great diversity from about two dozen speakers from numerous countries in Eastern and Western Europe as well as China and the United States of America. Scholars from Russia, Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic complemented those from Finland, France, and the former East and West regions of Germany. Many had personal experience with the events they had studied. Though the papers were delivered in either English or French, they were available in both languages through the conference packet given to participants. The four sessions in two days allowed for presentations and frank, spirited discussion as well as ample breaks for coffee and lunch.

As reported in the American Library Association's Library History Round Table Newsletter:

The conference brought together a remarkable group of scholars who, many for the first time, were able to share their research and insights and to discuss with their colleagues the implications of the many facets of the Cold War era. All were grateful for the opportunity to be present and to benefit from the spirited interchange that followed the paper sessions. Though the breaks did not seem nearly long enough, the conference organizers encouraged further dialogue by arranging for lunches for the speakers nearby in the dining room of Le Bon Marché and by arranging for a pleasant reception on the first evening at the American Library in Paris, hosted by the director and staff. ¹

Despite a number of obstacles, some foreseen and others not, the essays in this volume are now available for the benefit of a larger audience. The untimely passing of Pamela Spence Richards in September 1999 notwithstanding, Hermina Anghelescu, a trilingual conference participant who was completing her doctoral dissertation at the same time as she began her graduate teaching career at Wayne State University in Detroit, was able to edit the papers with the help of Martine Poulain and to prepare the abstracts and the index them with the assistance of her indexing and abstracting class. Readers of these essays owe these colleagues a great deal of thanks.

The essays are arranged in the configuration in which they appeared in the conference program under four broad headings. A glance at the table of contents indicates that the first and last relate to libraries in the Cold War; the other two relate to publishing and reading. They reflect some national variance in research emphasis, scholarly communication, and documentation. The editors omitted from this collection three papers originally delivered at the Paris conference--those by Peter Borchardt, Christine Martin, and Jürgen Freytag--that could not be included because of a complex set of circumstances; their papers may appear elsewhere.

Libraries & Culture is an appropriate medium for the initial public appearance of these essays. The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress will republish them in a cloth volume as a tribute to Pam Richards, which will please all her colleagues and the conference participants. The editors are grateful to...