ISAW Library makes donation to the American University in Iraq, Sulaimani

By Gabriel McKee
09/27/2017

This summer, the ISAW Library donated several hundred books to the American University in Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS). Located in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, about 175 miles east of Mosul, the AUIS was founded in 2007 as a not-for-profit institution dedicated to providing a comprehensive, student-centered liberal arts education on the American model. The school has grown to 1,600 students, and offers undergraduate degrees in Business Administration, Information Technology, International Studies, Engineering, and English and Journalism. The university also houses the Center for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (CACHE), which advances the study of antiquity in Iraq in general and the Kurdistan Region in particular, and the Institute of Regional and International Studies (IRIS), which fosters multidisciplinary inquiry into issues facing the Kurdistan Region.

Over the last decade, the ISAW Library has acquired or received donations of entire libraries of several individual scholars, and in the process has acquired a number of duplicate volumes, as well as materials outside the scope of the Institute. In light of ISAW's academic mission to support the study of the ancient world, the Library has committed itself to placing as many such volumes as possible at institutions where they are likely to have a profound and lasting scholarly or pedagogical impact. In doing so, we make a special effort to place books with institutions like the AUIS, which train future generations to interpret, value, and preserve the cultural heritage of antiquity around the globe. 

The AUIS Library was founded in 2009 and has relied largely on donations for building its collection. The titles in ISAW's donation were selected by members of the AUIS faculty, including Lynn RoseFrederick Monsma, and Tobin Hartnell. Among the nearly 300 items in this shipment were a number of titles on the history of the Ancient Near East, as well as materials on Classical, East Asian, and European history and archaeology. This was ISAW's second donation of books to the AUIS, following a similar shipment in 2015. We hope that the materials in this donation will be of use to students and researchers at the AUIS for generations to come.