The American Center for Mongolian Studies (ACMS) will conduct a regular series of seminars for students and faculty to develop search strategies for locating information relevant to their educational and research needs and to learn how to use web-based and freely available tools to strengthen their search and communication strategies. The ACMS will publish the materials developed for the seminars to a publicly accessible location on its library website. Training guides and tutorials on search strategies and web-based tools are almost non-existent in the Mongolian language. Both the seminars and the seminar materials will provide a first for Mongolian education and training.     

The Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) and its Digital Library for International Research (DLIR) program are pleased to announce a new, improved Web site for the catalog representing the libraries of CAORC member centers and their local overseas partners. The new catalog operates in conjunction with the catalog of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL). This improved version of the DLIR catalog (http://catalog.crl.edu/search~S6) offers more specific online searching of library collections at individual overseas research centers in the CAORC consortium and at many of their local partners’ libraries. These collections include books, e-books, journals, maps, images, and archival collections.

On September 7th, 2008, the first library meeting of the new school year was held at the American Center for Mongolian Studies.

Mr. Bat-Erdene, who is a director of the Mongolian Arts College, participated at the meeting and gave a briefing about his tour to the USA. He participated in the annual conference of the American Library Association in Los-Angeles in June, 2008.

Then the ACMS librarian introduced the ACMS digital books collection: “Selected Mongolian Laws and Regulations 1917-1940” and gave information about building steps of a digital library, conversion steps and methods of collection, creating metadata and implementing and using technologies of digital projects. At the end of the meeting the participants discussed how to develop a digital library.

In this meeting, there were not only some university librarians, but also some students of the library faculty of the Mongolian Arts College.

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The ACMS is pleased to announce its newest online digital collection: Selected Mongolian Laws and Regulations 1917-1940. The collection contains nearly 1,600 digital scans of laws and regulations written in Mongol script, and it covers an interesting array of topics from the Mongolian People's Republic constitution to regulations about harvesting pine cone seeds. The project received support from the US Department of Education TICFIA program under the Local Archives and Libraries at Overseas Research Centers (LALORC) project. To view the collection, visit www.mongoliacenter.org/library/digitalbooks.

The ACMS is developing online resources to facilitate research. Currently it is difficult to find relevant information while conducting research from outside Mongolia. The ACMS library website is one example of trying to centralize information about Mongolia to provide researchers a useful research portal. The ACMS is also currently working on the pilot phase of an online reference resource to Mongolia, which will eventually include information about a diverse set of topics. During the pilot phase two interns are collecting and compiling information resources in the areas of health and Mongolia's connection to the Middle East. These two topic areas will provide a solid demonstration of the value of continuing to develop this reference resource in other topic areas, including history, language, social policy, and politics.