BELMONT, MA — The Mardigian Library of the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) recently became a part of WorldCat, the world’s largest bibliographic database, operated by OCLC, Inc. NAASR’s Mardigian Library is only the second Armenian-focused library to join WorldCat (following the Armenian Institute in London) and with some 30,000 items listed on WorldCat it is by far the largest.
“It has been our dream and our ambition for some time to have NAASR’s library among the resources on WorldCat and to see the name ‘Mardigian Library’ appear when searching on their site,” said Ani Babaian, NAASR’s Library Curator. “Although our library is known among scholars and the public, being a part of WorldCat brings our Mardigian Library to a new level of visibility and accessibility. We are very proud to make the treasures we have here better known to the world.”
About NAASR’s Mardigian Library
The Edward and Helen Mardigian Library at NAASR consists of nearly 40,000 books, pamphlets, periodicals, manuscripts, documents, and recordings, primarily in Armenian and English, dating as far back as the 1600s. The collection encompasses a broad range of topics including history, literature, art, music, architecture, linguistics, as well as law, anthropology, cooking, and natural sciences.
The library is named in honor of the late Edward and Helen Mardigian in recognition of their decades of generous support of NAASR and its initiatives and the continued support of the Mardigian family.
NAASR’s Director of Academic Affairs Marc A. Mamigonian noted that “Over the past decades, NAASR has assembled one of the foremost research libraries in the Armenian diaspora. In the past 15 years it has more than doubled in size, but even more, it has grown in terms of its stature, its level of professionalism and organization, its accessibility, and of course the physical space itself was been utterly transformed when we opened our Vartan Gregorian Building in 2019.”
The library draws scholars, undergraduates, high school students, and the general public from around the world, and serves two important functions. The first is to provide materials for researchers to write books, articles, dissertations, term papers, or do personal research (such as family history); the second is to serve as a repository of memory and identity for the global Armenian community.
About WorldCat
WorldCat is the world’s most comprehensive database of information about library collections. It serves as a union catalog, meaning it itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of libraries worldwide, and is a powerful tool for researchers, students, and librarians, making library collections findable and accessible around the world.
