North County Times, CA
Dec 26 2004

News briefs from around the state

By: Associated Press

GLENDALE — The American Armenian International College has donated
12,500 hard-to-find Armenian books to the library here in hopes the
city’s Armenian population will read them.

The donation places the library among those with the largest
Armenian-language collections in the country, according to library
experts. The books include hardcover volumes with titles and mandalas
imprinted in gold fleck and pocket-sized paperbacks by the
“Shakespeare of Armenia,” author Hovhannes Tumanian.

The trustees wanted to find a home for the books close to a
significant Armenian population, and Glendale seemed the logical fit,
said Jack Jandegian, vice chairman of the college’s board of
trustees. The college is based in La Verne.

More than one-third of Los Angeles County’s nearly 153,000 Armenians
live in Glendale, which has the second-largest population of people
of Armenian descent of any city in the country, behind Los Angeles.

The volumes include stories about King Argishti I, who lived in the
8th century B.C.; books about generals, colonels and soldiers who
fought in the Red Army during the Russian Revolution and anthologies
of Armenian poetry.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress