PRESS OFFICE
Department of Communications
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern)
630 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Contact: Jake Goshert, Media Relations Specialist
Tel: (212) 686-0710 Ext. 160; Fax: (212) 779-3558
E-mail: jakeg@armeniandiocese.org
Website:
June 21, 2007
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NEW DIRECTOR AIMS TO MAKE CENTER’S RESOURCES WIDELY AVAILABLE
By Jake Goshert
Surrounded by piles of books, some Armenian, some Turkish some in dialects
not used since the Genocide, Rachel Goshgarian picks up a stack of
Armenian-American newspapers to see how best to file them. As the new
director of the Eastern Diocese’s Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information
Center, Goshgarian is steward of a wealth of resources and materials, many
unique and quite valuable. She is conducting a comprehensive evaluation of
the Center’s collections in order to determine the most effective way to
make the resources available to the largest number of people.
"We have major plans. The Zohrab Center is already an amazing place for
scholars, but it is unfortunately underused," she said. "We want to make it
more user-friendly and useful to everyone, from high school students to
Armenologists to retired professionals who are simply interested in Armenian
history, politics, or culture. Access is our goal at this point."
OPEN DOORS
The Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center, founded in 1987, helps
researchers, academics, teachers, and the community-at-large learn about the
Armenian community and its rich and noble history.
"Our doors will always be open to people interested in learning about the
Armenians – especially through technology," Goshgarian said.
As part of her goal, Goshgarian is working on increasing the presence of the
Zohrab Center on the internet, by digitizing its resources, creating an
online catalogue of the collection and other printed materials, and creating
web features on Armenian history and culture.
"Beyond creating a comprehensive catalogue that will entice greater usage,
we are discovering that we have a serious need to treat much of our
collection," Goshgarian said. "We have many unique, un-studied, and
un-published materials of significant importance, but we must re-bind many
of the books and treat the collection, much of which was created before the
invention of acid-free paper."
Goshgarian is already reaching out to conservation experts to evaluate and
establish a comprehensive treatment plan all of the manuscripts and older
books and artworks in the library’s possession.
"It would be tragic to see works that survived the Genocide perish simply
because they will turn to dust on our shelves unless we can take some
preservation measures soon," she said. "Unfortunately, preservation
treatment can be costly. Even new bindings are expensive. We must find the
resources to preserve and promote our collection."
BEYOND BOOKS AND MAPS
Another role central to the Zohrab Information Center’s mission is
disseminating information about Armenians and Armenia to the larger
community.
Goshgarian plans to team up with various Manhattan-based cultural and
education institutes in order to provide more diversified programming that
is central to the Center’s mission. She has already met with the Alliance
Francais, Italian Cultural Institute, and the Russian Consulate in order to
plan co-sponsored events. This year is the "Year of Armenia" in France, she
said, so French officials in New York are eager to hold a joint event of
interest to the Armenian and French communities.
Many of these events will serve as models that Armenian communities
throughout the Diocese can replicate locally, themselves teaming-up with
similar organizations, furthering the Zohrab Center’s mandate to increase
its relevance to the entire Diocese and beyond.
VARIETY OF TOPICS
Goshgarian stressed that the Zohrab Center has a wide-ranging, extensive
collection that she hopes to make more interesting to the public.
"The collection established by my predecessors is incredibly impressive. It
is unparalleled in terms of small Armenian-focused libraries in the world,"
she said. "There’s so much more we can do with the resources in terms of
increasing education and awareness and creating higher levels of interest in
things Armenian."
The Zohrab Center’s library holds a large collection of bibles, books, and
newspapers in Armeno-Turkish, or Turkish written with the Armenia alphabet.
These resources shed a great deal of light upon our understanding of the
Armenian communities of the Ottoman Empire. Goshgarian said recent
scholarship has shown the extent to which Armeno-Turkish was a
significantly-used resource by Armenians.
The Zohrab Center also houses several important volumes dealing with wider
Middle Eastern history as well as Armenian resources from communities in
Tiflis, Istanbul, Aleppo, Paris, Venice, Tehran, and other centers of
Armenian culture.
Much of the collection was assembled through the personal generosity of
Armenians who wanted to ensure that their personal collections — large
libraries, simple single volumes, historic maps, or works of art — were
retained in the Armenian community and became part of a wider and more
effective collection.
"I’ve been pleased that since the announcement of my appointment as director
that several people have already begun to inquire about making donations,"
Goshgerian said. "They are always welcome. Donations to the Zohrab Center
will ensure that we are a living center, constantly evolving and adding new
reasons for scholars, clergy, Armenologists, those interested in Armenia,
and even young students writing papers."
FROM HARVARD TO ZOHRAB
Goshgarian comes to the Zohrab Center from Harvard University, where she has
completed course work on a doctorate degree, which she will be awarded in
October. Her main area of research has been exploring Armenian brotherhoods
— groups which were religious, economic, and social — which sprung up in
late Medieval Anatolian cities, between the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires.
She received her master’s degree from Harvard in 2001 and her bachelor’s
degree from Wellesley College in 1997. She received a Fulbright grant to
study in Morocco in 1999-2000 and a Fulbright-Hays grant to study in
Armenia, Turkey, and Italy in 2003-04.
"We are glad to welcome such a strong scholar to the Diocesan family," said
Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, Primate of the Eastern Diocese. "The Zohrab
Center has always been blessed to be led by gifted academics who understand
the importance of remembering our past. And Rachel is indeed from that same
belief, that we must never forget where the Armenian people came from."
The daughter of Dr. Gerard and Mary Goshgarian, she grew up as a member of
the St. George Church in Waukegan, Illinois, and a camper at Hye Camp.
She came to the Zohrab Center because of her belief in the importance of
giving back to the community and her desire to creatively educate others.
"The Center provides an incredible opportunity for someone like me who has
completed rigorous graduate work and is dedicated to the Armenian
community," she said. "I can continue to participate in intellectual
discussions and contribute to the community by being creative in developing
different types of programs and publications."
CELEBRATION OF INTELLECTUAL
This summer, Goshgarian is being helped as she sorts through the Zohrab
Center collection by two students. One, Natalia Maraslioglu, is a Diocesan
intern participating in the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) summer
internship program. The other summer employee at the Zohrab Center, Anoush
Varjabedian, is a history student who will soon follow in Goshgarian’s
footsteps pursuing graduate studies in Middle Eastern history at Harvard.
A New York City native, Varjabedian is a 2006 graduate of Georgetown
University who attended St. Vartan Camp, the St. Nersess Seminary Summer
Conferences, and AGBU’s Camp Nubar. The daughter of Ida
Tjeknavorian-Schlossberg and Yervant Varjabedian, she recently completed a
one-year Fulbright Fellowship which allowed her to research Habsburg-Ottoman
history and teach English in Vienna, Austria.
"The Zohrab Center has the ability to become one of the most valuable
centers of Armenian thought, research, history, culture and religion in the
world," Varjabedian said. "I hope to be able to use it myself as a graduate
student one day."
With the additional help this summer, Goshgarian hopes to not only get a
complete survey of the Zohrab Center’s holdings, but to prepare a special
exhibit on Dolores Zohrab Leibmann, the daughter of Krikor Zohrab and the
donor whose gift helped establish the Zohrab Center. The exhibit will
anchor a grand reopening of the Center this fall.
"We want to show why she donated money to this project, why she cared about
the Armenian cause, and why she constantly supported Armenian intellectual
advancement," Goshgarian said. "And specifically considering this center
was initially funded by the daughter of Krikor Zohrab, we want to expand our
work in promoting a greater awareness of Armenian intellectuals of the
Ottoman Empire."
"However, one of our greatest challenges is that people have the notion that
Dolores Zohrab Leibmann’s founding gift provides enough to sustain the
Zohrab Center. As with any library or collection, while the founding gift
makes it possible to open the doors and even might provide an endowed
income, the nature of books is that they get worn, need repair. They must
be treated to keep their acidic paper from crumbling and so much more," she
added. "This is a great treasure and resource for the Armenian community
and the world. As our collection grows, so does our needs. I trust that
people will step forward to generously help us carry out our mission."
Krikor Zohrab was born on June 26, 1861, in Istanbul, Turkey. One of the
outstanding Armenian political leaders of his era, he was murdered by the
Ottoman Turkish government in 1915, at the outset of the Genocide which
culminated in the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians.
Initially, Zohrab studied civil engineering; he later chose law, receiving
his law degree from the Imperial College of Jurisprudence in 1882. A writer
and community leader, he became a well-known trial lawyer and was acclaimed
for his dauntless attacks on injustice and corruption. During his years in
political life, beginning in 1908, Zohrab championed the cause of the
Armenians in the capital and the provinces: as a member of the Ottoman
Chamber of Deputies. In fact, Zohrab helped compose the first Ottoman
constitution and was also a champion of women’s causes.
— 6/20/07
E-mail photos available on request. Photos also viewable in the News and
Events section of the Eastern Diocese’s website,
PHOTO CAPTION (1): During one of her first events at the Diocese, Rachel
Goshgarian, director of the Diocesan Zohrab Information Center, right,
introduces author Antonia Arslan during an event Goshgarian organized with
the support from the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research.