I manage the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Project for the Library for the Performing Arts, a two-year endeavor funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to present, document, and preserve jazz, contemporary dance, and theater performances and related oral histories. The project is entering its final season this fall, and we have an exciting lineup of artists performing in our Duke Jazz Series: Drew Gress and 7 Black Butterflies (August 26), Brian Lynch and Spheres of Influence (September 23), and Peter Apfelbaum and The New York Hieroglyphics (November 13). Further information is available from our most recent press release. Most of the live performances and oral histories we have recorded as part of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Project are now available for viewing/listening at The Library for the Performing Arts. To view a full list, search “Doris Duke Charitable Foundation” as a note in The Catalog. I will be taking a brief hiatus from the project during the late summer and early fall to travel to Kabul, Afghanistan, where I will be training staff at the American University of Afghanistan in library cataloging procedures and assisting the University library in getting its online catalog up and running.

This is my first time in Afghanistan, and what a time to be there! In order to better educate myself about the country and its people, I have made extensive use of the Library’s web resources and catalog, and I thought it would be interesting to give a sense of the breath of coverage I have discovered:

• Over 2,400 subject hits in The Catalog, whose new feature of listing popular choices within a given search was useful in finding fiction about the country.
• A Reader’s Den online book discussion of Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns (one of the popular choices in The Catalog) conducted via the NYPL blog
• E-books and audiobooks related to Afghanistan, including a 14-hour audiobook on the history of the country by Stephen Tanner (good for that long plane ride) and the charming children’s ebook Count Your Way Through Afghanistan, which should prove immediately useful!
• Video from the excellent Live from the NYPL public program series: “ISLAM IN EUROPE Insult: Fractured States”
• A description of a recent exhibition of photographs by Stephen Dupont taken in Afghanistan
• “Best of the web” guides to internet resources related to Afghanistan
• Archival records related to research conducted in and about Afghanistan

And, finally, the NYPL Digital Gallery has a fantastic collection of images related to Afghanistan. A few of my favorites are featured in this posting. I will try to send updates while I’m away via the blog of the work we are doing in Kabul. In the meantime, please try to make it to our Duke Jazz Series concerts!