Richter honored at Association for Asian Studies Conference

On Friday, April 1, 2016 at the Association for Asian Studies annual conference in Seattle, Western Libraries Asian Materials Specialist Wayne Richter received a tremendous honor.  President of The Mongolia Society, Alicia Campi, presented him with Volume XXXV (2013) of Mongolian Studies, the scholarly journal of The Mongolia Society, which is a special issue dedicated to Richter. 

Writes journal editor David Bade in the beginning of the special issue:

“Wayne Richter has been at the forefront of Mongolian studies in the United States as well as internationally for more than 30 years. . . .  It is largely because of Wayne’s many years of careful scholarly devotion to identifying and collating the works of each author represented in Wilson Library’s collection that other bibliographers, catalogers and scholars around the world find that the results of their searches make sense, and they are able to find what they want to find.”

The quality and accessibility of the extraordinary Mongolian Studies Collection at Western Libraries is a result of the generosity of scholars such as Henry Schwarz, Nicholas Poppe, and John C. Street, and the valuable work of Richter. Richter is a nationally recognized expert in the creation and editing of bibliographic records for materials written in Mongolian and related languages, and he is the only cataloger in the United States who routinely creates national name authority records – work which involves considerable research in a field with only limited bibliographic and biographic resources.

Richter has actively reached out to people who are interested in Mongolia and its cultures and languages, participates in meetings of the Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast, and is in regular contact with Mongolian scholars and librarians from other institutions who use Western’s collections. He regularly coordinates and leads tours of the Libraries’ Mongolian Studies Collection for a wide variety of individuals and groups, including Mongolian ambassadors to the U.S., U.S. Ambassadors to Mongolia, and many visiting scholars.

Richter’s efforts to make resources available to scholars worldwide will impact Mongolian studies for decades to come, and the dedication of this special issue of Mongolian Studies recognizes and honors that work.

For more information about Western’s Mongolian Studies Initiatives, please see the Center for East Asian Studies Mongolian Studies page, or this online guide about the Mongolian Collection.