Unique Armenian newspaper discovered at California’s Standford University

The microfilming staff at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute on War, Revolution, and Peace recently came across an unmarked box of microfilm that presented them with difficulty: a copy of a newspaper from World War I published in the Armenian script, Asbarez reports.

To help transliterate the title, the Hoover librarian turned to Behzad Allahyar, principal Middle East languages cataloger for Stanford University Libraries; he in turn sought help from Nora Avetyan, the librarian for Armenian and Persian at UCLA.

“With the help of those two colleagues, we had enough information to identify and catalog this publication, as well as realizing that no other copies appear to be available,” a press release by the Hoover Institute said. “We are proud that the Hoover Library has again added an item unique to its collection.”

The newspaper, entitled Zang, was produced by the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party, founded in Switzerland in 1887 by Armenians hoping to establish an independent Armenia free from the Ottoman Empire.

Read more on the Asbarez website.