Yerevan State University starts 100th anniversary celebrations with book-gifting event

The Yerevan State University (YSU) on Tuesday announced the opening of its 100th anniversary celebrations in a special ceremony of gifting books.

Economist Tatul Manaseryan, a YSU professor who was the keynote speaker at the event, donated a special collection to the University’s library. Though the number of his books is symbolically thought to be 100, the library’s director, Yeznik Mirzoyan, says his literary contribution is even "much more valuable than that".

“This is not the professor’s first donation to the YSU library; Mr. Manaseryan always avoided publicity. This is just a kind of campaigning which we believe will be ongoing in the future to encourage other professors too, to follow suit,” he added.

Manaseryan said it was a big honor for him to mark the jubilee with such a symbolic start. “I turned to many colleagues of mine in Europe and the United States to ask for sharing any professional literature they can. Also, there are manuals from my personal archive, which I acquired in different countries. For the first time in my life, I  had the honor to donate books back in 1997 when the new building of our library was just marking its opening. We are lucky enough today to both send them to students and use [the literature] ourselves. The longer this initiative, the more long-lasting, I think, will be our students’ love for knowledge."

Manaseryan added that the donated literature covers various disciplines apart from economics. The professor, who has been lecturing at the YSU for 36 years, noted that he descends from a family which was at the roots of the University’s foundation.

Alexander Safaryan, a YSU professor also attending the event, encouraged colleagues to join the fruitful initiative. “If all the professors donate their samples of unseconded books to our library, we will thus have 300,000  [new] books here. And with those 300,000 books, the YSU library will be an undisputed leader among the scientific libraries of the universities across the Transcaucasus region. So I call upon all my colleagues to follow Manaseryan’s example,” he said.