“Nation Building Through Information Sharing”: Nancy Dupree and the Afghanistan Center at Kabul University

Dupree, right, and her colleague show an archived paper of the Taliban [from Al Jazeera obituary] [Massoud Hossaini/Reuters]

On September 10, 2017, the Afghanistan Center of Kabul University (ACKU) announced that its founder, Nancy Dupree, died at 89 years old. Dupree, an American who spent many years in Afghanistan, collected photographs, sound recordings, newspapers, magazines, and other documents from when she arrived in 1962 to the early 2000s. These materials document Afghanistan through the peaceful 1970s to the Soviet invasion and Soviet-backed Kabul government to Taliban rule.

ACKU, founded in 2006, was a vision of Dupree’s since 1989 when she and her husband worked on the ACBAR Resource and Information Centre (ARIC). ACBAR was the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, which was active in Peshawar, Pakistan to support Afghan refugees. ARIC, then, according to the website of ACKU, was a “central depository for reports and surveys generated by NGOs, bilateral humanitarian organizations and UN agencies… The purpose was to facilitate coordination of humanitarian aid to Afghan refugees and to avoid duplication.” This commitment to collection and organization is exemplified in the Center’s motto: “nation building through information sharing.” ACKU also has a program for building libraries in communities outside of Kabul.

 

Nancy Hatch Dupree at the Afghanistan Center at Kabul University in 2014. [from New York Times obituary] [Massoud Hossaini/Associated Press]

This motto of the ACKU is echoed by an anecdote Omara Khan Massoudi, former director of Afghanistan’s National Museum, told The New York Times for Dupree’s obituary. During the years of Taliban rule Dupree returned to Kabul to install metal doors to help protect the surviving cultural artifacts in the National Museum. During this time she told Massoudi, “A nation stays alive if its culture stays alive.”

I am interested in this story because we often hear about the documents and artifacts taken out of their cultural context by anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians to be organized and preserved for study in museums and archives. It seems that Dupree was invested in keeping this collection in Afghanistan as opposed to an institution in the United States because of its significance to Afghan culture and the importance of this collection staying in Afghanistan. The organization of materials in libraries, museums, and archives is not done in a vacuum. It is a worthwhile endeavor that can not only assist users in accessing an information resource, but also empower them in their use.

Sources consulted:

New York Times obituary

Washington Post obituary

Afghanistan Center at Kabul University website

Submitted by Alice Griffin (653-03)

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Tagged with: Afghanistan, current events, knowledge sharing, Nancy Dupree, Preservation
Posted in Archives, Libraries, Library