FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Five library administrators from Russia will spend Thursday, Oct. 5, in Fayetteville visiting the Fayetteville Public Library and the archives in Special Collections at the University of Arkansas Libraries. The Russians are in Arkansas touring libraries and archives as delegates in the Open World Program and are being hosted here by the Arkansas River Valley Regional Library System and the National Peace Foundation.

Accompanying them will be Donna McDonald of the Arkansas River Valley Regional Library System and Betty Bumpers, wife of former U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers. In 1982, Betty Bumpers founded Peace Links, the forerunner to and model for the Open World Program.

The visiting delegates are Yelena Alebastrova, Anrey Igor Minyuk, Yekaterina Pykhtina and Igor Vishev. Andrey Khokhryakov from Perm accompanies them as a facilitator and interpreter.

The delegates will spend the morning at the Fayetteville Public Library and the afternoon at Mullins Library on the University of Arkansas campus. In addition to touring the facilities, the delegates will receive a brief tutorial at Mullins Library about compiling reference materials and archives to meet the needs of community businesses. They will also have an opportunity to examine the archives in Special Collections, including the Fulbright Papers and the Peace Links Papers.

Earlier this week, the delegates visited the Arkansas State Library, Heifer International, the Clinton Presidential Library, Parkview High School, and the Arkansas History Commission and Archives in Little Rock; the Bailey Library at Hendrix College in Conway; and the Arkansas River Valley Regional Library headquarters in Dardanelle.

Managed by the independent Open World Leadership Center at the Library of Congress, Open World enables emerging political and civic leaders from participating countries to work with their U.S. counterparts and experience American-style democracy and free enterprise at the local level. The Open World Program is a unique, nonpartisan initiative of the U.S. Congress that builds mutual understanding between the emerging leaders of participating countries and their U.S. counterparts. It exposes delegates to ideas and practices they can adapt for use in their own home countries.

Past delegates have ranged from mayors to journalists, from nonprofit directors to small-business owners, and from political activists to high-court judges. More than 10,500 delegates have been hosted in all 50 U.S. states, since the founding of the Open World program in 1999. Initially focused on Russia, the program has also in recent years hosted delegations from Lithuania, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.