Indiana University Bloomington holds more than 560,000 audio and video recordings and film reels, many of which are historically significant, all of which are actively deteriorating. And the window of time to save these materials is closing fast.

An IU scientist's primer on climate change, a study of melodrama in Latin American cinema and television, an exploration of the flowering of Jewish culture in the late Russian empire, a memoir of growing up in New Orleans and a respected former congressman's argument for strengthening Congress are featured in this issue of Indiana University Book Marks.

The exhibit "In the Shadow of Cortés: From Veracruz to Mexico City" will open at 5 p.m. Friday (Oct. 2) at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, 416 N. Indiana Ave. at Indiana University Bloomington.

The National Endowment for the Humanities' "We the People" project has awarded a group of Indiana University anthropologists $250,000 to transcribe, translate and publish the oral literature of the Assiniboine, a northern Plains Indian tribe with only about 50 living members still fluent in the tribal language of Nakota.

As South Africa continues to move away from its apartheid past, its film culture has taken a similar path of reflection on the past during the country's first decade as a democracy. Audrey Thomas McCluskey, an Indiana University professor, writes about the changes in a new book featuring interviews with 25 South African filmmakers.

Two centers in Indiana University's College of Arts and Sciences have received nearly $290,000 in additional federal funding to educate middle- and high school teachers and students in three strategic languages spoken in some of the most populated countries -- Chinese, Hindi and Urdu.

National Public Radio national correspondent Jamie Tarabay will keynote a half-day workshop about Islam and Muslim practices for journalists and media professionals on March 27 in Bloomington, presented by Voices and Visions -- a consortium of six Title VI National Resource Centers at IU, funded by the Social Science Research Council.

Voices and Visions, a consortium of six Title VI National Resource Centers at IU, led by the Center for the Study of Global Change, is being recognized for its efforts to counter misperceptions and improve understanding about the second most practiced religion in the world.

Sumit Ganguly, director of the India Studies Institute, professor of political science and holder of the Rabindranath Tagore Professorship in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, will be an official observer of parliamentary elections for the People's Republic of Bangladesh on Dec. 29.

The Indiana University Center for Chinese Language Pedagogy (CCLP) has received a $1 million grant over three years from The Language Flagship, an initiative of the National Security Education Program (NSEP) within the U.S. Department of Defense.

Indiana University President Michael A. McRobbie has awarded emeriti faculty members Denis Sinor and Harvey Phillips with the President's Medal for Excellence. The awards are among the highest honors an IU president can bestow.

Indiana University's Kelley School of Business will again take a group of honors students to one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, and they're inviting others along through a new blog, "Kelley Takes You to Incredible India."

In response to China's growing economic importance and other factors, Mandarin Chinese is becoming one of the fastest growing languages for students in secondary schools and colleges nationwide. At Indiana University, middle and high school teachers are immersed in an intensive, two-and-a-half-week course on teaching Mandarin Chinese.

A new project at Indiana University, funded with a $96,600 grant from the Social Science Research Council, hopes to break down some of the misconceptions about Islam and increase intercultural dialogue and understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Indiana University's Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region (CeLCAR) has been awarded a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to provide language and culture training to 70 senior U.S. military and State Department officials who will command and participate in 12 U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman elected as president of Liberia and any African country, will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Indiana University on Saturday (May 3 ), in recognition of her efforts to promote peace, justice and democracy, and of the close relations between her country and IU.

Documentary filmmaker Yoruba Richen will visit Indiana University and speak Wednesday (March 19) at a screening of her new documentary Sisters of the Good Death.

About 80 faculty members at Indiana University's Bloomington campus have research or professional interests in the Middle East. They can be found from the Kelley School of Business to the Jacobs School of Music and in many specialized areas as well, such as designing national health care plans and government administration. The new director of IU's Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Program hopes to involve as many of them as possible in the program's future activities.

Indiana University and its East Asian Studies Center, opened the Chinese Pedagogy Institute on Sunday to 15 prospective and practicing high school teachers of Chinese. Jennifer Liu, East Asian languages and cultures professor, and Chinese language coordinator at IU, is leading the course.

Abigail Scott, a student at Iindiana University Bloomington, is one of 20 college students nationwide selected to receive the Beinecke Scholarship.

Two initiatives this week by the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University demonstrate that its faculty and students see themselves playing an important role in India's future. Kelley School Dean Daniel C. Smith will be visiting government ministers and senior administrators at companies and universities across India during a seven-day trip there. M.A. Venkataramanan, chair of the undergraduate program, also will be leading a group of about 60 sophomore honors students there.

Natsagiin Bagabandi, former president of Mongolia, will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Indiana University on Saturday (Dec. 17) in recognition of a decades-long relationship between the central Asian nation and the university.