Students at the newly built One World University campus just outside Mozambique's capital opened boxes from far away recently to discover book after book of culturally treasured Portuguese and Brazilian literature. The large collection made its way from BYU's campus as the legacy of one who gave her life and her talents to teaching, cultivating and loving Portuguese and Brazilian culture and language.

The late professor of Portuguese and familiar face among Brazilian students, Myriam Ramsey, amassed an admirable collection of books, leaving them to BYU's Harold B. Lee Library and her surviving family in memory of a lifetime of learning

"My mother had more than just a love for leaning," said her son, Paul Ramsey, in a news release. "For her, it was an essential tool that contributed to her very humanity."

Myriam Ramsey devoted over 25 years to scholarship and teaching at BYU. When she died of cancer in 2003, she left her family with the substantial collection. They turned to Mark Grover, university librarian and friend of Ramsey, for advice on what to do with the books. It was nothing less than a serendipitous match, as Grover had history with the country of Mozambique, whose native language is Portuguese, and a passion for spreading great literature to countries lacking the funding to develop libraries.

BYU is involved in service learning projects around the world. One in particular, Grover said, involves a non-governmental association in the Netherlands focused on, among several philanthropic goals, furthering education with several schools around the world, among them One World University in Mozambique.

"Most of our students go there," Grover said, in reference to BYU's study abroad program in Mozambique.

"[The school] gets some governmental funding but they also [sustain] basically on grants," he said. "That's the way it works in Africa."

One summer, when the director could not oversee the BYU program, Grover was asked to attend and took note of the poor shape of the library.

"Frankly, outside of the United States libraries are the last place that money goes," he said. "There was just a bunch of books there that were mostly English language and occasionally an old science text that was really of little value."

Grover left some of his own books when he left Mozambique and has continued to be an active contributor from a distance. So it was simply a sweet mercy when Ramsey's family found itself with hundreds of Portuguese language books and nothing to do with them, for Grover knew where they needed to be.

"This was a very strong collection, I knew exactly where to put it," Grover said. "It was needed in Africa."

The act did not come without obstacles, however; Grover estimated the books packed into about 20 boxes, leaving a massive shipping charge to have them sent to the underdeveloped region of Africa. However, with donations and some aid from the Harold B. Lee Library, Grover was able to successfully send the majority of Ramsey's collection to One World University.

The Harold B. Lee library has and continues to make a determined effort to send what it can to libraries around the world, as much of what is donated to and by professors and administrators is often a repeat of something it already has. Grover was eager to share this abundance with the rest of the world.

"Those students will be able to read the greatest literature that Brazil and Portugal has produced, which they never would have had a chance to do," he said. "They will have the chance to have that book in their hands, if you've ever had those experiences where you've read a book that you just absolutely love. The experience of reading it is the physical part of holding the book, of smelling it, reading it, crying as you get to some parts, well, that's from an old librarian," he said, chuckling. "I'll never get used to e-books."

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Copyright Brigham Young University 11 Jul 2008