Talk to Focus on Italian Immigration

As part of the Roads to Appalachia through Italy Study Abroad class, several speakers will visit campus to present lectures on Italian culture and customs.

Victor A. Basile will present his research findings on "Appalachian Italians" their Struggle and Achievements" from 7:30 to 8:45 p.m. Thursday, March 22, in Room 114 of the Education Building. All lectures will be free and open to the campus community. For more information, call the West Virginia Folklife Center at (304) 367-4403.

Basile is a 1959 graduate of Fairmont State and a former Italian-American Man of the Year of the West Virginia Italian Heritage Festival. A part-time job at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., while attending Georgetown University led him to become a librarian. Following short academic appointments at the University of Maryland and Indiana University, he became the Director of Library Services at Wyeth Pharmaceutical Laboratories in Philadelphia. In 1970, he was awarded a Gustavius Pfeiffer Fellowship to set up a pharmaceutical research library at Isituto "Mario Negri" in Milan, Italy.

He took advantage of the opportunity to live and work in Italy and traveled throughout Europe. His West Virginia family joined him on a trip to Calabria, Italy, and to the former Yugoslavia to visit their transatlantic relatives. After two years in Europe, Basile returned to the U.S. and joined the faculty of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. In 2001, he completed a 30-year tenure at the university and was awarded the honorary title of University Librarian Emeritus.

In his retirement, Basile continues to pursue his love of books and his fascination with his Italian-American heritage and culture. In New York City where he resides, he is an active member of the Grolier Club, a book collectors club. He is also a member and the curator of the American Italian Historical Association, which promotes and conserves the Italian-American publications of historians, writers and social scientists. His current area of research is the 1890-1925 immigration of Italians into West Virginia.