FIS Honors Judith Holt, Retiring from Houston Public Library

HOUSTON: Judith Hiott, Chief of the Houston Area Library Automated Network (HALAN), a staunch supporter of the Foundation for India Studies (FIS), retired after 27 years of service with the City of Houston.

Judith was honored at a retirement celebration at the Julia Ideson Building. FIS collaboration with HPL started way back in January 2007 in a special project called “World Languages Book Collection” then headed by Ms.Hiott. The project collected several hundred books from five Indian languages Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Tamil and Telugu, which were procured from India. They are available at HPL’s Central Library for the public to borrow.

The ties with HPL grew stronger and in March 2011 Ms. Hiott spearheaded HPL’s partnership agreement with FIS and had been HPL’s primary contact for the Indo-American Oral History Project which has seen completion of over 53 video interviews till now. They are digitally archived in HPL’s Houston Metropolitan Research Center.

At the retirement celebration, FIS was represented by Board Member Mr. Kulwant Bhatia and Chairman, Mr. Krishna Vavilala, who spoke of Judith’s sincerity and support to FIS over the years and wished her the very best as she begins a new chapter in her life.