Esperanto League for North America Collection
The Esperanto League for North America was founded in Emeryville, Calif., in 1952 as an affiliate of the Universal Esperanto Association. Operating primarily within the United Sates, the League serves as a point of connection and education for speakers of Esperanto, an international constructed language, and holds annual congresses for speakers at all levels of fluency. The League adopted the informal name Esperanto-USA in 2007, though officially retaining Esperanto League for North America.
The records of the Esperanto League for North America (Esperanto USA) are an important resource for documenting the growth and development of the Esperanto movement in the United States from the end of the First World War to the present. Varied in both scope and content, the collection includes a significant body of correspondence from ELNA officers, documentation of world and natioanl congresses, and a range of publications promoting the League and language. Of particular note, the collection includes several hurdred audiocassette tapes distributed by ELNA, including tapes for Esperanto learners, recordings of Esperanto conversations, music, recordings of Esperanto congresses, and Esperanto radio broadcasts from Switzerland, Poland, and China.