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The Area Studies Council & Collection
and Services Advisory Panel Joint Meeting
Meeting Summary 98-1
April 15, 1998, 1:30 pm-5:00pm
Hotel Sofitel
Rosemont, IL
The Area Studies Council (ASC) and Collection
and Services Advisory Panel (CSAP) met on April 15, 1998
at 1:30 p.m in Rosemont, IL. David Easterbrook (substituting
for Dan Britz), David Block (substituting for Dan Hazen),
Judith Henchy, Michael Hopper, Jim Nye and Allan Urbanic
represented the six area studies projects. Linda Gould,
Tony Ferguson, Kay Flowers, and Barbara Van Deventer attended
from CSAP. Carolyn Brown, from the Library of Congress,
and Hans Rutimann, International Program Officer from the
Council on Library and Information Resources also attended.
CRL staff were represented by Pat Finney, Susan Rabe, Marlys
Rudeen, and Milton Wolf. Deborah Jakubs and Wendy Lougee
from CSAP were absent.
- The meeting began with introductions due to the number
of new members and substitutes.
- The previous meeting minutes were approved with one
correction of the Harvard-Yenching Library to Harvard-Yenching
Institute.
- Mr. Wolf reported on the first meeting of the International
Coalition on Newspapers (ICON) Working Group. CRL is taking
a leadership role in the development of ICON. Mr. Wolf
indicated that CRL is willing to cooperate with other
institutions on filming projects. Everyone agrees there
is a problem regarding the preservation and access to
information about newspapers but there are no specific
on how to approach the problem. The Working Group’s
next steps are to set priorities; identify the needs for
personnel and money; and gather data. ICON plans to focus
on US collections at this point but will plan to branch
out to a truly international project. Ms. Henchy emphasized
the use of area studies groups as consultants for selecting
priorities. The group discussed the development of a central
database of information including its feasibility and
content. Information on the current activities of interested
institutions was one new feature that was identified by
the group. The group requested that ICON
minutes be posted to WWW.CRL.
- Ms. Finney reviewed the objectives of the Foreign Official
Gazettes Task Force:
- Identify key interested parties;
- Establish a retrospective collection at CRL;
- Seek funding to complete and preserve the collection;
and
- Develop plan for prospective collecting, probably
cooperatively.
- Ms. Finney reviewed the access and records available
in CRLCATALOG for the gazettes through 1995. She reported
on plans for future deposits from the University of Michigan
and Harvard University and recent discussions with the
OAS. She also asked for suggestions for a new member of
the Task Force. Representation on the Task Force needs
to be broadened beyond Law Librarians so a faculty or
librarian representative with historical or humanities
interests is sought.
- Each project chair gave a brief description of their
activities.
- Mr. Easterbrook reported that CAMP and Title VI Center
money continues the filming of provincial court records
at the National Archives of Senegal. This is the third
year of a three year projected funded by the Directors
of the Title VI African Centers. The Title VI Centers
continued funding library projects by acquiring African
dissertations and masters theses with exchange partners
of Title VI Centers. The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations
sponsored a conference in Nairobi on theses and dissertations.
CAMP has applied to the ARL Global Resources Project for
funding to enlarge the union list of currently received
African newspapers to include all African newspapers and
create a searchable database on the world-wide web. CAMP
has continued its interests in microfilming of newspapers
both at CAMP and by receiving copies from institutional
filming projects. Northwestern University has been approved
for another year of filming for 55 newspapers through
the CIC Preservation Project with copies going to CAMP.
There is a proposed venture in Eritrea to acquire collections,
equip libraries and archives, and give preservation aid
and advice. This is a departure from CAMP’s normal
practices. CAMP is filming the SWAPO archives from Namibia
at Yale University and the Karis-Gerhart collection of
political ephemera. There is little overlap between the
African National Congress archives at Fort Hare with the
SWAPO archives and Karis-Gerhart collection. CAMP is revising
its French brochure and bylaws. The other project chairs
were interested in the billing process for the Title VI
funded projects since the filming has taken longer than
the Title VI grant cycle. CAMP has not had any problems
since the Title VI Centers were billed by CRL within the
grant cycle even though CRL did not spend all of the money
within the same period.
- Mr. Block reported that LAMP membership recruitment
drive has resulted in 41 members. LAMP is in the second
of a three year plan to increase dues to $775. The Brazil
digitization project is nearing completion with the scanned
images of title pages being used to create an index. They
have achieved an approximate 90% level of OCR in converting
these images to text. Mr. Block and Ms. Rudeen related
one of the pitfalls of foreign filming. LAMP has filmed
the archives of a Bolivian tin company. Due to local political
changes the cameras have been confiscated by the local
government and further filming halted.
- Mr. Hopper reported that MEMP has completed the filming
of the Chaqeri Collection of Iranian Left-Wing Materials.
It continues its projects to film the Sunday Ghibli,
Sudanese newspapers at the New York Public Library,
Turkish newspapers at CRL, Algerian newspapers at the
Library of Congress, and LC’s Arabic pamphlet collection.
It is considering filming LC’s Iranian dissident
pamphlets as a future project. He reported that MEMP continues
its interests in the ethnic press. Current projects include
a Sudanese newspaper from Ft. Worth, al-Ray-akhar,
and the cultural monthly, Jadid. It is investigating
the filming of a Palestinian newspaper published in London,
al Quts al arabiyah al-Hatif, and a Shiite paper,
El Hatif, that is available at Princeton University.
MEMP purchased al-Ahali, an Iraqi newspaper for
1932 to 1962 in film, with a paper and disk index. It
has made a proposal to the ARL Global Resources Project
to convert the Middle East in Microform to the
web with interactive part for updates and queries. Mr.
Hopper also reported on a contact with the Press Archive
Center at the Moshe Dayan Center in Israel. It has extensive
holdings of newspapers and has begun publishing catalogs
of these with published of Jordan and Syria available
and Iraq due soon. The discussion of some future projects
have been delayed because of the delay in establishing
a filming facility at LC’s Cairo Office due to its
scheduled move in May 1999. Mr. Hopper reported that representatives
from Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, New
York University, Cornell, Columbia and the New York Public
Library will be meeting May 11, 1998 to establish a Middle
East consortium in the Northeast for collection development
and access to Middle Eastern materials. He said that the
group will accept observers observers at meetings. MEMP
is also interested in gathering information on who is
disposing of equipment, especially older MRD-2 cameras.
He ended his report by stating that MEMP currently has
25 members.
- Check with Jim Danky re: finding out about old cameras;
dealers that could be helpful
- Mr. Nye began his report by reporting SAMP’s interest
in CRL’s recent purchase proposal for the Presbyterian
Board of Foreign Missions, 1833-1911 since it is a
multi-disciplinary and multi-regional project that doesn’t
fit a single area studies project. He stressed
the importance of area studies bibliographers following
CRL’s purchase proposals. SAMP has recently attempted
to rationalize projects by examining allocated funds to
projects that had no movement. This resulting in the freeing
of some funds but mostly resulted in restarted projects.
Kaiser-e-Hind has been received at CRL and SAMP
will being hiring part-time help to collate the paper
in preparation for filming. SAMP plans to list projects
completed and projects in process on the SAMP website.
Mr. Nye also expressed a thank you to CRL for the purchase
proposal for Colombo overland observer. SAMP proposes
English materials for CRL purchase since they will appeal
to a wider audience that just South Asia specialists and
purchases vernacular newspapers itself. It plans to propose
the Times of Ceylon and Ceylon times to
fill in gaps in SAMP’s holdings. SAMP has established
a committee to investigate increasing by membership fees
by $50 per year for four years. Mr. Nye reported that
SAMP's Microfilming of Indian Publications Project (MIPP)
has completed the filming of 18,000 volumes of the over
55,000 volumes in the project. The quality of the filming
has been very good due to the support of LC’s Field
Office in New Delhi. New initiatives include the purchase
a portable camera for use at the University of Bombay
and at the American Institute of Pakistan Studies in Pakistan;
the preservation of manuscripts (the Bengali and Sanskrit
collection of Sukamar Sen) in the field. This is a new
field of preservation for SAMP as it used to focus on
newspapers, journals, and books. SAMP continues its efforts
to preserve brittle Southern Asian reference titles by
reproducing these on acid-free paper. The images are saved
in digital form for print on demand through Book Lab.
He reported that the Future: Urdu Research Library Consortium
has six members with some of members being consortia themselves.
It is seeking support from the Ford Foundation and Aga
Khan Foundation for transferring equipment for preservation
to Hyderabad. The Universities of Chicago and Columbia
have submitted a digital library project to ARL and the
Mellon Foundation which plans to have 38,000 index records
and deliver images of requested artciles to the U.S. from
Hyderabad. Mr. Hopper said that SAMP should contact the
Harvard Judaica Library about its holdings for inclusion
in the proposal to film Bene-Israel materials.
- Ms. Henchy reported that SEAM still has 22 members.
Two SEAM projects have been done by other institutions.
The Carl Lande Philippine election returns was filmed
by Yale University and the Mira Siddhartha colloquial
Malay collection was filmed by KITLV for Cornell University.
SEAM is in the second year of a four year project to film
Southeast Asian newspapers at Cornell. SEAM has received
a two volume catalog of the Fakultas Sastra Universitas
Indonesia collection and hopes to put a description of
it on the SEAM website. The project in Vietnam continues
with 21 reels received and 40 reels ready to be shipped.
Ms. Henchy has received a detailed list of holdings from
Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. She will be participating
in a panel at conference in Hanoi this summer to report
on this project. The project to for the India Office Library
to film the holdings of the U.N. supervised Cambodian
election materials in London is on hold due to a lot of
political issues. SEAM has a joint project with Yale University
to film the Yale Genocide Project material gathered for
State Dept. in preparation of possible trial of Khmer
Rouge. Ms. Henchy reported that there will be a Ford Foundation
sponsored pre-conference to IFLA in Bangkok in 1999 on
evaluating film projects in Southeast Asia. SEAM is cooperating
with the LC Field Office in Jakarta to be alerted on materials
that the Field Office has located that are out of LC’s
scope. SEAM is concerned about restricted access at various
sites because materials have not been preserved. They
are concerned about getting information about these sites
out to the community of scholars. There was a question
of how can area studies microform projects make other
preservation groups more aware of area studies microform
projects (AMP) activities? A suggestion was made to encourage
other websites to establish links to the AMP’s websites
for information on current projects. The ASC members were
interested in seeing hit statistics from the AMP websites
at CRL. Ms. Henchy also mentioned the Australian
website on preservation, PADI.
- Mr. Urbanic reported that SEEMP is in its second year
of existence. It is now an official affiliate of AAASS
which makes it easier to schedule meetings. It has 28
members, with an ongoing membership drive in the SEES
and AAASS newsletters. It currently is working on four
projects:
- To film Oslobodenje from Sarajevo in a joint
project with LC. Predrag Pajic doing the negotiations.
- To preserve papers from the former Yugoslavia that
are outside of commercial interests in a joint project
with Norman Ross. SEEMP and Norman Ross are currently
negotiating the discounts for donating the hard copy.
- To film LC’s collection of October Revolution
newspapers.
- To film the University of Toronto’s collection
of Ukrainian diaspora materials.
- This year it plans to start a project with Eastview
to film regional newspapers from Russia covering the years
of 1991 to 1995. In this project Eastview will negotiate
the rights, obtain as complete of run as possible and
film the paper. CRL will receive one copy of the film
for SEEMP and other SEEMP members will receive a discount
for a few years. This was originally a cooperative project
with a Moscow Library but after receiving no news on any
work in progress SEEMP entered into this project with
Eastview. They said that they would film but no news.
Probably thought they could earn more money themselves.
- Mr. Urbanic then asked the other project chairs if it
was natural for the initial enthusiasm to drop such as
seeing lower voter turnout on projects or officers. The
group said that there is a natural ebb and flow in each
project. Some suggestions to avoid the doldrums are to
seek an activist chair who will follow-up with members
about project development and that the Executive Committee
should encourage practical and doable projects rather
than "ideal" ones. They suggested that getting
complete run before filming is a goal that may not be
obtainable but that should not stop the completion of
a worthwhile project. Another suggestion to increase interest
is to involve various project members in a project. They
emphasized a need for patience as the project starts up.
This summary was recorded by Susan Rabe.
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