Present:

Dan Hazen, Chair (LAMP),
Dan Britz (CAMP),
Allan Urbanic (SEEMP),
Jim Nye (SAMP),
Judith Henchy (SEAM),
Carolyn Brown (Library of Congress).
Michael Hopper (MEMP) was absent.

Pat Finney, Linda Naru, Susan Rabe, Marlys Rudeen (staff liaison) and Don Simpson represented CRL.

1. Review of Minutes of Meeting 96-1.

A suggestion was made to mount the minutes on ASC's website. Rudeen agreed to pursue this task.

A question was raised from the minutes about LC's concern that the LC staff liaison to SEAM was not on the SEAM Executive Committee. An LC representative is an ex-officio member of the executive committees of all of the other projects. Judith Henchy and Marlys Rudeen agreed to look into this and investigate what would need to be done to change this for SEAM.

The summary of meeting 96-1 was accepted as distributed.

2. Resolution Honoring John Howell.

The text of the following resolution was adopted unanimously: Marlys Rudeen said she would convey the resolution to the Howell family.

3. International Newspaper Symposium.

Linda Naru spoke on the program planning aspect. Three new speakers have been recruited: Marlys Rudeen (CRL) will speak in Session 3 on Micropublishing; Michael Hopper (Harvard) and Robert Warden (LC) will speak in Session 9 on geographical topics. She asked that the members of ASC attend and serve as facilitators for the group discussions in Session 10.

The ASC then turned to a discussion of what kinds of outcomes could be expected from the symposium. Dan Hazen pointed out that the Mellon Foundation had an expressed interest in international studies and in the digitization of newspapers. Other funding agencies may also be willing to support innovative programs, but it is up to the various area studies organizations to demonstrate that they have a plan for solving the problem of access to newspapers..

Dan Britz spoke about the difficulty of coming up with something as straightforward as a list of important newspapers for Africa. Due to changes in the political climate of many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, newspapers spring up and cease publication frequently. Papers often represent a fairly narrow view of a particular political party; to get balanced coverage, collecting several other titles may be necessary.

The ASC expressed the importance of the discussion groups to identify questions that need to be answered before a full-fledged plan can be developed, such as:

• What is currently being collected and filmed?
• What local initiative can be encouraged?
• What kind of cooperation or partnerships can support wider coverage?

The ASC made the point that everyone likes the idea of cooperation right now. The question is how do we make support for the collecting and preserving of newspapers appealing to ARL Directors and funders. It was also suggested that it might be helpful to invite members of the press to the symposium, both to solicit their opinions and perhaps generate some publicity for our concerns.Don Simpson asked that Linda Naru create and distribute a press kit for appropriate news outlets.

Keynote speakers will be encouraged to stress the need for action. One outcome to encourage is the formation of a steering committee to craft a strategic plan for improving access to newspapers. Judith Henchy cited the example of Malaysia which has distributed the responsibility of microfilming newspapers among several different institutions to the benefit of all.

4. Review Project for Compiling Resources for Foreign Microfilm Projects.

Marlys Rudeen distributed a list of the materials that have been collected so far for this project. Materials had been received from SEAM's Vietnam Project and from the microfilming project at Fudan University in China. She then solicited suggestions on arrangement of materials, contents of a potential website and sources to contact for more materials.

The ASC suggested the following names or organizations as possible sources to contact for further information:

NEDCC - microfilming manual.

John Dean (Cornell) active in preservation project in Cambodia

Jim Nye (Chicago) - material on storage facilities

Will Tuchrello and Lygia Ballantine - any manuals or guides they might have in vernacular languages.

The ASC suggested that the list of materials be organized by types of materials rather than by project. The list could then be mounted on a website with a few sample documents in English. CRL could perform a clearinghouse operation with the documents rather than making them all available electronically. Pat Finney offered to help organize such an operation. It was also suggested to consider doing a "Frequently Asked Questions" page on the website, but mixed reactions to this proved inconclusive.

5. Review Area Studies Homepages and Make Suggestions for Further Development.

General reactions to the new homepages were good. Specific suggestions were made to add the ASC minutes to the ASC homepage, and to drop the "CAMP is:" heading style. from the sections on organization, membership and collections. Projects were encouraged to make suggestions for graphics or other changes. Also a document with links to related organizations for each project is planned. Marlys Rudeen will be in touch to discuss which organizations would make appropriate links for each project.

6. Discuss How ASC and Projects Fit into the International Preservation Scene.

Dan Hazen introduced the topic by asking if ASC members were interested in having the Council involved in what was going on in preservation internationally and if so, what steps could be taken to move the Council in that direction. Don Simpson suggested that Hans Rütimann from the Commission on Preservation and Access be invited to join the ASC as a permanent guest; the ASC enthusiastically endorsed this idea.

Several projects were mentioned that involved the formation of and access to union lists of various sorts, and of the importance of supporting all of these projects. Union lists from Vietnam, Venezuela and Indonesia are all being loaded into either OCLC or RLIN. Mention was made of the importance of the Library of Congress Field Offices in various areas and the necessity of working closely with them. Other organizations that were mentioned as possible contacts were the International Commission of Archives, IFLA's preservation committee and UNESCO's Memory of the World project. ASC should make preliminary contacts with these organizations, learn what their agendas are and where the activities of ASC and the individual projects might fit in.

7. Continue Discussion on the Ethnic Press.

This issue had been discussed at ASC's last meeting from the standpoint of exploring the possibility of a joint project of some sort to preserve ethnic newspapers and serials that had not been done previously. ASC members had been asked to discuss this within their projects and assess the level of interest. Dan Hazen reported that due to other organizations' activities in this area, LAMP was fairly cool to the idea. Dan Britz reported that some institutions were collecting these materials for the U.S. African communities, but were probably not covering it sufficiently. Carolyn Brown noted that there is an increasing interest in the ethnic press at LC due to increased use by Congress, and that she might have something more concrete to discuss by next year's meeting.

While a great many titles have been filmed under the USNP, there are still gaps in the preservation of these titles. CRL staff should contact Jim Danky at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin who works with this material a great deal and ask for his assessment of the situation. Also, Judith Henchy noted that some of the Vietnamese press is now being published on the Web which adds another dimension to the preservation discussion. Judith Henchy is also lobbying for the inclusion of local ethnic material in the regional websites in the Pacific Northwest. MEMP has formed a small task force to document the publication and collection of the Arab-American press in the U.S. The conclusion of the discussion was that it would be premature at this point to try to design any kind of joint project, but that the materials were significant and there is considerable activity happening in various constituencies.

8. Prebyterian Church in the U.S.A.: Board of Foreign Missions correspondence and reports, 1833-1911.

After presentation,

It was moved, seconded and voted to recommend to CSAP that this microfilm set be submitted for balloting in the next round of purchase proposals. The set will be categorized into groups of countries to allow purchasing over a three year period.

Some discussion followed about whether ASC has a role as a gatekeeper or filter for purchase proposal nominations dealing with area studies. Should there be rules or agreements about what sorts of sets/titles should be proposed? It was agreed that ASC's role should be more informational.

9. Area Librarianship Issues and Conferences.

Don Simpson asked about the next conference on Area Librarianship at Indiana University this summer and asked if the ASC has a sense of what CRL's role should be both in the development of Area Librarians and in the discussion of the future of the field. Suggestions were made to use CRL as a location for internships or visiting program officers. There also was discussion about the changes in the types of positions available and of the changes in the field of international studies as it moves from an organization based on geography to an organization that is more programmatic or topical.

The meeting adjourned at 12:00. Minutes recorded by Marlys Rudeen.

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