Present:  David Easterbrook (Northwestern), chair; Dorothy Woodson (Yale), secretary; James Simon (Center for Research Libraries); Joanne Zellers (Library of Congress); Ruby Bell-Gam (UCLA); Peter Limb (Michigan State); Greg Finnegan (Harvard University); Bruce Haight (Western Michigan University), faculty representative. Guest: Al Kagan (University of Illinois).

The meeting was called to order at 9:30 AM

Business Committee agenda corrections

Joanne Zellers will give a follow-up on the Mozambique Archives as item 17-A.

New CRL President

David Easterbrook met with the new Center for Research Libraries President and invited him to attend our meeting in Washington, D.C. in December 2002.

Elections

Bell-Gam will chair the Nominating Committee. Karen Fung (Stanford) and Helene Baumann (Duke) will also serve on the committee. Vacancies include Chair/Chair Elect and faculty representative. There was a discussion about adding additional responsibilities for the position of Chair Elect, such as also chairing the Nominations Committee. It was suggested that the Past-Chair be responsible for outreach projects, such as recruiting new members for CAMP.

Senegal Project

Joe Caruso has distributed two position papers to be discussed at the CAMP Business Meeting.

Identifying and Funding Projects

Simon reported that the new President of CRL will be asking various foundations to help us pursue grants. Limb pointed out that many archival collections are identified by researchers and it would be useful to have a site/venue to indicate who is doing what and where. History in Africa was cited as one place where this was already being done.

Bell-Gam mentioned that the National Archives in Ghana are in bad shape and that there is not a complete inventory of the collection. The Archives reputedly has massive amounts of excellent materials. She suggested CAMP consider some project there.  Additionally, the Archives in Abidjan have several years of research relating to socio-economic data gathered from villages throughout Cote d’Ivoire

Limb mentioned a South Asian model where grants were acquired to digitize and film newspapers on site.

Zellers stated that CAMP had a negative experience when they attempted to film court records in Nigeria, probably because the project was being directed from afar. She suggested compiling a list of elements required to make a project successful, such as Caruso mentions in his position paper.

CRL’s Strategic Plan

Simon said that CRL will be holding area studies meetings in order to revive communications as outlined in CRL’s Strategic Plan. These meetings will be taking place in June and July.

Action Items

(As per chair Easterbrook)

1. Move forward with the Portuguese brochure
2. Mount brochures in Portuguese and French on the CRL web site
3. Organize a panel or “Baobab” for the December meeting
4. Work with Zellers on the Sirleaf collection
5. Fund the Senegal project $4000
6. Acquire Mombasa Times from Imperial War Museum for filming
7. Move forward with Mbabu suggestion proposal regarding Ghana documents (Bell-Gam)
8. Circulate Caruso’s report (with an intro by Easterbrook)

Simon (CRL) said he is only receiving the weekly edition of two Mali papers (Los Echos and Le Republicain) from Indiana University, and asked if we want to continue filming with the daily addition as well. Committee approved.

Suggestions for the next faculty representative for CAMP were taken.

Finnegan suggested a dissertation prize for those whose research required heavy use of CRL.

Limb suggested that publicity about CAMP, as well as comments from grateful users be sent out on several listservs.

Return to CAMP meeting summary page