General Business Meeting
Thursday 6 Nov 2003 19:30
Anchorage Hilton
(DRAFT for approval)

Present: David Hirsch, Michael Hopper, James Weinberger, Gamil Youssef, William Kopycki, Christof Galli, John Eilts, Midhat Abraham, Christopher Murphy, Muhammad al-Faruque, James Simon, Jonathan Rodgers, Anne O'Shea (Atiyeh Prize Winner), Peter Magierski, Meryle Gaston, Mark Day, Shayee Khanaka, Simon Samœil.

Minutes 2002: General Business meeting read and approved with corrections

CRL Report: J. Simon

As related in the CCDO report issued over e-mail, the cataloguing of foreign dissertations continues to progress. Over 200,000 available in CRL catalog and OCLC.

In July 2003, CRL sponsored a conference on “Preserving America’s Printed Resources”
(cf. Nicholson Baker’s writings) “The Preserving America’s Print Resources (PAPR) initiative stems from a widely expressed need within the U.S. library community to establish a viable national strategy for ensuring the long-term survival of important paper-based library materials. The urgent need for a comprehensive plan was identified as a community-wide priority in The Evidence in Hand report, issued by the Council on Library and Information Resources, and in similar appeals by the Library of Congress and Association of Research Libraries.”

The Center has partnered with the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC http://www.caorc.org/) to assist with the project administration of the American Overseas Digital Library http://www.aiys.org/aodl/index.php. AODL is an initiative to provide bibliographic and full-text access to the varied resources of the CAORC-sponsored overseas research centers in Europe, the Near and Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and West Africa. An online OPAC for these centers is being developed.

Another sponsored grant through this project is the Middle East Research Journals (MERJ) project, providing access to ME journals through preservation, indexing, or full-text digitization. A list of titles will be distributed to MEMP members once selected. CRL is encouraging and supporting the coordinating such projects

International Coalition on Newspapers (ICON): CRL has submitted a new grant proposal to NEH for preservation and access to foreign newspapers – included were a few from the ME (e.g., Turkish newspapers added and one Jeddah Saudi Arabia).

CRL Purchase Proposal Program: A number of submissions for ME resources were proposed, including 100+ reels of early Arab American newspapers (comment by C. Murphy: it is from LC and available anyway, why should it be on the list?); also proposed is the British Library Arabic MS microfiche set from IDC [not purchased].

Global Resources Network: CRL is discussing an agreement with ARL to assume administrative oversight of several of the Global Resources projects - e.g., German Resources Project and the Latin American Research Resources Project. [see ARL web site for complete list]. “The Global Resources Network <http://www.arl.org/collect/grp/> (GRN) is a joint initiative of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL)... During the fall of 2003, ARL and CRL shared information intended to position CRL to provide oversight for management and operational support for the GRN projects that request such assistance, and also to promote synergies, facilitate communications, and exploit efficiencies among and across all these projects. By early 2004 ARL and CRL expect to reach agreement on the role of the Center in operating several GRN projects as well as CRL's role within the overall GRN.” See report: http://www.arl.org/collect/grp/GRNupdateMay04.pdf

D. Hirsch: suggestion to include Iraqi newspapers in International Coalition on Newspapers (ICON) http://icon.crl.edu/ project. They can be considered, and LC will subscribe to five Iraqi dailies

MEMP Report: J. Simon

Budget distributed. Revenue is more than expenditures. See handout for details on commitments for current projects, films received, recently catalogued.

Discussion of Iraq al-Hurr: New York Public Library has some and British Library has some. We can get it complete by combining these holdings after securing an agreement to participate.

LC Reports: C. Murphy:

The reformatting plan from last year was resubmitted for this filming year.
LC is moving away from film to digital projects.
Dar al-Kutub in Cairo has proposed a digital project (possibly?) to include periodicals maybe and also manuscripts.
The periodicals are in desperate need of preservation, and there have been some staff changes in the preservation division. Mark Sweeney has required that all material must be cataloged prior to filming. This is having an impact on Middle East cataloging of newspapers.

J. Simon: will the list of Arabic newspapers be put up on web? M. Deeb is responsible for that job, and it has been delayed. It is now just a word-processing file. Please remind C. Murphy next week to follow up. Then a reminder can easily be posted on CRL and/or LC’s websites.

Old and Continuing Business:

al-Samir: summary of history of the process: Bob Madey son of the poet and editor Ilyia Abu Madi, has a complete run of al-Samir 1936-57 and will give to MEMP to film. An acceptable agreement has been reached, and Madey wants two copies of the film produced. Estimate $10,900, including shipping costs. A copy of agreement is distributed to MEMP Board members. MEMP can distribute copies of the film for sale. The agreement was approved.

Iraqi newspapers at the Dyan Centre: correspondence distributed to those in attendance.
A microfilmer in Israel will be necessary, and most need filming will be done there, but al-Thawrah is already on film for 1959-64 and 1968-89 (al-Thawrah al-`Arabiyah was published 1964-67 and is also on film) and costs $90 reel plus shipping for a total of about $7600 for the run.

Discussion of whether we should buy it, and does LC have in some quantity some of the original? We need to request a sample from Dayan, based on what is not held already by LC. What generation will they loan for duplication?
- We need to determine what are LC’s holdings
- British Library has holdings also? J. Simon will inquire.
- S. Samoeil will inquire of the Asad library in Damascus.

The Dayan Center has expressed the desire to scan all other newspapers and copy to CD for distribution. al-Zaman will be digitized in the next few weeks.

Beirut Times: MEMP owns Aug 1985- on film, and are looking for earlier issues (1981-84). Stanford has? NYPL also? Eilts, Youssef to check.

D. Hirsch reminded members to use the CRL/MEMP proposal form.

New Business

Al-Ufuq al-‘Arabi: (Hirsch) Arab American newspaper published in Bedford Park, IL. This proposal qualifies as a demand purchase and is automatically approved.

Liwa al-Arabi: (Youssef ) Proposal not received. Gamil Youssef will resubmit his proposal.

Ayntabi collection of the Arabic press: (Hirsch) newspapers and magazines from the 19th century filmed in 1968. Contains first issues and several longer runs and serves as documentation of the Arabic press around the world. 70 reels held by UCLA – around 700 titles. The titles are not cataloged, and the papers are not indexed. A partial handlist was distributed.

These are not complete runs but samples, and the seemingly random holdings reduces its usefulness somewhat; the issues need cataloguing also; is the film a master film? The Ayntabi collection proposal was not approved. UCLA might consider an indexing or digitization project utilizing this material.

al-Quds al-Arabi: (Samoeil) Yale has issues from 2003- of this Arabic daily from London. Need to poll for other holdings, and Yale will submit formal proposal.

Iranian Opposition Pamphlets: (Hopper) These pamphlets are held by NYPL (currently at Harvard?) and complement the Shakeri collection. Could be sent to CRL to speed the process.

Youssef explained that NYPL can cooperate with MEMP but needs to keep the master film. This discussion needs to be continued with the NYPL preservation division.

NYPL will film Sawt al-Muhajir, which was proposed earlier for MEMP filming.

Other Proposals:

al-Munazir (Syria Baath Party) : (Samoeil) is held by Yale from beginning 1965 through 2002. It is still being published. There are some missing issues, but Yale will submit a proposal; LC has some, others have some as well. Locating and gathering the existing issues will be coordinated by MEMP to assemble a complete set for filming

Yale will also propose al-Masar (Ram Allah); also al-Nur (Syria, complete run)

Heritage Microfilm for Central Asian newspapers has offered Khazak, Tajik, Uzbek, Azerbi, and Kyrgys materials. There is an announcement at their web site: www.heritagemicrofilm.com.

Elections for Board:

There are three open positions and five candidates for them:
M. al-Faruque, C. Galli, D. Hirsch, J. Rodgers, S. Samoeil, S. Khanaka
Brenda Bickett has resigned, and William Kopycki will fill in for another year.
Voting Results: Rodgers, Khanaka, Hirsch will serve on the Board.

Adjourned at 22:45

MEMP Board meeting (brief)

Submitted by Jonathan Rodgers