Present [partial list]: Meryle Gaston (University of California, Santa Barbara), William Kopycki (University of Pennsylvania), Christopher Murphy (Library of Congress), John Eilts (Stanford University), David Hirsch (University of California, Los Angeles), Jonathan Rodgers (University of Michigan), Michael Hopper (Harvard University), Shayee Khanaka (University of California, Berkeley), Simon Samoeil (Yale), Elizabeth Darocha Berenz (CRL), James Simon (CRL), Ali Boutaqmanti (Harvard University), Brenda Bickett (Georgetown University)

I. The minutes of the MEMP General Business Meeting of 2004 were approved.

II. Member news:
Columbia (Kamaly): Persian dissident publications acquired as small runs from the 1980's, including materials having to do with prisoners after the revolution, also Kurdish Armenian oral history materials.

Illinois (Faruque): al-Ahram whole set will be acquired 2004 and back.

Yale (Samoeil): al-Ahram 1875-2005 on film is owned by Yale.

Harvard ( Hopper): Harvard also owns copy, as does NYPL. They are complete sets.

III. CRL/MEMP Reports (J. Simon):
CRL is developing its strategic plan to deliver materials electronically rather than in print or film by end of 2009. The plan in development has been well received by members. The issues of volume, copyright, and relations with projects such as MEMP vs CRL materials in general are still being worked out.

CRL Purchase ballots went out, but none relative to the Middle East.

International Coalition on Newspapers will film three titles with Middle East content: Dunya and Anadolu from Turkey; Bourse Egyptienne from Egypt.

Global Resources Network (GRN): Initiated by AAU and ARL, and including such projects as the Digital South Asia Project, etc., the administration has been transferred to CRL after long discussion among library directors. The Center for Research Libraries now provides administrative, technical, legal, financial management, and communications support for the regular activities of the GRN and its related projects.
CRL will administer the projects and clearly define the aims of the network make the collections more interdependent. Results of the work with OCLC to identify overlap and duplication is expected.

MEMP Budget: handout of financial statement distributed, and discussion followed, including an explanation al-Samir’s particularly expensive spend down.
Ending balance is $41K+.
Outstanding projects: $35K
There is available $6K for new projects.

See verso of handout for a listing of commitments.
In-Process: See page following, e.g., Beirut Times continues to come in; Dunya from Tehran; Harvard continues to process al-Nasr, etc.
The major title al-Sameer/Samir was donated by Bob Mady, a run of 1936-1957
Suggestion: ad in MELA Notes for availability of the film of al-Samir for sale. Editor or D. Hirsch will produce a blurb for the ad. It is suggested that we consult the Encyclopaedia of Arabic Literature article by J. Meisami on al-Samir.
al-Mujahid (Algeria) on film is owned by Yale: S. Samoeil.

IV. Library of Congress Report (C. Murphy):
Most of what he says he notes can be reviewed in the Summer 2005 minutes and published on CRL IntraSpect site and below in the end-note.
Filming operations of Cairo material are to be transferred to Delhi.
LC budget looks good.
There is a move away from filming to digitization.
Murphy mentions the Timbuctu manuscripts web-exhibit and the reconstruction of ms fragment.
The LC global gateway project with Dar al-Kutub will include scientific manuscripts in cooperation with LC. There is no release date set. It will comprise a total of 120 manuscripts ranging from medieval to later periods. Four of LC’s are unique, and one very early, a Tusi manuscript. None of LC’s have been edited.
The Iraqi librarians project training and book repair still operating, but against almost insurmountable problems.
There has been a decision to send 3200 volumes of Turkish, including 800 serial volumes to the mass deacidification project in 9 months to a year in an effort to begin to deacidify the whole African-Near East collection of 600,000, and about 450K will be deacidified at the Ft. Mead storage facility.
Mention is made of the list of current titles in film. The list will be sent to the MEMP-list, including instruction on how to search the LC catalogue by call number to determine items in film format.
C. Murphy will also send a text list to MEMP-list as an attachment, and a copy is on CRL MEMP restricted site.
The Hasan al-Banna` Muslim Brotherhood title and Manar al-Misriyah proposal to film: call to collect other issues to fill in gaps difficult to film because of varied format.

V. Elections:
MEMP Nomination committee: M. Gaston and W. Kopycki. There are three open positions to fill on Board as the terms of Rodgers, Hirsch, and Khanaka expire. All three are willing to stand again for election, as are M. al-Farouque and P. Magierski. Thus there are 5 candidates.

Five minutes break for voting and ballot counting.

It is announced that Holly S. Bielawa of NovoDynamics in Ann Arbor will demonstrate its Middle Eastern language Arabic script OCR software in the Coolidge room at 3:00-4:00PM.

VI. Filming Proposals:
Report of proposals reviewed by the Executive Committee at its meeting on Thursday. See the EC minutes and the CRL/MEMP proposals list for details.

Afghan News: Proposed by NYU; approved with a call for additional holdings.

Kayhan Farhangi, et al: Proposed by Columbia; additional holdings called for pending approval.

Lahib al-Marakah/Sawt al-Marakah: proposed by Penn; approved over summer. Other members holdings solicited .

Mu’tamar: paper published in London, now in Iraq: UCLA and Berkeley hold, LC also? Is LC planning to film? LC Field office will let us know if it is being filmed or planned. Mu’tamar is also online but with limited archives.

al-Quds al-Arabi: Proposed by Yale; other issues available? Simon will talk with Antwan, the editor to locate more issues. It is also available online but only in a two month archive (via NewspaperDirect). He can find out if it is otherwise available.

Subh-i Iran, Los Angeles daily in Persian: The California Newspaper Project might offer cooperation? Permission of the editor is needed, and he is very difficult to contact.

Other Proposals:
Any interest in North African titles? LC does film some titles from Tunisia and Morocco. MEMP should also undertake filming of more from North African titles. There is a call for submissions from membership.

VII. Approved Projects and Continuing Business
Algerian newspapers: Last two major titles received 6/05: Al-Nasr [June 1991 – June 1993] and Al-Salam [Apr. 1991 – Aug. 1993]. Current Filming; Al-Mujahid al-Usbu'I [Mar. 2 1990 – October 21, 1994]. Scattered smaller runs remain to be filmed.

Beirut Times: a commercial film is being acquired, but it was also known previously as Ittihad, v. 1-99. The editor dumped most of those older issues, but we might be able to acquire some of these if any survived

Shaqiri (Chaqueri)papers: almost complete, and cataloguing almost done.

Iranian Opposition Newspapers: Other newspapers on the list are discussed; they appear in “Approved projects and continuing commitments” handout. There is a call for added volumes to these titles as they continue to be filmed.

Election announcement: winners: D. Hirsch, P. Magierski, and J. Rodgers
The Executive Committee thus now consists of:
David Hirsch, Chair (2005-2007) University of California, Los Angeles
Jonathan Rodgers, Secretary (2005-2007) University of Michigan
John Eilts (2004-2006) Stanford University
Meryle Gaston (2004-2006)* University of California, Santa Barbara
Michael Hopper (2004-2006) Harvard University
William J. Kopycki (2004-2006) University of Pennsylvania
Peter Magierski (2005-2007) New York University
Ex-officio Members:
Christopher Murphy, LC
James Simon, CRL
Ali Houissa, Cornell University (MELA Chair)

VIII. Newspaper Survey (M .Hopper):
A draft of an updated MEMP newspaper holdings survey proposal distributed.
discussion: The 1997 conference on International Newspapers focused on what MEMP collected and disposition keep film or dispose, etc.
As this previous survey ran 8 years ago, we would like to do it again to update the holdings information.
M. Hopper will supply a survey form to fill out with instructions to the membership.
The LC titles listed on their website do not include those titles acquired by exchange. LC will produce a list of those too.
NYPL films titles, but if no funds are available it will submit to MEMP for filming both current and archives.
Arab-American newspapers also have runs to film.

IX. Other Business
MEMP/CRL NEH grant proposal Iraq Initiative funding preservation of cultural heritage of Iraq:
MEMP submitted proposal with list of titles and holding of Iraqi cultural and political titles (the list was included in an email to the list.)
Acknowledgment is given to CLR and J. Simon, E. Darocha and Bernard F. Reilly for help in writing the grant proposal.
NEH now moving to an Afghanistan initiative.

S. Samoeil of Yale will digitize also some Iraqi titles with Penn 10 titles under an NEH funded grant proposal
Yale has ordered on CD al-Nahar and fiche of al-Waqa’i al-Misriyah
A run can be purchased through Leila beginning in 1828, but Yale’s holding begin later.
Penn also has a fiche, and there is an index on CD for al-Nahar.

Iranian opposition pamphlets from the time of the Shah supplements the Chaqueri collection originally collected by NYPL. Stanford will search and propose as supplement to Chaqueri project.
Reference is made to Behn’s collection. Hirsch will contact Behn to review the list distributed here to identify possible duplication.

Political Web Archiving E. Darocha reports on the test of new software to archive web site. Archiving was undertaken for 6-8 weeks under a pilot program. Crawlers collected data, but the archive is not yet public. It will be released to Internet Archives’ “Wayback Machine” web archive.
The resources are based on the list provided by David Hirsch (see list to be published in MELA Notes 78)
It is emphasized that it is only a pilot project.
D. Hirsch reviews the sites included, numbering 100 sites, all from the Middle East, including Iran, Turkey, and Arab world.
These archived sites need to be catalogued and he solicits volunteers to do so.
Eight fields from the Dublin core should be used, but there is no provision for non-roman fields for the metadata. The question of persistent URL is raised.
MEMP Executive Committee should review and decide if the pilot should be transformed into a permanent project and assume the cost: $10K cost per collection? Or time-parsed crawl frequency will be decided. MEMP members will have access if the EC decides to pursue.
Volunteers agree to participate, including members from Yale, Harvard, Penn, UVA, Santa Barbara, etc.
The project will not collect the “invisible web” resources, e.g., databases.

Digitization of the Middle East in Microform: printed published by University of Washington Press.
discussion of digitizing as a viable project ensued.
Should we transfer this data into OACIS??
The issue is not resolved at this time.

There is discussion of what we should be collecting in other formats e.g., NGO publications, pamphlets, posters, etc.

The meeting adjourned at 10:50

Executive Committee Meeting wrap-up
M. Hopper, J. Simon, D. Hirsch, P. Magierski, M. Gaston, J. Rodgers W. Kopycki, E. Darocha

Hirsch selected chair again.

As in the past, a Harvard meeting is favored, and Harvard will send an invitation.
Topic of discussion: discussion of filming standards film vs digitalization

Endnote:
.IV. Library of Congress Report (Murphy) [from the minutes of the MEMP Executive Committee Meeting of Tuesday, August 9, 2005, Harvard University]

Near East & North African cataloguing team and acquisitions in that area is fully staffed. An Chi Ho promoted to Asia Division. Prosser Gifford will retire at the end of the Fiscal year. Interviews for Chief of AFR-NE div are under way

Field offices down two field directors for FY06. Will Tuchrello goes back to Indonesia after a sabbatical leave. James Armstrong has retired, Paul Steere in Nairobi resigned. Pamela Howard-Reguindin will move to Nairobi, Islamabad will be covered by Carol Mitchell from New Delhi.

FY06 budget better than 05; the semi-moratorium on serials is lifted. Mark Sweeney, who took over as chief in Preservation Reformatting, has streamlined filming titles, and capacity is up significantly. Production numbers are climbing noticeably and1/4 of newspapers filmed by LC are Near East titles (approx. 400 titles).

The digital world has come into more prominence at LC. Two Near East projects are in production: On calligraphy: manuscripts split in the 20'sa and 30's by dealers to be mounted on web January 2006. Freer Sackler, NYPL, Los Angeles County Museum, among other institutions, have been identified as holding complimentary materials for the project to reconstruct manuscripts from fragments. Ancient Manuscripts from the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu: 26 Sep 05 22 mss in 2200 images are now exhibited on the web (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/mali/). Global Gateway Project in cooperation with Dar al-Kutub in which LC will digitize and mount images of scientific mss in the areas of mathematics, medicine, astronomy, etc., on the web; Dar al-Kutub will do the same with their resources, and LC will receive an Ikhwan journal in exchange from Dar al-Kutub.

Iran trip: James Billington and Mary Jane Deeb met with the Director of the National Library of Iran who was to come to US, but the trip has been postponed. Small blurb was released but not complete report? C. Murphy will look into it; M. Deeb wrote a report but it is not known where it is.

LC tried to bring four Iraqis to train in preservation but have been unsuccessful so far. Assessment of Iraq collections indicates 40-50K damaged mss; these were flooded and are now in cold storage; LC is trying to clean and remove mold; Iraqis need to be trained to do this to preserve and clean them, but the training has not yet been begun because of visa problems and other mixups. Iraqi books acquired by LC are still in Cairo, not yet processed.

Next big deal: antiquarian Armeno-Turkish and Karamanli materials acquired with Lev Avdoyan ??The division moved last year and more space problems developed: 14-16K titles were processed per year in MENA and included the work-down of the backlog in addition processing of to new acquisitions 10K new titles, 1200 from Turkey, and an increase in Iranian coming up to 1800 breakdown of acquisition numbers is request by the Executive Committee members Off-site storage of some Turkish belle-lettres and minimal level cataloguing and de-acidify before sending to storage

LC holds the title Manar al-Misriyah; 1930-1951; vol 3-24 (missing vols. 1, 2, 12, 19, 22-23; vol. 18 incomplete). Who else has it and is there interest in a MEMP project to film this title? Confirm titles and publisher and complete bibliographic details; a proposal should be submitted.

Murphy presented the group with the current list of titles to be microfilmed by LC-Photodup. If the title on the list is current, LC is committed to ongoing filming.