MEMP Executive Committee Meeting
21 August 2006
Widener Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Present: Christopher Murphy, William Kopycki, John Eilts, James Simon, Judy Eckoff, Jonathan Rodgers, David Hirsch, Michael Hopper

I. Minutes from Nov. 2005 board meeting and general business meeting (Rodgers):
The minutes were read, reviewed and accepted.

II. Member news reports:

Michigan (Rodgers): Google Book Search project update, Verus Arabic OCR program news, Africana Bibliographer position vacancy

CRL (Judy Eckoff): introduction

Harvard (Hopper): Widener Google scanning gear-up, bar code completion now scanner onsite; new version of Aleph: problems encountered; Arabic script record creation/input testing in Aleph and or Connexion OCLC; Islamic studies grant from Saudi Arabia yields $1 million to library and it needs to be determined how to spend the funds, e.g., geography and Koran?

Stanford (Eilts): Google project, testing Verus and Sakhr, OCR production is still not acceptable, Bibliotheca Alexandrina production reported. The scanning of Arabic is not going as well as expected. The Alexandria Conference was not well attended, although some Egyptian publishers did attend. Participants discussed intellectual property and copyright, e.g., the Egyptian copyright law 1900, plus family or publishers' ownership. The possibilities in Arabic OCR can attract foundation funding to support research, and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina must be involved. Bibliotheca Alexandrina conference confronted issues of duplication of effort with OCLC News about the endowed program in Iranian studies

Pennsylvania (Kopycki): Head, Collection Development posting, no interviews yet. Library catalogue has been upgraded to Voyager 6.1 with Unicode; it was a painful experience however, but it is possible to search in Arabic and Hebrew, etc. The web site for religious communities in the ME update. Manuscripts have been digitized: Arabic and Coptic.

UCLA (Hirsch): staffing changes: 3 bibliographers are retiring at end of this month and next, including the AUL for Collection Development. We have hired an Arabic language copy cataloguer at full time. Technical Services, including Acquisitions, Cataloguing, and Serials, will move to a remote location. "Smart barcoding" has been implemented for all books without bar codes in Voyager system, for books on shelf without record, for on the fly creation of bar codes. David made trips to the UAE to train Iraqi librarians in the program run cooperatively by Simmons and Harvard and funded by NEH at UAE University in Al Ain. Program included participants from the National Library of Iraq, Mosul, Baghdad, and Mustansiriyah Universities, etc. There was also an acquisitions trip to Israel and W Bank, and manuscript catalogs were acquired as well as publications by Druzes, etc. Another trip was to the Islamic Manuscript II: A Conference to Establish The Islamic Manuscript Association, from 7-9 August 2006 at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, where among the topics under discussion were collections cataloguing, digitization, set up of committees for preservation, digitization, cataloguing, etc. There was also a visit to the Furqan Foundation which provides funding support for the cataloguing of manuscripts collections in the Middle East. The Director is Adil Salahi.

III. CRL Reports (Simon)

CRL Update: strategic planning underway, retreat to come, for an "E-CRL" program informed by Area Studies programs, converting legacy materials to e-form, engaging public and authors, licensing, web-harvesting. There has been some reconsideration of schedule for delivering all materials electronically.

Global Resources Network transfer from ARL/AAU to CRL: CRL will take over the entire project and is now engaged in integrating the project into CRL structure. The endeavor will likely provide the model for all E-projects, in particular international materials. CRL will attend the Frankfurt Book Fair and will send us materials and information about it.

There was a workshop at the Library of Congress about GRN initiatives, from which a report be issued soon. CRL will support Area Studies for transition to electronic form, in addition and in place of microform.

The pilot study on political websites and newspapers revealed that the process works well to capture materials, although there were encountered some problems with searching non-roman script language sites, and some sites have disappeared in the meantime.

Timbuktu Manuscript Digitization Project http://www.crl.edu/areastudies/CAMP/collections/timbuktu.htm> administered by the Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP): The manuscripts have scanned by Northwestern University, and input is sought on metadata. The collection is relatively small: 200 faded and deteriorating manuscripts, and is now browseable.

International Coalition on Newspapers (ICON) Middle East-related projects (Dunya, Anadolu-Turkey; Bourse Egyptienne-Egypt) There is now a focus is Latin America, but will become more broadly international

There is also emphasis on archiving government documents and web sites, discussion and CRL involvement.

IV. Library of Congress Report (Murphy)
Filming this year: sent in whole and in part 2003-2004 60 Arabic newspapers, and other languages. Little or no Hebrew or Yiddish is being done.
25 of 60 newspapers in New Delhi; others in Preservation Resources.
Every Near Eastern newspaper through 2002 has been sent to be filmed locally at Preservation.
Reformatting Division and it should be possible to work off over next few years at a stable rate of 100 titles per year

We continuing to digitize, and more Mali manuscripts have arrived and sent back to Mali. There is a new edition of the website coming showing 31 complete manuscripts.
Mali is part of the World Digital Library, thus more funds are possible.
The LC-Dar al-Kutub project includes120 Islamic scientific manuscripts, presented on a bi-lingual site continues, and manuscripts are ready to go from both sides. Egyptian materials are digitized, but the new location for manuscripts at Dar al-Kutub has had any effect? Not known In the future: A scanning lab in Egypt? Maybe at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Mena monastery of Coptic materials.

World Digital Library in which LC is involved also includes Google, but maybe the UNESCO online library, which is accessible without fee. It focuses on Third World preservation components also.
Explanation of the list distributed: handout: Near East Section Newspapers in Microform catalogue search by Voyager Bib record no. or LCCN; newspapers use call number instead, e.g., 17000, but one needs to upper-case LC Call; browse: other AMED/Nes space Microfilm space number - yields holdings Personnel; Michael Grunberger hired away to Holocaust Museum from Hebraic Section; Mary Jane Deeb is Head of AMED, and all three section heads positions are vacant: Africa, ME, Judaica will be filled. Nawal Kawar has moved from Acquisitions to NE Section.
Position requisition for reference librarian for AMED.

Carol Mitchell in now in the Islamabad office. James Gentner was in Cairo, but now in D.C. as acting head of OVOP.

There were four trips to Egypt by NE staff: two to Egypt Dar al-Kutub in relation to digitization; Turkey: C. Murphy visited various libraries promoting calligraphy and Mali manuscripts and querying about Turkish digitization projects. There are major efforts underway with significant accomplishments. Baku: Poorhadi has written a paper on medical and pharmacological manuscripts at LC. He is now 87 years old.

The mass deacidification pilot project at LC: the goal is 600K AMED collection titles by 2008 and will include all but brittle and clay paper materials.

Saad Iskander, director-general of the library and archives the Iraqi National Library will visit in two weeks.

Besides LC and CRL, who else is filming? UCLA will discuss later.

V. Nominating Committee
For three board positions whose terms expire (replacing four due to previous tie). (Eilts, Gaston, Hopper and Kopycki) Two volunteers to serve as Nominating Committee are appointed: Eilts and Rodgers form the new nominating committee. Hopper and Kopycki agree to be candidates.

VI. Old and Continuing Business

Budget, recent receipts (Eckoff)

Refer to Handout
Available funds: $1577.83, but membership bills have not been sent, and membership fees yield is estimated.
Dues increase to $750 was discussed. It is proposed that the increase be submitted as a recommendation by Board to the General membership meeting in November 2006. It will be voted on at the meeting and if passed sent out in the notice? Accordingly, it will take effect at the time of the meeting.

Receipts handout

Project Updates (no action required) (Eckoff)
Afghan news 2 reels at filmer
Algerian Newspapers received and awaits cataloguing
al-Jadid: await receipt
Beirut times Dec 2004 receipt latest
predecessor al-Itithad no possibility of receipts
two Penn titles await receipt
al-Nur sent to filmer
Subh-I Iran await Calif news project
see handout [not received]

Approved Projects (action items):
Arabic Pamphlet Coll. (Simon) No update; need to hire student to organize collection of several hundred items.
Chaqueri Collection (Hopper) Targets ready Sept 2006 to be completed
Continued of discussion of Hoover Iranian opposition materials
Irani Opposition Papers II (Nawruz, Khurdad, Hambastagi, 'Asr-I Azadagan) (Hopper) Awaiting confirmation with Princeton to avoid duplication, some complication because of varying editions and duplication. The catalogue record can note the variants Baghdad vs Syrian for target and in the record.
Ittijah al-akhar (Hopper)
al-Quds al-Arabi (Hirsch) While Hirsch was in London he was unsuccessful at attempting to contact publishers. We should delay action for now.
Atwan, Abd al-Bari ed.
PDF available on the web? Holdings and at UCLA
as-Sameer publicity (Hirsch). Text will be provided by D Hirsch [NOTE: The ad, prepared by Hirsch and James Hill at CRL, will appear in MELA Notes no. 79, 2006, in print and on the web.]
al-Rabitah al-Qalamiyah
Web site (translation into Arabic: Can we attract a volunteer from membership or should we contract out the work?) We can ask Hopper's catalogue assistants, as they are native speakers and can prepare the needed two or three paragraphs in Arabic about MEMP.

Pending Projects
Kamaly Proposal (D. Hirsch) no follow up
al-Mu'tamar (Simon/Hopper) The original proposal included early issues to be filmed and more was found. It was tabled pending discovery of what LC was intending to film or has filmed. LC is only filming 2004; we should wait until we hear from LC about its exact filming plans; further discussion about what to film depending on who holds what, e.g., Harvard has some issues missing; after all is coordinated, we can begin to film whatever is available; we can also ask the vendor for missing issues to include in the overall project, and we can combine Harvard, Berkeley, and LC holdings.
Subh-i Iran (D. Hirsch, UPDATE) Persian daily Los Angeles: finally the Cal Newspaper Project is willing to film and will collate and tell us what is missing. We shall need to add Harvard's holdings. Hirsch will provide an update on progress.

VII. Fall Meetings
Times for Fall Executive and General Membership meetings are discussed.
Possibilities: MELA is Fri 17th Nov 9AM-4PM followed by MEMP general meeting 4:30-6:00PM; MECAP in evening; Thurs 16th ? For MELA and MEMP Board? Turkish Workshop? Still undecided. It depends on the scheduling of the Catalogue Committee.

IX. Filming Proposals
Mu'tamar (S. Khanaka, Berkeley) see above
Tangiers Gazette (P. Magierski, NYU) wait for a query of the BL about availability of film, and other repositories; see proposal.
MERJ 6 Titles: film from digital? Degradation, ask for clarification about ordinals
Waqa'i Iraqiyah (Hirsch, UCLA): law libraries are filming such publications, including this one? Wait for Lesley to get back to us about the Law Library consortium, also LC? Table for now
Stanford/Hoover Newspapers (Eilts, Stanford) see list, very large number who can handle such a large number? Some of course have been done elsewhere, but others are very important; can ProQuest take it? The proposal needs to be reviewed to determine what else has been filmed elsewhere; prioritize? William and John will review to determine what should be proposed as a smaller group at the Fall meeting
William Kopycki: al-Ahd continued from al-Intiqad, a Hizb al-Allah publication. There is a potential complication in the issue of copyright and State Dept. list of prohibited? Since Subh-I Iran is being dropped for now, there is money available to film these. Is LC receiving regularly and filming. We need to await confirmation of LC's action.

X. Newspaper Survey Update (Hopper)
A question about electronic access instead of/in addition to print might be added. The survey is intended for MEMP, but others might also contribute data.

XI. OACIS database and AMEEL: MEMP contribution? (Simon)
The transition from OACIS with emphasis on digitization and electronic access, from just records and holdings to full text access.
Update by William Kopycki/Jonathan Rodgers
Participants include: Yale, JSTOR, Brill, Bibl Alex, with linkage to JSTOR, OACIS, and Brill content
Fedora open source for a digital object library.

XII. Other business
Potential projects (Hopper)
Iranian Political Opposition Literature (handout) Eilts
Islamic Manuscripts Association and Conference-Cambridge, UK (Hirsch) see above
Harvard has Palestinian weeklies, monthlies, newsprint materials, variety of topics, women, human rights, social issues, West Bank possible project. There is a student working on it who is collating the holdings.

Meeting Adjourned 3:57 pm