Present: David Hirsch, Midhat Abraham, James Weinberger, Gamil Youssef, Meryle Gaston, Chris Murphy, Simon Samoeil, Robin Dougherty, Marlys Rudeen

1. Marlys: Passed out copies of the financial report for review. Additional details: 3 chunks of LC pamphlet material have not yet been filmed. LC will be sending more materials; the $7,000 that are to be spent for processing Saudi material will be spent. Marlys requested that a page count be kept. Chris requested that written instructions be sent for exactly what CRL requires and copied to Beverly Gray.
2. Yemen Times may stop publishing in paper form so future of filming needs is undetermined. Total commitments for FY1997: $9683.00. Funds available for commitment: $16,216.62
3. Iranian Opposition Materials project: a handout was distributed detailing number of reels filmed so far (26) and cost thus far ($6,800). There is a large collection of serials, none of which are in substantial runs but mainly scattered issues. Estimate for remainder of project is $5,300.00. Funds for cataloging and filming will soon be exhausted; should filming continue or not?
   --$4,500 to do rest of pamphlets and one serial title, Dunya: motion was made, seconded and passed.
4. Old minutes: membership is asked to send e-mail before Jan. 1 if there is anything to be changed and Michael Hopper will send out corrections after.
5. Marlys: will be sending out a survey to each bibliographer to confirm name, address, e-mail, etc. CRL is going to mount a webpage for each of the microform projects, hopefully by Feb., and include desired links specified by bibliographers to home institution webpages, telnet links to catalogs, etc. David Hirsch asked that in-process newspapers be included in CRL's list of MEMP holdings to help institutions when making decisions about filming.
6. General MEMP meeting: 3-5 p.m. at Providence Library.
7. Suggested projects:
   There is Kurdish material out there that needs to be filmed; perhaps a small group should help MEMP decide which ones these are.
   Armenian newspaper coming out of Nagorno-Karabakh.
   Marlys asked about materials from core Muslim world.--aren't there any materials from these countries that also deserve filming?
   Michael Hopper will ask general membership to report on titles filmed and held, this way duplication of effort can be avoided.
   Committees have been appointed, some are several years old, but no results have been reported: how to encourage committees to do the work they committed to do? Perhaps these committees should be required to present a report to membership, this would encourage progress.
   How to more accurately estimate costs of project? Marlys has a form that will help people make a more accurate estimate of these costs (e.g. no. of pages involved) and she will send out a copy.

Meeting adjourned at 8:40 p.m.

Roberta L. Dougherty
Middle East Bibliographer & Head, Middle East Technical Services
University of Pennsylvania Libraries

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