18 July 2003
Widener Library, Harvard University
Cambridge, MA

Present: David Hirsch, Chris Murphy, Mary St. Germain, John Eilts, James Simon, Jonathan Rodgers (Chaired by D. Hirsch: Michael Hopper absent)

The meeting was called to order at 9:30am by D. Hirsch for M. Hopper, who is absent.

1. Reports/news: D. Hirsch distributes a situation report from Dar al-Muthanna in Baghdad, a book vendor whose services many Middle East libraries had used in the past before the Gulf War. Nothing has been published since the war and fall of the Saddam regime. Warehouses have been burned, although currently newspapers have begun publishing editions again and new papers have appeared.
2. Review and corrected General Business meeting notes (Nov. 2003), revised by J. Simon, are distributed. Review of the revised minutes of the General Business and Executive Board meetings. General Business Meeting Minutes approved as amended (J Simon's revision). Executive Board Meeting Minutes approved as amended
3. Discussion of the OACIS project http://www.library.yale.edu/oacis/.
4. William Kopycki will replace Brenda Bickett who resigned from the Board.

I. Local Reports:

• U Washington: Uzbekistan cooperative project in comparative religion with US State Dept. Funding support ($9 million)
  al-Biruni Library: M. St Germain will travel while there a review of collection. The assessment of the Biruni will include investigation for possibilities for digitization and preservation; substantial cooperation, however, remains a questionable possibility.
• Kirgyzstan: more work needed; decided not to film, but to digitize the collection (including a government depository office collection of newspapers 1929– which are out of copyright). Some details to be worked out.
• Uzbekistan: Samarkand University library newspapers are being received and Academy of Science is also sending materials, including academic publications from Tashkent
• Stanford: merger of Hoover and Stanford Libraries still in progress but slow and complicated.
  Ed Jajko, Middle East Curator at Hoover, retired in September.
  Stanford is working on newspapers to assemble to contribute to MEMP which are not now not under environmental control
  There are some 30–40 years of uncatalogued materials on Iran opposition which constitute a very good collection of periodicals and pamphlets and some other unprocessed archival materials. Stanford will pick up Hoover's collection profile and add materials collected accordingly to Stanford's collection.
  Digitization: Notoriety for the project employing the automatic digitizer machine (a robot made by 4DigitalBooks) [see NYT article at, among other places: http://donswa.home.pipeline.com/nytimes.digitizing.html]
  Stanford staffing situation: There was a cataloguer resignation, but we are now interviewing, and the position will be filled soon.
  Gift collection: In Santa Monica, Ali Djalali, editor of Kayhan donated a private collection of over 5000 items, including books, serials, also personal papers, topics include: Iranian Opposition materials with much research potential overall; contents not known completely yet.
• Michigan: budget crunch (staff reassignments, time reductions, and terminations and flat collection budget for 03-04)
  The University Library and the Kelsey Museum together submitted a grant proposal to NEH for digitization of the Kelsey museum materials (archives and photographs) and supporting materials from the library’s collection in the Ancient Near East.
• UCLA: budget cuts and a new university librarian (Gary Strong); serials cut have taken place.
  Endeavor, the library system, is coming up
  Hebrew and Arabic cataloguing position postings have been frozen, but for Hebrew, we have someone from the Medical Library to fill in.
  Manuscripts project: continuing with Arabic, Persian, and Armenian titles to be included in the database. It will come up on web based on MS Excel format.
  Trip to Azerbaijan: Baku Institute of Manuscripts has a very impressive collection (the trip to Uzbekistan called off). Many publications were collected. The National Academy of Sciences has been secured as an exchange partner, no money involved. There are technical problems in cataloguing having to do with language, standards, alphabets, etc. Much material was collected but with minimal level cataloguing. Also collected maps at the Cartographic Institute and writers union.
  Middle Eastern posters collected have been accepted by UCLA collection development office, but the may be appropriate rather for MEMP.

II. CRL Reports: J. Simon

Report distributed already in handout.

• Current CRL affiliated or supported projects:
  National Action Agenda conference: strategy of last printed copy and abstracts to be posted on the web site
  American Overseas Digital Library (AODL: http://www.aiys.org/aodl/) of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC): Union List project. Middle East Research Journals (MERJ) project will produce a subset of bibliographic records of the institute's holdings
  International Coalition on Newspapers (ICON http://icon.crl.edu/ ) briefing: will prepare to film Turkish Daily News from Berkeley's copies. Question: did Norman Ross also film? Will investigate with a call to the publisher. 15 July NEH submission of additional Hoover collection materials and CRL Turkish materials La Borse Egyptienne, Dunya (Istanbul), al-Madinah (Saudi Aarabia). MEMP cost share is committed and to be approved at the fall meeting
• CRL Dissertations cataloguing project working: coverage is still under 25% with over 150K completed and approaching 200K (163,282 as of June) out of a total of more than 800K
  A list of depositing libraries will be compiled [now completed and posted on CRL web site; see also email to MEMP Thu, 2 Oct 2003 12:54:10 -0500]
  J. Simon: CRL's new web site is up; new alternate language version in Arabic for MEMP is planned.
• MEMP Financial Statement is distributed, with commitments on verso. available funds: $21,190
  • al-Jadid is currently being filmed, including issues through summer 02 (D. Hirsch supplying)
  • opposition papers Barid al-Janub: Harvard has none, will use UCLA's copies (but wait also for another possible source, D. Hirsch)
  • Iraq al-Hurr (London) is now collated. NYPL has a few issues, and the British Library has a much earlier run which has not been filmed. BL film some or all, and MEMP can buy from BL.
  • Navid (Afghanistan) is now being filmed

III. LC Report: C. Murphy

• LC Associate Librarian for Library Services Winston Tabb resigned, and Deanna Marcum succeeds him. She has requested a census of digitization projects to be completed at LC.
  Project to match manuscript fragments with other holdings at Freer-Sackler, NYPL, LC and post on the web the assembled pages microfilming projects: priority given to all materials from Iraq
• A proposal to sponsor May Jane Deeb and C. Murphy and conservators to travel to Iraq has been written.
• NEH announcement "Recovering Iraq's past" is distributed.
• LC Cairo office is purchasing materials from Iraq now.
• LC is now hiring again: cataloguers for Arabic, Persian,
• Turkish, Kurdish. New staff hired recently include: M Chayet, Alan Mayberry, An Chi Hoh Dianu. They are now in place and at work. Interviews for Persian and Arabic reference librarians have been completed.
• Big news: Deanna Marcum has requested that George Atiyeh's position, Near East Section Head, be posted.
• LC will continue filming 342K + exposures in ‘03 and more in ‘04. Proposals have been sent forward.
• James Armstrong's bibliography of Afghan materials filmed pre-1993 questions ?
• Kluge Center fellowships now well established with better quality of readers now. There is also money for acquisitions in that multi-million grant.
• New: LC Exhibition (http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2003/03-109.html) on Ancient Manuscripts of Timbuktu: "Ancient Manuscripts from the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu" now open. Microfilm copies of the manuscripts will become part of the LC Aftricana collection. The related CAMP project focuses on other mss. from Timbuktu.
• Eastview for Central Asian imprints is too expensive, and LC is using also ATC which is reliable.
  LC: no FY 04 micro-format plan (‘03 plan distributed).
  Also new: a holdings list of LC’s Arabic newspaper on the web produced by Mary Jane Deeb.

Nominating Committee appointed: John Eilts and J Rodgers. MEMP Exec. Board members M. St. Germain and Midhat Abraham are finishing terms and need to be replaced.

IV. Old Business, project progress, etc.

• Cosro Chaqeri collection of Iranian left-wing materials: ref. orange handout: at Harvard catalogue records are being produced and work on targets is continuing (see agenda notes).
• Dunya (Tudeh party) see holdings printout
• Iran Opposition newspapers to be sent to CRL
• Iraq al-Hurr and Barid al-Janub: see above
• Sudanese newspapers: uncertain progress at this point
• Sawt al-Muhajir: NYPL. MEMP film master negative sent to NYPL?? But CRL should have master and positive to NYPL. CRL will send NYPL a print negative and CRL will hold negative master.
• Tatar serials: ATC can supply titles for filming.
• Beirut Times: D. Hirsch has not heard from publishers yet.

V. Other old business

• Dayan Centre in Israel: D. Hirsch received a response from them: Iraq press: al-Thawrah is already on film. 75 reels in positive: Could this be covered by the NEH grant guidelines? Still have hard copies dates: 59-63, 59-89

VI. Afternoon

• MEMP Executive Board Fall meeting: Thurs 6 Nov scheduled 7-9 pm? No. Not possible.
  The Board meeting will need to be re-scheduled on Wed 5 Nov. In the evening meeting with diner 6pm? Tentative
• Amendments to bylaws reconfirmed, reviewed, and discussed: These were approved at the last meeting.

VII. Proposals

• al-Samir: The filming project was approved at the last meeting, and we await the outcome of discussions with Robert Madey and other particulars. The copyright statement should be prominently displayed on the film. ARL scholarly communications office web site copyright offers a sample statement for the film target and film.
• NYPL: Iranian Opposition Pamphlets collection was originally part of the Chaqeri collection
• CRL: cataloguing problems: 168 pamphlets not at CRL but contracted out to member libraries for cataloguing.List available from Michael Hopper. ? request additional information?
  The Board is in agreement that we should undertake the filming.
• al-Quds al-Arabi: daily (London) needs further checking to determine who has what holdings. British Llibrary? Filming? Hoover: wait for further confirmation of holdings and other filming
• other titles on agenda: al-Masar: a formal proposal is needed
  al-Nur: might be small enough to be under the dollar figure required for a formal vote by Board
• OACIS: MEMP might, if asked, contribute its serial holdings to the project, but nothing is definite now.
  J. Rodgers will write a report on the OACIS meeting and submit it to the Board.
• White Paper survey not seen and questionnaire not sent out
  model ICON survey send out newspaper survey by October combine with questionnaire
• Membership list changes: Penn: William Kopycki now ME librarian.

VIII. Other new business:

• J. Eilts: will investigate archiving relevant ME web sites. Other groups are doing this.
  CRL: experiemnting with some web site archiving, testing with other groups with data submitted, extract meta-data
• Brenda Bickett has resigned with 1.5 years of term remaining; W. Kopycki if willing will be asked to fill in. M. Hopper needs to resign his chairmanship as he is too busy with running Slavic division and without an Arabic cataloguer.
  After consulting the bylaws: the chair appointed D. Hirsch as replacement for himself . M. Hopper will remain a member for two year term.
• Some old business from J. Simon: LC received Photodup an al-Ahram test film from al-Ahram. It was determined to be was substandard according to testing, but we are not certain why, was it Diazo?

The Meeting adjourned at 5:00pm.

Return to MEMP meeting summary page