Present:

Judy Alspach (CRL), Deepa Banerjee Washington), Bindu Bhatt (Columbia), Bronwen Bledsoe (Cornell), Merry Burlingham (Texas), Rajwant Chilana (Illinois), Donald Clay Johnson (Minnesota), Raymond Lum (Harvard), David Magier (Princeton), Avinash Maheshwary (Duke), Adnan Malik (UC Berkeley), Samip Mallick (Chicago), Jeff Martin (Michigan), Philip McEldowney (Virginia), James Nye (Chicago), Liladhar Pendse (UCLA), Felicity Pickup (Toronto), Mary Rader (Wisconsin), Sarbjit Kaur Randhawa (U British Columbia), Rich Richie (Yale), Uma Sharma (Syracuse), Andrea Singer (Indiana), Gurnek Singh (Syracuse), Mel Thatcher (GSU/Family Search), Allen Thrasher (LC), Willem van Schendel (U Amsterdam), Sunita Vaze (NYPL)

Introductions

Attendees introduced themselves.

Approval of minutes

The minutes from the March 2007 meeting were approved.

Report from Chair

Jim Nye opened the meeting by congratulating CRL and extending the group’s appreciation for the progress that has been made on several projects.

He then asked the group to consider where SAMP is going, especially in relationship to two issues affecting SAMP’s work: the future availability of microfilm and the mass digitization projects which are now showing some results. Regarding the future availability of microfilm, the British Library has stopped producing microfilm copies of books. Instead, they now deliver digital page images. If pressed, they’ll get microfilm from vendors. Regarding mass digitization, SAMP should endeavor to avoid duplicating the efforts of other organizations that are digitizing this material. For example, Nye has found that Google books has already digitized at least 20 titles of the Land Settlement Reports. These were done from Oxford’s collection.

For Nye, this raises several questions, including: How do we evaluate new proposals? Will we do preservation digitization? Will we continue to focus on microfilm?
MIPP is an example of an approach we may want to take. We may want to limit the number of microfilm copies in future proposal to the master and duplicating negatives. The use copies should probably be in digital format. This blended approach combines the best features of preservation film and digital access.
SAMP and its members may want to have expanded role in mass digitization projects and provide feedback to Google. Google claims to be interested in users’ feedback and they have said they would rescan images that are flawed. Quality checking would perhaps prevent the need for preservation microfilming. However, Lum reported that Google told Harvard they would not rescan flawed images. Rader noted that Google does not have a mechanism to add in rescanned images to a book they have already made available digitally.

The group discussed these issues, focusing on the importance of collaboration in our approach. In the future, might we first make digital images, and then transfer it to microfilm? It was noted that in some cases, the digital image would be more appropriate for preservation, since film does not capture color, and sometimes color is critical.

CRL Report

Alspach referred SAMP members to CRL’s Report to Chief Collection Development Officers and offered some highlights of the most recent report. CRL has developed and tested a methodology for certifying digital archives. NSF has recently awarded CRL a grant to continue its work in this area. CRL was a co-sponsor of the Human Rights Archives and Documentation conference at Columbia University in October 2007 and an additional conference on this topic at the University of Connecticut in March 2008.

CRL is continuing to ramp up its capability to deliver its material digitally. These items are available through the CRL catalog.

Alspach showed the group the Workspace Pages and asked for their feedback. When asked whether the Workspace should replace or duplicate the information on the Current Projects page of the SAMP website, the SAMP members tended to think the project information should be kept out of the public view. Saying that projects are ‘in process’ can be misleading to users, as some materials held locally that are ‘in process’ may still be available. Also, we don’t know the outcome of current projects until they are done. We should consider the needs of librarians and scholars in determining whether to continue to have current project information available to the public. SAMP members didn’t seem enthusiastic about how much they would use the project pages of the Workspace.

Once a year, SAMP should send a list of completed projects to H-Asia to publicize their availability.

SAMP members were concerned about the uniformity of the Workspace pages across the various groups. Once CRL personnel have determined the standard look and feel, SAMP members would be happy to follow that format.

SAMP members requested that a copy of the Workspace handout be posted in Intraspect.

SAMP Financial Report

Alspach reported that SAMP currently has $12,816.72 SAMP can expect to receive $26,500 in membership dues in the summer of 2008.

Election Results were announced

Sunita Vaze was elected as the Librarian Representative.
Sumathi Ramaswamy from Duke University was elected as the Faculty Representative.

New Proposals

Nepali News VI—approved ($7,449)
Land Settlement Reports—approved ($1151)
Official Publications shipping expenses—approved ($2,964.87)
Ceylon Times—approved ($20,000 over next two fiscal years)
Swadesh and Mashriq—approved ($4,000)

A MOU will need to be signed for Swadesh and Mashriq, and the MOU should include heirs.
There was some discussion about the possibility of purchasing the newspapers rather than rights, and leave them in place. Will other projects want to make same deal? Unknown collections may come to light. But a similar proposal last year was rejected.

SAMP members would appreciate a reminder about CRL Purchase Proposal items related to South Asia when it is time to vote on them so they can speak with their collection development officers.

Developing Projects

Jaminraitu—There was some discussion about possibly dropping this proposal, since there has been no action on it. It may have been filmed by LC. It was decided that the proposal should not be dropped at this point, and Bledsoe will follow up with Lisa Mitchell.

Extracts from the Native Press—check with Simon if these can be added to CRL’s digitization queue.

Bombay Chamber of Commerce—starting in 1889. A professor at Harvard is interested in having these filmed, so Lum will check into it. The same professor is also interested in the records of the All-India Textile Association, but Lum hasn’t begun working on this yet.

Project Updates

19th century Urdu film—delivered to CRL. 3900 titles will be accessible.

Amir Khusraw and Endangered Urdu Archives—camera not re-deployed. LC field office to send camera. Microfilming of both titles. Title list partially defined for Endangered Urdu Archives.

Dastan-I Amir Hamza Cataloging done. Film is at CRL. Simon has offered for digitization. Film needs to be moved to queue.

MIPP $10K remaining. Some was used for filming English titles under the "American MIPP". Since most of the remaining English books showing up in Google Books, the remaining MIPP funds will be used for microfilming regional language books in India.

Official Publications—already approved money can support filming. Jail reports in front of queue.

Rahbar-I Dakan way over budget. Is this a typo? If not, handling of paper may have caused cost overrun.
Sunday Observer—permission not yet secured from publisher.

Attention was drawn to the list of completed projects, which had been distributed. The complete projects are:

Asiatic Society filming
Bengali newspapers from Columbia University
Da’vat
EPWAPDA
Native Press
Nepali Newspapers IV
Nepali Newspapers V
Young Pakistan Weekly

Meeting adjourned 8:55 pm.

Submitted by Judy Alspach

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