April 2, 2008
Hyatt Regency Atlanta
Atlanta, GA

Attending:

Judy Alspach (Center for Research Libraries), Fe Susan Go, Chair (Michigan), Rich Richie (Yale), Virginia Shih (Berkeley), Larry Ashmun (Wisconsin), Hao Phan (Northern Illinois), Gerry Moran (Moran Micropublications), Greg Green (Cornell), Mel Thatcher (Genealogical Society of Utah), Jeff Peterson (Cornell), Jeff Shane (Ohio), David Magier (Princeton), Zbigniew Kantoroskinski (Library of Congress), James Gentner (Library of Congress), Keng We Koh (Ohio), Raymond Lum (Harvard), Judith Henchy (Washington), Chan Phan (Harvard), Will Tuchrello (Library of Congress Field Office, Jakarta), Marc Zeitschik (Praxess).

I. Introductions:

The members of SEAM and guests listed above spent a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting and went around the room introducing themselves to the group. There were two guests present representing microform publishing and distribution. These were Marc Zeitschik from Praxess Associates and Gerry Moran from Moran Micropublications. Fe Susan Go announced that the University of California, Irvine had joined SEAM with Dan Tsang representing that institution.

II. Approval of Minutes:

Fe Susan Go asked members of SEAM for amendments to the 2007 SEAM minutes. There were no amendments and the minutes were approved unanimously.

III. Election of SEAM Representative:

Fe Susan Go was re-elected Chair of SEAM for another term, and Professor Tom Hudak, of Arizona State University was re-elected for another term as faculty representative to SEAM.

IV. SEAM Reports

1. Center for Research Libraries and Global Resources Network (CRL/GRN) Report Judy Alspach reported for the Center for Research Libraries and for its affiliate, the Global Resources Network on their activities during the past year. CRL is developing a methodology for certifying digital archives as they are being developed. The Global Resources Network with Columbia University’s Center for Human Rights Documentation sponsored a conference on “Human Rights Archives and Documentation: Meeting the Needs of Research, Teaching, Advocacy and Social Justice” from October 4-6, 2007. This conference brought together librarians, archivists, human rights lawyers and organization to develop ideas to better preserve the human rights records and evidence of human rights abuses around the world. The conference proceedings were video taped and can be viewed at: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/humanrights/news_events/2007/conference/program.html. A follow up conference was held at the University of Connecticut from March 3-4, 2008.

Judy also reported that CRL is continuing to develop their digital ILL program. CRL is fulfilling an increasing number of its Interlibrary Loan requests through scanning and digitization efforts, with digital scans provided to patrons of the Center’s ILL services. Approximately 2/3 of CRL’s scanning in the last year have been in response to ILL requests. Judy also noted that in terms of cataloging approximately 7,0000 scans of documents was done during the past year and that cataloging efforts for dissertations included the creation of basic catalog records for 86,000 dissertations during June through December 2007.

CRL has been using Intraspect together with the “AMPs” to communicate for several years now. CRL’s use of Intraspect will be coming to an end during the next year and a WIKI tool will be created to replace INTRASPECT. Judy provided a quick mockup of the new WIKI tool for the SEAM members at the meeting and fielded questions about its development.

2. SEAM Financial and Progress Report. Judy Alspach from the CRL walked the SEAM members through the current financial report and noted progress on several SEAM projects during the past year. SEAM started the fiscal 2008 year with a budget of $60,722, and received an additional $18,000 in membership fees. There will be an additional $18,000 in revenue added by the end of fiscal year 2008, generated by membership fees which can be contributed to new preservation or microfilming efforts. The group went over the expenditures and commitments from the past year. Raymond Lum proposed, and the group agreed that at the next meeting of SEAM in 2009, that the group would go over old outstanding commitments and release funds for projects that haven’t and won’t likely be completed.

V. Discussion Items

1. Web Archiving. A preliminary web archiving pilot proposal was handed out and discussed by the members of SEAM. Fe Susan Go asked for comments to whether this would be a feasible and useful project to go ahead with. Judy Alspach reported that CRL had run a test project used Archivit to capture websites in the past. CRL has been working with their systems to capture particular foreign language sites. There are some other AMPsters who are also testing these capturing projects for foreign language websites. Judy offered that if the SEAM committee was interested, CRL would run a test project for one month, using 10 URLS. If the SEAM AMP would like to implement this project, it would cost a total of $10,000. Both the project and the archiving costs would be shared by the number of AMPs interested in sharing the cost. There is quite a bit of work involved, so CRL would have to set up a small group to decide on which websites to archive in the test project and to help with keeping track of the actual archiving results.

CRL representative Judy Alspach proposed the following timeline: the pilot should be decided upon by early summer, and the archiving should start in the early fall of 2008. The SEAM committee could chose the depth of the archiving through the different layers of each website, and Judy confirmed that it would be possible to archive right down to the “pdf” level. David Magier raised the issue of whether this is legal to archive this information. Columbia is web archiving human rights archiving efforts. David asked many good questions of the SEAM members present on the types of material the group would be interested in preserving through this archiving effort. Will Tuchrello, director from the Library of Congress Field Office in Jakarta, mentioned that the Australians spent some time on deciding many of these issues and that he would offer to look into what solutions or decisions the Australians had reached. Ray Lum asked for volunteers for a working group with the following volunteers; David Magier, Rich Richie, Will Tuchrello, Keng We Koh, Judith Henchy, volunteered to look at the issues and report.

1. Newspaper Digital Archives (Alspach) Proposal for a SEA Newspaper Digital Archives.
Gregory Green set forth a proposal to work with newspaper publishers as a SEAM or Southeast Asian Studies library consortium to develop an archive of their digital backfiles of newspapers. Members of SEAM could subscribe to this service for their library users. The subscription income would go to helping to manage the consortium and to give back to publishers to help them to maintain a digital archive of their own newspaper holdings. Will Tuchrello noted that he had spoken with one digital publisher in Indonesia about a project of this nature, and also made note of a particular company which had already begun to archive 5 newspaper titles. He was concerned that this publisher might be deleting their digital archives when the archives became full, in order to begin filling the archives with more recent material. Greg noted that he had particular titles in mind in terms of building such a digital archive and is willing to take the lead on this project for SEAM, but needed to know whether CRL could host this archive. Judy Alspach offered to go back to CRL and to work with James Simon there to decide whether CRL could be a host for this project. Judy offered to come back to the group after speaking with James Simon. Will Tuchrello noted that James Simon would also be attending a meeting in Singapore with interested parties there to discuss similar efforts in the region.

2. Election materials. Will Tuchrello from the Library of Congress Field Office in Jakarta noted that LC would be circularizing ephemera from the current Malaysian elections. Participants who selected this material from the circular would receive a selection of photographs, posters, t-shirts or other election ephemera as it was collected by LC representatives in Malaysia. It was noted that since participants showed a good general interest in collecting this material for their own host institutions, that CRL would not try to collect this material. Keng We Koh from Ohio University suggested it would also be useful to try to archive the digital material from You-Tube and related blogs on the Malaysian election.

VI. Proposals for New Projects & Voting – Three Formal Proposals Presented:

1. Philippine Star. This Philippine newspaper had a editor, Max Soliven with a very strong and controversial viewpoint expressed in the Star. SEAM voted to purchase the film over the next two years. The film will be purchased and delivered to the Library of Congress Representative Office in Manila for shipping to CRL. Approved by SEAM for $21,487.50 Costs will be spread over two years.

2. Official Gazette of Cambodia. Greg Green proposed to film the official gazette of Cambodia. The group decided to film the gazette unless it turns out that the National Archives has already filmed these. The group voted on to do this project over two years, contingent on whether this material has been filmed already. Approved by SEAM for $18,820.50 Costs will be spread over two years.

3. Vernacular Press in the Netherlands Indies (1855-1955) from Moran Micropublications. Judy Eckoff Alspach recommended purchasing the Vernacular Press in the Netherlands Indies (1855-1955). It was agreed that SEAM would buy a set for shared use although Cornell, UC Riverside, and Hawaii have already purchased this film. Approved by SEAM for $1600.

VII. Current Projects

1. Projects in process. Judy Alspach from CRL gave a progress report on the current SEAM projects with input from the various project leaders. Fe Susan Go from Michigan reported on the pricing and shipping of the Vietnamese newspapers from the National Library of Vietnam to Ateneo de Manila. The microfilming has started and Ateneo has projected that the project will be done by December. In time for Mr. Khang’s retirement. Greg and Susan shared the filming efforts by Cornell University. Judith Henchy reported on the Heder project and noted that she would be going to London to try to get the project started with Heder. She also noted that there is some money left in the National Library of Vietnam to continue and finish the resistance filming. CRL has copies of all this film including the print negative and the positive.

VIII. Other Reports.

Mel Thatcher gave a brief report on the efforts of the Genealogical Society of Utah’s efforts to begin digitizing the Philippine Catholic Church microfilm from some of the dioceses. These are parish records, births, baptisms, and deaths. Next year will be the last year of the project. Mel also offered to train SEAM or CORMOSEA affiliates in digitization. The staff of the Society could help in training to do digitization from original paper materials, digitization from microfilm and indexing of images for digital archives. Members of CORMOSEA should keep this in mind. Mel also noted that the Genealogical Society is offering free access to their family research database and seeks new sources of information for genealogical from around the world. Gerry Moran through Fe Susan Go, also reported that he had been pursuing Indonesian /Malay Arabic newspapers that are housed in Leiden University. He indicated that a few titles exist and will consult the list of titles found in a Journal of Asian Studies article on the subject. The Center for Research Libraries collection does not contain many of these Arabic script newspapers from Southeast Asia. Gerry will try to cover as many titles as he can find and conduct the project himself with the product being a microfiche collection.

IX. The meeting adjourned early.

Minutes submitted by Richard Richie.

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