Washington DC
Wednesday, March 25th 1998, 6.30 - 8.30 pm.
Washington Hilton & Towers (Chevy Chase Room)

A. APPROVAL OF 1997 MINUTES.

It was noted that Hue Tam Ho Tai's name was incorrectly spelled.

B. AMENDMENT OF BY-LAWS.

It was suggested by the Chair that a three year term of office would allow incumbents more time to be productive. It was also suggested that this would allow for one Executive Committee position to be elected at each meeting, allowing for continuity. A ballot measure was proposed. (This ballot measure was passed, allowing for three year terms, and for the election BY THE SEAM MEMBERSHIP of an additional faculty representative.

C. ELECTIONS.

The current Chair has expressed a desire to stand down some time in the near future. It is hoped to establish a Nominating Committee some time soon after the meeting in order to elect a new Chair by ballot prior to the next meeting, so that the new Chair will have some time for preparation. [The Chair has established a nominating and an election will take place for new Chair at the 1999 meeting , as per the Prospectus. Dan Doeppers has agreed to stand as next elected faculty rep, also to be voted on at the 1999 meeting.]

D. FINANCIAL REPORT (Rudeen)

Marlys reported that the available balance of funds stands at $41,776. She noted that SEAM lost the membership of the National Library of Australia, thereby lowering expected revenues. However, the University of North Carolina joined. [The Chair notes that she contacted the National Library of Australia to ensure that this was an intentional decision to withdraw from the program. Marie Sexton reported that she had not been aware of this decision and was intending to reverse it.]

E. CONTINUING PROJECTS.

1. Indonesia projects (Rudeen/Henchy/Mulliner)

With regard to the Ford Foundation letter, Jennifer Lindsay confirmed that all LC participants would receive the 2 volume catalog of the collection from the Facultas Sastra, University of Indonesia.

Jennifer also informed us of a preliminary catalogue of reels 1-82 of the South Sulawesi collection had been sent to CRL. The project was originally going to be complete after these 82 rolls, but the team is finding more and more manuscripts to film. They stopped at 108 reels. Supplementary reel information will follow. The entire catalog will be revised for publication.

Bp Edi Ekajati has been working further on the Sundanese manuscript catalogue. We now have a reel list for reels 30--50 and 1-10, plus complete cataloguing for many reels including 10-20, 21-30 and reels 7 and 9. Jenny Lindsay is sending copies of these on to SEAM? ]

2. Vietnam project (Henchy)

Henchy reported that she had spent three months in Vietnam working on the filming project in the summer of 1997. She was able to get complete list of pre-1975 serial and newspaper holdings from both the National Library in Hanoi and the General Sciences Library in Saigon. Two copies of these lists were made and given to Cornell and Yale, in order for them to compare their holdings with those of the early quoc ngu holdings in Vietnam. Henchy sent a report to the Ministry of Culture and the Prime Minister's office at the end of her stay in Vietnam. She hoped to make that report the basis of a panel at the forthcoming International Conference on Vietnamese Studies in Hanoi in July 1998.

[Henchy was in Vietnam in the summer 1998 where she organized a panel on archives and preservation at the International Conference. A report of the panel will follow. While in Saigon Henchy was able to get a signed agreement from the General Sciences Library to film additional issues of pre- 1940s newspapers that were being filmed in Hanoi. An additional 38 reels of film were shipped via the US embassy from the National Library in August 1998.]

3. Lande Philippine election returns (Richie)

This project has been finished by Yale. [SEAM will get a copy]

4. Siddhartha Peranakan collection/Colloquial Malay (Riedy)

This was filmed by a consortium of Cornell and Wisconsin, using the KITLV facilities. SEAM could decide to buy a copy. [Yati reports that the cost for these 600 titles would be: Silver fiche is $1850; diazo fiche is $650. The Cornell cataloger has almost finished cataloging the microfiche. The records are available in RLIN by simply typing "ti:sidharta collection". There should be 600 plus titles.]

5. Cornell newspaper filming (Riedy)

Allen announced that as well as those titles being filmed by Cornell with SEAM funds, they will also be cooperating with LC to film 5 Vietnamese titles. Lists of titles to be filmed were provided to the membership.

F. NEW PROJECTS

1. Cambodian election materials (Henchy)

This project had been agreed to by all parties, but was delayed because of developments in Cambodia. Steve Heder had not been responding to communications for the last few weeks, and the Chair fears that the window of opportunity to use the British Library facilities may be lost, since the India Office and Oriental Collections will be disrupted by the move to the new site later in the year.

[Steve Heder has been back in communication in October and the Chair is trying to determine whether our existing agreement with the British Library is still workable. Heder is wondering if he will have time to do any listing or cataloging. It may be that SEAM will have to put some additional subvention towards this activity?]

Will reported that he remembered seeing some pre-1975 KR materials in the National Library of Cambodia. Rich said that he would try to investigate when in Cambodia later in the year.]

G. UNDER CONSIDERATION

1. Hobart Balinese video project reconsidered. (Henchy/Riedy)

A detailed description of the TV broadcasts included in the set were mounted on the Chair's SEAM web site. No institution appears to be very interested in these materials. The Chair expresses a certain regret at this.

[In response to enduring confusion regarding the pricing of this set, the Chair received the following clarification from Mark Hobart:

There are about 200 disks. I have had a chance to discuss the matter and we would like to come back to you, or to the Center for Research Libraries, to ask for precise details about what you, and then, envision. We have no idea at present how they deal with materials in CD form. We would appreciate details of how they lend these, how many at one time, what steps they take to prevent illicit copying? Similar considerations arise with the transcriptions. As these are on computer disk, it is very easy to copy and very hard to prevent such copying. Obviously we are concerned to know these details as part of a broader understanding of the circumstances under which the materials would be held and used.

Another issue which we obviously have to bear in mind is the sale price of this set. If depositing one set in the Center forestalls the likelihood of further sales to the US, then that would present us with understandable difficulties.

I was slightly surprised to hear your colleagues thought it expensive. The various Australian and Dutch universities in the consortium thought it very inexpensive considering what there was in the collection. [The Chair visited Prof. Hobart in December and discussed with him the possibility of packaging the materials in more affordable units, according to theatrical types.]

2. Yale Cambodia Genocide Documents (Richie)

Rich presented the meeting with a description of the security files that had been discovered by the Genocide Project at Yale. A request for less than a quarter of the total funds was made. [This project was agreed by subsequent ballot.]

3. Thai funeral volumes (Henchy/Mitchell)

The project seems to have made no progress. It's main proponent, John Butler has been on sabbatical in Hong Kong. The Chair recommends that an investigation of extant collections of Thai funeral volumes would be a useful bibliographic endeavour.

4. Retrospective materials from the region acquired by LC (Tuchrello)

Will had mentioned that LC staff sometimes come across older materials available on the book market and privately which fall outside of LC' collection scope. He has agreed to put in place a mechanism which would notify SEAM when such material, which may be of interest to the wider research community, are available.

H. OTHER BUSINESS

1. Proposed conference on evaluation of filming projects in the region. (Henchy/Mulliner)

Kent reported that Jennifer Lindsay in the Ford Foundation office is very interested in supporting the kind of program of evaluation that SEA bibliographers had agreed to at the pre-CONSAL meeting in KL. The Chair agreed to pursue this. It was discussed that a similar focus on preservation filming might be put forward as an AAS panel [this has been approved by AAS as an ALL-sponsored event. The Chair has secured support from the Chair of IFLAs preservation division to go forward with a satellite meeting in conjunction with IFLA, Aug 29 and 30th. Final discussion with the Ford and Japan Foundations regarding funding are still pending. A report commissioned by Roger Tol of KITLV (being distributed to SEAM members) will form the basis of these discussions.]

2. Relationship with Norman Ross and other commercial filmers.

Norman Ross or another representative from his company had been invited, but no one was able to attend. [This topic will now be taken up at the forthcoming ALL panel discussion.]

3. Arrangement of holdings list on Home page. Brochure. (Rudeen)

Marlys welcomes comments on the home page and requests information on how best to organize the holdings lists.

4. Newspaper symposium/coordination of newspaper filming. (Rudeen)

Marlys reported on the initial meeting of the International Coalition on Newspapers, which is an attempt to address the preservation needs of this endangered category of materials. The Chair was present at this initial meeting, as were Allen Riedy, who spoke on the Southeast Asian perspective from the point of view of the Cornell Library, Ray Lum and Rich Richie.

[Reports of the ICON group are available on the Web at http://www.crl.edu/info/icon/icon.htm]

The meeting was adjourned.