Present:

The meeting was begun at 2:10 by Chair Tatjana Lorkovic

I. Introductions and Approval of minutes:

Corrections:

• Discussion of PDJA (Prerevolutionary Journals Digital Access Project): Option 3 is a 5-year segment of one journal (not two)
• Michael Neubert (Library of Congress) report on Newspapers of the October Revolution Project: should read that the materials have been fully collated and targets prepared. LC Photoduplication estimates it will cost $750 instead of the $500 approved by SEEMP, but LC will cover the difference. LC Photoduplication will put the materials on their schedule for filming."
  Minutes approved as corrected.

II. Budget Report, CRL News: (James Simon)

Simon reported that SEEMP began FY2002 with a fund balance of $37,900. FY02 revenues were $20,400 and expenses $10,026. Current fiscal year revenues are $18,000 and expenses to date (including payments of Russian Regional news) are $27,531. With current commitments of $21,372, SEEMP currently has $17,371 in available funds to consider for new projects. CRL's commitment to the project occurs in the 4th quarter of the FY.

SEEMP has added a new member, the University of Kansas.

New receipts for SEEMP in the past year include additional Russian regional newspapers and the film from the Soviet Central Asian pamphlet microfilming project.

CRL is working on processing its many uncataloged collections. There is a report on this work in CRL’s Focus Newsletter <http://www.crl.edu/focus/wtr02Catupdte.asp>

Simon summarized CRL's progress in cataloging its large foreign doctoral dissertation collection. With over 800,000 dissertations spanning the years 1738-2002, this collection is a largely untapped resource. CRL received general funding from Mellon Foundation to begin the process of developing a methodology and workflow to gain access to this collection. Over the first eight months of funding, the cataloging department has been providing minimal catalog records with all major access points (author, title, imprint, granting institution, subject keywords) in CRL's online catalog and in OCLC at a high rate of speed. To date, they have added over 61,000. Simon will attempt to gather a sampling of Slavic-related dissertations available.

Questions:
** Can one search dissertations by institution?
** Are languages being inputted in fixed fields?

Simon reported that CRL received additional funding from the Mellon Foundation to examine the methodologies and processes to archive Web sites, using international political sites as a testbed. A meeting was scheduled for Nov. 25 to discuss issues like how to capture them.

The International Coalition on Newspapers (ICON) received additional funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a second round of funding. This will continue work on the union list of newspapers in addition to preservation projects. CRL holds the master negative of most of the papers it is filming under this effort. Several Slavic titles were included in the current round of funding (coming primarily from Columbia's holdings of Eastern European newspapers). These include:

• Odjek 1904-1905, 1947-1976
  A semi-monthly Serbo-Croatian language paper from Sarajevo, Bosnia that began publication in 1947.
• Glas Slavonije 1946-1954. 1955-1956 (gaps in LC film)
  A daily Serbo-Croatian language paper from Osijek, Croatia that began publication in 1943.
• Ilustrirani vjesnik 1945-1952
  A weekly paper from Zagreb, Croatia that began publication in 1945.
• Kulturni tvorba 1963-1968
  A weekly paper from Prague, Czech Republic that began publication in 1963 and ran until the end of 1968.
• Lidova demokracie 1952-1961. 1962-1964 (gaps in LC film)
  A daily paper form Prague, Czech Republic that began publication in 1945.
• Literaturuli Sakartvelo 1970-1973
  A weekly paper from Tbilisi, Georgia Republic that began publication in 1964.
• Magyar nemzet 1939-1941, 1950-1952, 1958-1964, 1969, 1974-1975 (gaps in LC film)
  A daily paper from Budapest, Hungary that began publication in 1938.
• Eleore 1958-1971
  A daily paper from Bucharest, Romania that began publication in 1947.
• Uj szo 1949-1955, 1955-1966 (gaps in LC film)
  A daily paper from Bratislava, Slovakia that began publication in 1949.
• Slovenija 1932-1941
  A weekly paper from Ljubljana, Slovenia that began publication in 1850 as a semiweekly and seems to have been published sporadically until the weekly edition began in 1932.
• Narodni listy 1918-1934
  A daily paper from Prague, Czech Republic that began publication in 1861.

Simon reaffirmed the commitment of CRL to international resources and stated there seemed to be a general increase in support from the membership. Bernard Reilly has pushed this agenda to the library directors very strongly, and is interested in fundraising for these efforts. Simon has now become Director of International Resources.

III. Progress Reports on Current Projects

1. Luckziw collection (Mary Stevens)
This project was completed last year. 86 reels were produced and sent to CRL. The collection includes monographs of the publications by Ukrainian DPs and political refugees, spanning 1945-54. The University of Toronto sponsored a reception to celebrate the completion of this project - 110 people attended. Stevens offered her thanks to SEEMP & CRL. The bibliography of the Luczkiw collection – 398 pages – was scanned into electronic form. It needs editing, and will be available on Web page <http://www.pjrc.library.utoronto.ca> in 2003. A paper guide to the collection will be available from the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies for approximately $25.

Miller asked whether the newspapers and periodicals from the collection were filmed. This portion of the collection has not yet been done. Stevens has been discussing the possibility of completing runs from institutions such as Hoover, UIUC, and Columbia. A possible future SEEMP proposal? Stevens would need to compile more information before doing so.

2. Former Yugoslavia newspapers (Janet Crayne)
No progress was made on this project in the past year. Vreme is impossible to film from domestic sources (due to complications such as expense, permissions). In addition, a CD-ROM (1995- ) is available, which makes this title less urgent as a preservation priority.

Another source of filming is possible – Janet has identified a microfilmer in Sarajevo, who has been filming newspapers from Bosnia. These are mostly wartime editions, and the contents seem to be complete runs. Film is silver halide, 16 or 35mm -- the quality is generally acceptable.

Janet could look into whether Vreme is available for filming and attempt to negotiate a deal. She could find out whether the filmer is willing to expand to other areas of former Yugoslavia. Can send info to board, if SEEMP is interested.

Janet also inquired about interest in acquiring existing film for SEEMP. She has list of Bosnian newspapers available (29 entries), Total reel count may be 60 reels.... est. $13,000 for all films. Prices and availability, for example:
* Oslobodjenje ($198 per roll, 17 rolls 1992-1995). Alternate images reversed – Michigan is exploring digitization of this film.
* Vechernye Novinye [sp?] ($198 per roll)
* The rest are generally $164 per reel.

Lorkovic reported that Yale has already purchased this collection (and LC is interested). Politika (Beograd) began in 1904. Yale lacks early years, and they hope to film it with agreement with this company – hope to receive this year? Early years of Yugoslav history are hard to acquire. Suppliers in Yugoslavia and former Yugoslavia are very cautious in dealing with vendors, Westerners, because of the issue of national property.

Another title: Open Society Institute will be filming Glas srpski.

LC would also be interested in acquiring all those films.

3. Newspapers of the October Revolution (Michael Neubert)

LC Photoduplication has reduced its filming capacity even further, with more filming being outsourced to Preservation Resources. Michael offered the possibility of canceling this project, or shipping the material to CRL (or Pres Res) for processing. The material is very fragile, which is a concern. Michael will investigate using Pres Res and report back to the committee.

Neubert reported that he has not compared these titles to Norman Ross’ new catalog of newspapers. Are any of these already covered? Michael will have staff look into any duplication. Miranda Remnek also recommended looking into the overlap of NR with Primary Source Media’s “Russian Revolutionary Era” microfilm collection.

4. Russian Regional News 1996-2000, 2001-2005 (Dima Frangulov)

Frangulov reported for East View Publications. This project has been carried out in three parts -- 1991-1995 (part 1); 1996-2000 (part 2); and the new project 2001-2005 (part 3). Frangulov reported that part 1 was complete; part 2 was 90% complete, with the remaining reels to be complete within a few months. For part 3, SEEMP has prepaid 2001-2002 for the sixteen original title and 8 new titles (to be filmed 2001-2003). East View has begun negotiations with the publishers, but no filming has begun.

Frangulov also reported that as part of the agreement with SEEMP, Russian libraries were offered copies of the reels at a reduced rate of $115 per reel. There were no takers on this offer.

5. Russian Right Wing Extremist Press, 1990-1999 (Simon)

The reels from the second phase of filming for this project are currently at the filmer. These include continuations of 48 titles from the first phase of filming (1990-1998) and 96 new titles not included in the original project. As a reminder to the members, Simon noted that SEEMP decided not to catalog these titles individually, but that CRL would include them in its online database of foreign newspapers. These titles are also individually noted in the new SEEMP holdings list.

Hoover has lots of this sort of material. Their list is available on floppy disk - CRL has a copy of this list. Joe Dwyer was interested in a project that would incorporate other political leanings. There may be interested in Western oriented liberal democratic newspapers.

Is there an interest in developing a new project? Someone would need to have time to come up with a suitable proposal (identify titles, groups, other holdings). Columbia may also add to this list of material.

6. Soviet Eurasian Pamphlet Microfilming Project (Simon)

Simon reported that this project, while complete, is still awaiting catalog records. The film is currently available to SEEMP members, and Simon will announce when cataloging records are available.

IV. New Proposals

1. PDJA: Pre-Revolutionary Journals Digital Access (Remnek)

Miranda Remnek reported that discussions on this draft project have been slow. There were a number of issues that arose during the year, including the issue of potentially using images from Boris Gachpar (Equimont Corporation), which was eventually rejected due to quality concerns and results of OCR tests. He also never came up with a licensing agreement.

Remnek is still interested in spearheading this possibility, though she needs some time to develop the proposal, and adjust to her new position at University of Illinois. She intends to re-examine the proposal in spring and put in next year -- this, of course, depends on four factors
1. Her situation at UIUC.
2. Continuing discussions with East View re: potential collaboration. What are possibilities?
3. The "JSTOR factor." With their initiative to digitize Russian journals, there may be possibilities for collaboration.
4. Technical issues. Since the University of Illinois has different technical solutions, Miranda will need to look into these and the possibility of moving the project there. SEEMP should also consider various new products such as OliveSoft, and Anastasia (introduced in the U.K. as freeware with good possibilities).

Is there still interest from the committee to develop this specific project? One might also suggest newspapers from later period. Perhaps work in a collaborative way to cover different genres.

Remnek commented that she prefers to do a lot of encoding. There is value in marking up letters to editor, etc., to add more functionality to a project that would not be done as thoroughly by a commercial publisher.

2. Hoover Regional Newspapers (Rondestvedt)

Karen Rondestvedt distributed copies of regional newspapers held at the Hoover Institution that do not fit its collecting profile. The date range covers 1996-2002, and currently is estimated at 10,000 issues. A few are titles currently being filmed for SEEMP. There are probably gaps in collections that would need to be filled. A number of the titles are indexed in the Letopis' gazetnykh statei. Hoover will deaccession many of these, so what should SEEMP do with them (if anything)?

Columbia reports holdings of some of the titles, as does George Washington University. UIUC has stacks of regional papers, such as Azeri dailies. Diana Greene (NYU) stated that SEEMP probably needs to have a discussion about criteria/priorities for this type of material. We obviously can’t save all titles.

It may make sense to work with EVP to work with libraries, publishers to film these titles. In essence, this would be an expansion of the Russian Regional Newspaper project.

Neubert noted that East View has a large online database of full-text regional newspapers. LC is likely to become the electronic archive of these files. Neubert asked whether there is a need to provide comprehensive preservation coverage of regional newspapers when the access copies (i.e. electronic files) are also being preserved. Dima Frangulov responded that 90% of the Hoover list was not in the EVP database.

Institutions and libraries in Russia are not currently preserving newspapers in film. They are preserving paper copies (in physical form) in the Arkhiv pechati in Mozhaisk, but there is no central org doing this kind of reformatting work.

There was no resolution on this issue.

3. Provincia Russica. (Frangulov)

Frangulov reported on a meeting with Russian libraries in Sudak, Ukraine. The various oblast institutions approached EVP with a list of titles they would like to see preserved. Galina Kislovskaya (Russian State Library for Foreign Literature) is the contact for this project and came up with list of titles for inclusion. Frangulov distributed an exploratory proposal to SEEMP for discussion.

East View would be willing to make arrangements with the publishers of the titles and would bear the costs of filming. In addition, if SEEMP would buy one copy, EVP would then provide film copy to the newspapers as well as to the contributing regional library. Frangulov asserted that the copies in the regional libraries are likely more complete than holdings in Moscow libraries.

Various committee members suggested that there would be more interest in filming the newspapers covering pre-1918 than the current issues. Janet Crayne volunteered to examine the list and see if these have been filmed elsewhere. There was a general sense that the current titles could wait, as these are likely preserved in better physical shape. Miller also suggested that there is more scholarly interest in titles from central Moscow/St. Petersburg. Perhaps SEEMP could revisit in a few years?

Dan Pennell (Pittsburgh) suggested that SEEMP's coverage of the regions might be a consideration in selecting titles. He noted that the Central Black Soil region is very sparsely represented in SEEMP's collection (save for a few extremist titles from Briansk, Saratov).

Frangulov agreed to look further into the earlier titles and would attempt to assess the conditions of the later papers to see how quickly we might need to act.

4. LOCKSS (Rondestvedt)

Karen briefed the committee on the LOCKSS project ("Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe"). This project, based at Stanford, operates on the principle of many redundant archives to store electronic material. Institutions subscribing to a database are permitted to store the material in an archive, which is periodically checked and refreshed against other LOCKSS institutions’ archives of the same material. LOCKSS works with publishers to include in their online subscription agreements the right also to archive the material in this way.

LOCKSS is expanding under funding from Mellon and others. The software is complete, and the system is in beta testing, looking for additional collaborators. Is this something that SEEMP (or B&D?) or individuals should be collaborating on?

Started mainly with electronic journals in sciences. Looking for body of select Slavic journals. Would SEEMP want to select important electronic journals? Is this not the body?

Murlin Croucher suggested the Bibliography and Documentation committee may be a more appropriate venue for this discussion.

Frangulov said that East View has been negotiating with LC, but not with LOCKSS.

5. Other Proposals

Jared Ingersoll suggested that he would submit a proposal in February to preserve more archival guides of Pat Grimsted.

V. OTHER BUSINESS:

1. Elections

Murlin and Karen are rotating off the executive committee. A nominating committee of Hana Pyro and Kristin Johnson have provided names for inclusion:

Wanda Wawro, Lena Sigelbaum, Cathy Zeljak, Andy Spencer, Don Arthur Dan Pennell

Lorkovic will have the nominators confirm interest of the participants, and for which position. James will coordinate a ballot after the meeting.

2. Union List of Slavic microform (Biggins/Simon)

Simon related Michael Biggins' suggestion about creating an online union list of Slavic microforms available in North America. Biggins refined the idea to encompass only newspapers in microform. Simon presented the idea, along with an example of a current similar project with Africana librarians. A few questions were raised, such as how to ensure participation in such a collaborative venture. Neubert also asserted that much of this information may be available (if outdated) in the printed “Newspapers in Microform,” published by LC, which covered to 1979. It includes commercial master microforms also. It may not make sense to do double work. As time grew short, this discussion was tabled until SEEMP may discuss further over the listserv.

3. By laws amendment

Lorkovic presented a number of proposed changes to the existing bylaws, primarily to encompass digital or electronic efforts in SEEMP's mandate, as well as changing the terms of newly-elected members of the Executive Committee. In accordance with procedures set out in the current By-laws, members approved that proposed changes may be balloted to the membership.

Submitted by Karen Rondestvedt and James Simon

SEEMP - Received
Since October 2001

Russian regional newspapers.

Titles included [Dates Received]"
Buriatiia (Ulan-Ude). [Dec. 1990-1995]
Dagestanskaia Pravda (Makhachkala, Dagestan). [1991-1995]
* Groznenskii rabochii (Grozny, Checheno-Ingushetia).[ Jun. 1995-2000]
* Iuzhnyi Ural (Orenburg). [1991-2000]
* Kabardino-Balkarskaia Pravda (Nalchik). [1991-2000]
Krasnyi Sever (Vologda). [1991-1995]
Nizhegorodskie novosti (Nizhnii Novgorod). [Oct. 1990-Jun. 2000]
Oblastnaia gazeta (Ekaterinburg). [1992-1995]
Respublika Sakha (Iakutsk) : formerly "Iakutiia". [1991-1995]
Respublika Tatarstan (Kazan). Aug. [1993-2000]
* Severnaia Osetiia (Vladikavkaz). [Aug. 1991-[2000]
Severnyi kur'er (Petrozavodsk). [Sep. 1991-1995]
* Sovetskaia Sibir' (Novosibirsk). [1991-2000]
Tikhookeanskaia zvezda (Khabarovsk). [1991-2000]
* Vechernii Cheliabinsk (Cheliabinsk). [1991-2000]
* Volgogradskaia Pravda (Volgograd). [1991-2000]

* = new receipts since last meeting.

MF-12960 Neg. MF-at lab.
Soviet Central Asian pamphlet microfilming project [microform].
[New York, N.Y.] : New York Public Library Preservation Division ; Bethlehem, PA : Microfilmed by Preservation Resources, 2001.
Microfilm of originals held by New York Public Library Slavic and Baltic Division
Comprises ca. 375 items, chiefly pamphlets, published ca. 1925-1940 in the former Soviet Union in Chuvash, Kumyk, and Yakut.
34 reels.
OCLC# = 50406686.