Washington, DC
November 19, 2006
10 :15 am - 12:15 pm

Present:

Guests: Tammy Byrne(East View Information Services), Todd Bludeau (Praxess/IDC)

Introductions

Janet Crayne, Chair of SEEMP, welcomed the group.

Project Business

1. Minutes from Salt Lake 2005 approved as submitted.
2. Elections were conducted over e-mail. The current executive committee stands as:
   June Farris 2006-2008
   Diana Greene 2005-2007
   Ksenya Kiebuzinski 2006-2008
   Dan Pennell 2005-2007 (Secretary)
   Janet Crayne, Past Chair
   Angela Cannon (Ex Officio, LC)
   Brad Schaffner (Ex Officio, SEES-ACRL/ALA Chair)
   Miranda Remnek (Ex Officio, B&D committee)
   James Simon (Ex Officio, CRL)
   
   The chair of SEEMP will be held by email election after the meeting (June Farris was later elected chair for 2006-2008).

Budget Report, SEEMP/CRL News

1. CRL Report
   Global Resources Network: an initiative by North American institutions to increase their access to international resources. Includes collaborative projects such as the Digital South Asia Library, Latin Americanist Research Resources Project, German-North American Resources Partnership; African newspapers union list, and Collaborative Initiative for French and North American Libraries. Judy Eckoff project coordinator for this. In February 2006, Chairs of area studies projects and GRN were brought together to discuss new methods of acquiring access from overseas. Consensus that microforms still alive, but new attention to CRL’s overall strategy to emphasize electronic capturing of information.
   
   Focusing still in near term to microform and print as way to preserve information. However, CRL will increasingly focus on capturing in electronic format material that was born digitally.
   
   Strategic four year plan being developed and feedback from area studies groups being sought. One proposal on the table is the selection of appropriate AMP material for digitization. This may take form as a member-driven selection process.
   
   Miranda questioned the reformatting of materials and the copyright implications—public domain material that then becomes copyrighted again when reproduced by a vendor.
   
   Nadia thought important to use resources for new projects rather than reformatting of old material.
   
   Problematic issue of vendors/publishers reformatting material and selling them back to libraries who had purchased them already in the past—ProQuest, UMI, others contacted about need for balance between new and reformatting-type digital projects.
   
   June mentioned Slavic Cyrillic Union Catalog and other sources originally released on microcard and similar kinds of old materials inevitably have to be repurchased and maybe this a subset that could go directly to digital.
   
   Janet mentioned still have not done global Slavic resource project. James said would be welcomed—discussion encouraged on this.

2. SEEMP financial statement
   Simon distributed the budget and list of recent receipts. SEEMP's budget at the beginning of FY2006 was $30,988.02 and ended with a balance of $30,438.29. Total commitments for 2007 amount to $28,409.85. Available funds amount to $17,339.29.

Progress Reports on Current Projects

Newspapers of Russian revolution complete (Angela Cannon)

Oslobodenje still problematic, run incomplete. Markovic in Sarajevo said he lost money on the project and can’t get in touch with filmer—ongoing discussions with Grant Harris about other South Slavic serials Glas Srpski, Slobodna Bosna, etc. and other titles whose runs need to be filled in—Janet mentioned need to go to publisher of Oslobodenje to show what a poor job was done and get permission to re-film it.

Russian regional archival guides—104 guides completed and are in the processed of being shipped, still problems with some agreements.

Russian regional newspapers (contemporary)—Tammy Byrne said part III still in process but project nearly complete, recent parts completed already shipped.

Russian Right-Wing newspapers III, still in progress.

Soviet Central Asian pamphlets, originally a transliteration problem from NYPL to LC but project is complete.

Turkestanskie viedomosti, problems with ProQuest and fact that Norman Ross had filmed many titles which then inherited by ProQuest, who then misplaced much of it; project is to establish what in fact is held in US libraries, Russian National Library has full run except 1911-1912.

New Proposals / Developing Projects

CRL received no new proposals for this year. Impression apparently left in Salt Lake that there were no extra resources. However, now that more projects are complete, more annual revenues available.

June raised possibility of filming an Albanian-American newspaper Dieli. Would not overlap with LC’s holdings.

Jon asked whether any other institution might hold the Illustrated Daily Courier or Ilustrowany kuryer codzienny (1910-1939) from the Jagiellonian University Library in Krakow, Poland to ensure a complete run of this title that the University of Kansas recently received on microfilm.

Ksenya raised issue of Ukrainian DP press and desire to unify holdings with Harvard and cultural institutions. Nina raised issue of DP camp publications more broadly. Illinois, Princeton, Toronto interested.

Bibliographies of almanakhi and sborniki as great resources for initial drafts of poetry—any possibility for a digital corpus of poems?

B&D project—Slavic Digital Repository
Three-way grant proposal. Should repository be in a central location?

LC’s OSI project, working on contracting out with educational institutions as way to archive political websites in Eastern Europe especially FSU. Karen asked whether, if funding were to be given to Russian institutions, would they actually do it?
Karen also asked whether CRL could do web archiving. The answer was that CRL is a small institution with limited staff and resources for this kind of project. CRL doesn't intend to become a server farm, but rather will work with institutions that can host online materials. CRL's role in web archiving projects is mostly as a facilitator.

Other Reports

Todd Bludeau from Praxess—interested in preservation microfilming, his firm an authorized distributor for IDC and Brill—plans to film Berkeley’s holdings of Russian independent press from 1985-200—hundreds of titles many of which never filmed, Nina has volunteered to do the MARC cataloging for a fee—Illinois can contribute some—also Yeltsin transitional documents, small contents but valuable as separate collection—Berkeley’s collection going back to beginning of GDR.

Janet looking for Russian rock n’ roll ephemera, posters, etc.

Other Business (Closed session for SEEMP members only).

Vendor relationships—Licensing electronic resources through SEEMP, group buying—Janet IDC trying to purchase consortially Muslims in Russia. Discussions stalled over the nature of the consortial purchase, with CRL as a participating member. This is not under consideration at this time.

Problems with Open Society and Markovic on the South Slavic microfilming materials.