Present: L. Ballantyne, U. Bhasker, M. Burlingham, M. Ghosh, S. Go, D. Johnson (secretary), I. Joshi, V. Kayashta, K. Khera, R. Lum, S. McMahon, D. Magier (chair), A. Maheshwary, S. Meinheit, C. Mitchell, D. Nelson, J. Nye, H. Poe, M. Rudeen, O. Sharma, V. Sharma, G. Singh, A. Thrasher, L. Yang

David indicated there would be a moratorium for one year on membership in the executive board. Members continuing are: Aggarwal, Joshi, Khera, and Magier.

Lygia reported on LC/OvOp matters:

1. Good news. We will have rupees until 1998 at least and maybe into 1999. If funds are blocked we will ask for 32,000,000 rupees which will carry us for 2 years. If the funds are not blocked they will probably last another year.
   
2. The move in New Delhi is complete. The facility has less storage space. There are two new cameras and filming is moving from the embassy to the new office.
   
3. In February there was a mini conference on subject profiles when several American librarians visited. Standardized categories have been introduced, especially for Pakistan. The lists of these new categories will be distributed by e-mail.
   Starting on 23 February the subject profile will be encoded with the new profile categories. LC does assign more than one category for a book to insure widest distribution possible.
   
4. Five catalogers were fired and 1 is immigrating to the United States and another went to Canada. Cataloging in Gujarati, Khmer, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil, and Thai has been reduced because of these recent actions. Presently there are no significant backlogs but new staff will need to be trained.
   
5. David requested periodic statements on the size of arrearages. Lygia indicated 914 books were returned to New Delhi from Washington. There are about 1,400 works acquired more than one year ago awaiting cataloging. There are only 21 serials awaiting cataloging.
   
6. Lygia mentioned the ongoing comparisons of program acquisitions and dealer lists. Recently they compared Navrang and DK. She also did a "Jerry Barrier" list and the program had 95% of them. Of the 29 titles not found, 10 were government documents and 19 were commercial titles. DK has impressive lists but usually they acquire only one copy so if one doesn't get that copy you may not get the desired title. Don expressed great appreciation for Alice's recent work with listing OUP titles which will and which won't be acquired.
   
7. A cooperative Burma program is to be launched this year. Details will be communicated to CORMOSEA.
   
8. The serials list is now out on diskette.
   
9. Lygia indicated that 1997 is the 50th anniversary of India's independence and solicited ideas on how this might be celebrated.
   
10. The US budget is being felt in the field. Accessions list may go. Only New Delhi and Nairobi still have accessions lists. It will be going from quarterly to bi-monthly. It costs about $25,000 a year to produce.

Regional consortia.

1. SACWest met this morning and will meet again tomorrow. They are fine tuning their profile. They are discussing cooperative purchases. Their home page has been mounted at Texas. Web content is being discussed presently. Combined profiles are available, thanks to Monica.
   
2. SACEast. Includes Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, NYPL, Pennsylvania, and Syracuse. The Library of Congress and Virginia are observers. SACEast is several steps behind SACWest. A database on the New Delhi profile has been created for each participant. There is a 1-2-3 step evaluation for each categlory. There will be many 3s, works for which there will not be coverage. There will be a goodly number of safe 2s and a medium list of endangered 2s. Collection sharing has not been discussed.
   
3. CIC. There has been a call for proposals for projects for digital libraries and one was made for South and Southeast Asia. There is also a proposal for preservation photocopying of reference materials. Michigan and Minnesota continue to work jointly. Madison will be hiring a replacement for Jack Wells over the summer. There is interest for full text of dictionaries.
   
4. There was a meeting in Madison of the South Asia working group for information and consortia relations. Areas to be looked at include: newspapers, profiles, a rview of the CRL serials, "esoteric" language holdings, and endangered monographs. In a meeting in June there will be a second tier of serial cancellations, looking at the newspaper list, and profile issues.
   
5. Triangle consortium. Has three libraries: Duke, NC State, and UNC. There are several areas of cooperation: East Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and South Asia. They are trying to avoid duplication in acquisitions. There is a good delivery system between the three universities. Tony Stewart is working on distance education programs.

• Should we have 30 copies in the United States of English titles. If we elect to get less copies, how will this reduce effectiveness and discounts of the New Delhi Office? Lygia indicated dollars can always be used when the rupees run out. Volume business has been important. Once the rupees run out the LC office will remain but buying for LC as well as for others who are willing to pay dollars. It may be more important to get 30 copies of books which will be used instead of 1 in a language which won't be consulted.
  
• Should there be a national consortia instead of the regional ones?
  
• Is there potential ARL involvement in all this?
  
• The lottery proposal will probably not work even when we are on dollars.
  
• LC doesn't feel it should have every copy of every book. If someone else has it that is fine.
  
• Ved suggested we set a date for ending the ruppes which will force us to make decisions.
  
• There will be core items we all want. There will be items clearly no one wants. The problem are those titles which are inbetween.

Irene mentioned the Australians are working on an inventory of microform holdings in Australia, which are held in offices and out of bibliographic control. England has comparable groups. We need to share information with these groups.

The meeting will continue Thursday.

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