Draft Minutes of the Meeting Fall 2003
Conference on South Asia - Madison, Wisconsin
Thursday 23 October 2003 2-6 pm
University of Wisconsin Memorial Library
Submitted by Mary Rader

[Send revisions and corrections to Mary Rader mrader at umich.edu with a copy to Philip McEldowney]

I. Attendees:
Larry Ashmun (Wisconsin), Brent Bianchi (Duke), Bronwen Bledsoe (Chicago), Tim Bryson (Emory), Merry Burlingham (Texas), Monica Ghosh (Hawaii), Alan Grosenheider (Washington), Gerald Hall (Chicago and DSAL), Ved Kayastha (Cornell), Catherine Lee (UCLA), Avinash Maheshwary (Duke), Adnan Malik (Cornell), Philip McEldowney (Virginia), Edward Miner (Iowa), Carol Mitchell (LC), Laila Mulgaokar (LC), David Nelson (Pennsylvania), James Nye (Chicago), Fred Protopappas (LC), Mary Rader (Michigan) (minutes), Nuzhat Rahman (LC), Richard Richie (Yale), James Simon (CRL), Andrea Singer (Indiana), Gurunek Singh (Syracuse), Allen Thrasher (LC), Irene Zimmerman (Wisconsin)

II. Treasurer´s Report:
As of 30 September, we have $722.66 in our account through AAS.

III. Retirement Presentation:
CONSALD presented Ved Kayastha with a book to commemorate his many years as a colleague and his retirement from Cornell.

IV. Round Robin:
Attendees reported on their institutions and libraries.

V. IndiaStat demonstration:
Alan Grosenheider demonstrated the IndiaStat database, explaining how Washington has licensed it, how one can
search it, etc.

VI. South Asian Union Catalogue:
James Nye introduced the South Asia Union Catalogue to the group. The Union Catalogue has been given a 3-year, $90,000 grant through the Ford Foundation. The Union Catalogue will cover the period 1556 to the present and will be available on a free website. LC is mining its own database for records to populate the database. Within the next 1-2 months, they Union Catalogue expects to have approximately 500,000 records. After the initial influx of records, the project will focus on South Indian and Sri Lankan imprints (the next immediate target will be the northeast of South Asia). If anyone is willing to submit their own unique/original records, please contact Jim.

VII. South Asia Microfilm Project or SAMP:
James Simon briefly presented the new collaborative space for SAMP through Intraspect.crl.edu. At this website, members will be able to archive email, share documents, conduct discussions, etc. SAMP members should expect to hear more about this soon.

VIII. Core Journals:
David Nelson asked the group about preparing a list of “core” journals to be recommended to small libraries, including those where our students find jobs. Jim Nye and Merry Burlingham suggested RLG´s project “Red light green” as a possible resource (see http://www.redlightgreen.com). LC also suggested consulting its “core” journals lists through SCIMS. No action was taken.

IX. Journal Indexing:
Merry Burlingham raised the question of journal indexing on behalf of David Magier and the potential comm. on same which would include Allen Thrasher. Where are new journals being indexed (if anywhere) and how are we finding out where they are indexed? Do we see gaps while assisting faculty and students with research? If a project to verify indexing of South Asian journals is to be undertaken, we need to define the universe before asking for volunteers from the group. Two approaches were suggested: 1) Explore the model of TOCs used by the Latin Americanists via UT-LANIC; or 2) Select a group of titles based on number of subscribing libraries within SACAP--say 10 or more--which began after a specific date. Merry surmised that David might need additional information on other titles for the AAS meeting in order to continue some of the funding for the South Asia portion of the BAS. She will follow up with David.

X. LC Presentations:

Fred Protopappas announced that LC fully expects to keep the Islamabad office open without a reduction in staff. So far, they do not have any authorization for an American staff person although they are considering a number of possibilities to handle the work. Currently, James Gentner visits Islamabad for 2 weeks approximately every 3 months. Fred will do more research into the 61% overhead for the Islamabad program but suspects that this rate is due to increased staff costs, etc.

XI. Some discussion ensued about the LC circulars from both Delhi and Islamabad. For circulars necessitated by cost, it was agreed that $75 should be the cut-off point for circulars. Where feasible, the LC offices will give us one month to respond to circulars. Both LC offices request that we try to respond quickly to circulars.

XII. Laila Mulgaokar would like participants to email her with any and all questions about the program. She is in the process of re-assessing the Sri Lankan acquisitions. Due to security issues in Washington, clearances at customs have become erratic and this may slow down receipts to participants. The Delhi office now has a digital camera. Carol and Laila will be taking a trip to Nepal soon for the literary recordings project as well as an acquisitions trip to Bangladesh. The Delhi offices will no longer be putting bibliographic slips in the books shipped from their offices, although the stickers on the front of the books will remain.

XIII. Carol Mitchell reconfirmed that the LC office will not supply books that are dually published with a U.S. publisher. Although reprints continue to be circularized, those without publication dates or otherwise improperly cited will not be picked up through LC. When participants change their profiles, please alert both the DC and Delhi offices. The Delhi office will send an email and a letter confirming the changes. The Delhi office is looking into simplifying the geographic areas of the profile and will perhaps suggest working towards larger geographic groupings. The Delhi office is happy to provide sub-invoices for divisional libraries, etc; they can generate these invoices and reports for participants based on requested criteria. The Delhi office has a new Malayalam cataloger but they are still searching for a new Urdu cataloger. At this time, approximately 75% of cataloging is done in Delhi itself. However, they are not “independent” for non-book items or certain call number ranges.

XIV. Nuzhat Rahman announced that the Islamabad office has seen at 10-15% increase in publishing and a 10-15% increase in book prices in Pakistan. For example, in 2001, they supplied 1083 titles, 1793 in 2002 and 3744 in 2003. They continue to be short staffed in Islamabad. While commercial publications are relatively easy to acquire, government publications are increasingly difficult to acquire. For example, the NWFP have stopped giving LC copies of the gazetteer, etc. For controversial and/or ephemeral literatures, participants should contact the Islamabad office directly. The Islamabad office is seeking a new box vendor.

XV. Minutes from Previous Meeting:
The Minutes from the AAS meeting in New York were approved.

The meeting was adjourned around 6:30 pm

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