Draft Minutes of the Meeting Spring 2004
Association of Asian Studies 2004 Conference
Thursday 4 March 2004, 2-6 pm pm
Town and Country Resort, Esquire Room
San Diego, California
Submitted by Mary Rader

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

I. Attendees:
Usha Bhasker (NYPL), Bronwen Bledsoe (Chicago), Tim Bryson (Emory—chair), Merry Burlingham (Texas), Fehl Cannon (LC), Frank Conlon (BAS), Hirad Dinavari (LC), Monica Ghosh (Hawaii) Alan Grosenheider (Washington), Gerald Hall (DSAL), Aruna Kuruganti (BAS), Catherine Lee ( UCLA), David Magier (Columbia), Adnan Malik (Cornell), Philip McEldowney (Virginia), Laila Mulgaokar (LC), Panna Naik (Penn), James Nye (Chicago), Fred Protopappas (LC), Mary Rader (Michigan—minutes), James Simon (CRL), Andrea Singer (Indiana), Mel Thatcher (Genealogical Society of Utah), Will Tuchrello (LC)

2.Report from South Asia Council Meeting:
Tim Bryson reported on his presentation to the South Asia Council (SAC) meeting of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS). In addition to updating SAC on CONSALD´s activities, he re-requested support for 3 faculty members to attend the CONSALD meetings; SAC responded that if CONSALD will provide them with a list of five or six names (they thought we would have a better sense what faculty members would be good) that they would appoint 3 to CONSALD at their next meeting and even possibly offer to pay their way, if necessary. SAC approved our request to change the by-laws to include the CRL representative as an ex-officio member of CONSALD´s executive board. SAC made the following requests:

 * Have the CONSALD Chair make a report annually to SAC at AAS.
 * Continue with conference workshops on South Asia resources.
 * Forward the names of any South Asia university contacts to SAC to help them with their program to invite scholars to the US. (Martha Selby, Anita Weiss) They are interested in contacts in Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as India.
 * Help improve access (both bibliographical and physical) to dissertations from South Asia. (Tony Stewart)
 * Use any leverage available to have the Office of Epigraphy of the Archaeological Survey stop the lamination of primary materials. (Leslie Orr)

3.Thanks:
Alan Grosenheider was thanked for his work as the outgoing chair of CONSALD.

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

5. Bibliography of Asian Studies:
Aruna Kuruganti reported on the current status of the Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS). At present, there are over 600,000 records in the BAS and all records for currently indexed titles have been updated through November of 2003 (the most recent upload being from 15 February 2004). The South Asia indexing for the BAS is being done based on Columbia´s collection of serials. If others want to help contribute records or alert Aruna based on their own collections, please contact her. Please also contact Aruna or Frank Conlon (conlon@u.washington.edu) if you find errors or would like to give feedback on the BAS.

Monica Ghosh asked for a list of all South Asian journals indexed in the BAS; David Magier will update the existing list from SARAI and will alert us when it´s ready. Tim Bryson invited Aruna to regularly attend the CONSALD meetings to update us on the BAS. Related to the BAS discussion, it was pointed out that the Ford Foundation is going to give money to JSTOR to increase its South Asian content. [See Aruna's Handout]

6.Minutes from previous meeting:
The minutes from the CONSALD meeting in Madison were approved.

7.Elections:
Alan Grosenheider and Merry Burlingham nominated four candidates for the executive committee. Subsequent to these nominations, however, it was learned that we had four slots to fill. Therefore, in lieu of elections, all four candidates were appointed to the executive committee. The new executive committee will negotiate how to stagger the terms, who will be chair and secretary/treasurer, etc. Newly appointed executive committee members are: Rajwant Chilana, David Magier, David Nelson and Mary Rader.

8.Library of Congress Presentations:
A) Islamabad:
Will Tuchrello is the interim field director for the Islamabad office. For security reasons, especially because the LOC office is outside of the Embassy, the Department of State rejected LOC's request to have the American supervisor resident in Islamabad. Thus, Will will commute from New Delhi, thanks to the graciousness of his colleague Laila Mulgaokar. He provided an outline, attached, which outlines his plan for the present year. He reported that he has been asked to perform a cost-benefit analysis of the office and to report his findings to Judy McDermott. The Islamabad office activities will be focused on three main areas: security, finances and cleaning-up of the office. His first priority will be to work on the budget and an analysis of participant accounts. Will believes the office needs to become more automated (for example the shipping and serials databases) and that services will reduced at least until the office is put in order. He will make greater use of the bibliographic utilities for CAP access. Will wants to get LC and participant materials out of the office faster; he hopes that they will be processed and out of the office within 30 days (this is related in high but he hopes to revise them over the next year. He proposes sending participants an advance notice regarding supplemental bills when accounts have a 20% balance. In response to a question regarding the I&O charges, LC staff noted that the I&O for 2003-2004 was estimated at 61% as charges are formula based on the previous years budget. With the final accounting completed the LC staff in attendance noted that it now appears that the actual costs were 38%. The reductions will be corrected and adjusted soon. The office is working on developing their Afghan program and is also going to do a longitudinal study of the central Asian countries to see if they can acquire materials routinely and maybe create a program. The office is also in contact with the National Archives and they are looking into collaborating on preservation projects. Finally, Will had some questions for us: should they continue to bind materials in Islamabad and how will this slow down the shipping of materials out of the office? How shall the office make controversial materials available without offending governments (perhaps select based on profile or create a new profile)?

B) New Delhi:
Laila Mulgaokar reports that in combination with the new ambassador, the government is set to increase the size of the Delhi embassy; whether or not the LC offices will move to the embassy compound is unclear. The Delhi office had a cut of $70,000 from their operating budget; this has led to the cancellation of the proposed vendors conference, among other things. The office would like to focus on finding difficult to acquire materials. The Sri Lanka office is improving and will soon be able to input into the serials databases directly; the Nepal office is having trouble, in part because acquisitions trips are limited by the embassy. (A literary recordings trip is scheduled for Nepal in May.) The office would like to send emails to participants when their balance is 20-25% to give advanced notice of the need for supplementary bills; after such a notice, activity will be stopped until the Delhi office hears from participants or more money is deposited into the accounts. The cataloging unit in Delhi is still understaffed for the following languages: Urdu, Hindi, Sinhala, Mongolian, Manipuri, and Divehi. They have struggled to find an Urdu cataloger and will (re)open the search again soon. In the meantime, materials in those languages await cataloging. Carol will mail out CDs with files of active, inactive and really inactive (dead) serial titles. The Delhi office refuses to pay for materials in dollars; however, participants may request special purchase of materials that publishers/vendors refuse to sell in rupees (the office will facilitate the purchase). Both Laila and Carol would like to visit all participating institutions (for example, Laila will visit the Research Triangle this spring). The real I & O for 2003 was 14%, not the 30% charged; amendments/corrections will be made to bills/balances. LC- Washington is sending bound, print newspapers to Delhi to film. In addition, there may be new activity for the MIPP project; the Indian Minister of Culture may give permission for the filming of some 400 NBIL titles (without any GoI funding). LC still has a serials moratorium; the implication is that although serials will still be acquired and circularized, they will be cataloged as a “not for LC title” and therefore will not have call numbers in the records.

C) LC-Washington:
Fehl Cannon reports that the most efficient way to pay participant bills is through credit card or electronic transfer (if paying by EFT, please include the invoice number). Checks continue to be a problem. Whatever form of payment is made, please contact Fehl when the payment is made so he can try to track it. In relation to the “prompt payment act,” please pay balances soon as possible. The costs of security at the field offices will be shared; this will ultimately effect the I&O costs.

9.Cooperative Projects:
David Magier reported on SARAI. As the SARAI backlog is growing, David would like to “outsource” particular sections of it. So far, Alan Grosenheider has taken charge of the religion and philosophy section; if others would like to participate, please contact David. SARAI´s country sections are based upon and necessitated by the WWW Virtual Library demands; it may be that SARAI will consider alternatives to these arrangements. David clarified the SARAI-DSAL distinctions: SARAI is for external content and DSAL is for DSAL created content.

David also reported on oral histories in digital format that will be housed (served up?) from the oral history research office at Columbia. Included in these collections will be accounts from the Bangladesh liberation war in English, Bengali and Urdu. The hope is to expand this project to other displaced communities.

Jim Nye reported on the South Asia Union Catalog which has received funding from the Ford Foundation ($90,000). The first phase of the catalog is to focus on southern South Asia, in particular records from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamilnadu, the Maldives and Sri Lanka, and should cover materials from approximately 1556 onwards. So far, there are approximately 600,000 records to seed the catalog (including 370,000 from LC). Catalog participants will be attending a training session next month in Calcutta, run in part by Sunita Murti from LC-Delhi. The delivery protocols (Z39.50 server, etc.) are being worked out and the expectation will be that the catalog will have both an OPAC interface as well as access to the MARC records.

Jim also reported that in May 2003, the Center for South Asia Libraries held a meeting in Sri Lanka. Attendees included librarians, academics, and representatives from AIPS, AIIS, CRL, LC and CAORC. Among other outcomes from this meeting were the Union Catalog proposal (see above) and the associated training sessions.

Reporting on activities from CRL, James Simon noted that they continue to catalog their foreign dissertations collection; that they are outsourcing the processing of some of their materials; that they have a newly posted South Asian cataloging position; that there is a new grant proposal to support ICON; and that the recently approved purchase proposals included some South Asian content, notably continued coverage of the Times of India and more selections from the Church Missionary Society�s archives.

Last Update -
Webbing - Philip McEldowney, University of Virginia