Minutes
May 30, 2008
1pm, Riverview Room, Hotel Monteleone, New Orleans, LA

Attending: Fernando Acosta-Rodríguez (Princeton), Miguel Valladares (Dartmouth), Pamela Graham (Columbia), Lynn Shirey (Harvard), Margie Baillie (Student, Clarion/UIUC), Melissa Gasparotto (NYU), Daisy Domínguez (City College, CUNY), Aquiles Alencar-Brayner (British Library), Tracy North (Library of Congress), Irene Münster (IADB), Marisol Ramos (UConn), Geoff West (British Library), Peter Altekrueger (Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut), Ricarda Musser (Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut), César Rodríguez (Yale), María Vazquez-Estevez (Instituto Cervantes), Jesús Alonso-Regalado (SUNY Albany), Martha Kelehan (SUNY Binghamton), Peter Stern (UMass, Amherst), Joseph Holub (UPenn), Patricia Figueroa (Brown), Martha Mantilla (Univ. Pittsburgh), Michael Scott (Yale), David Block (Cornell), Ellen Jaramillo (Yale), Margarita Vannini (UCA-Nicaragua), Lissette Ruíz (UCA-Nicaragua), Sonia Morcillo-García (Cambridge University), Angela Carreño (NYU), Teresa Miguel (Yale Law)

Martha Mantilla began by reading a list of member institutions and their contacts by way of introducing everyone to each other. Those in attendance who were not on the list introduced themselves.

Martha Mantilla  then asked if there was anything to be added to the agenda, and Miguel suggested that a librarian from Managua be added to the agenda to speak about her institution's collections. This suggestion passed unanimously and was added to the agenda.

Martha Mantilla  then moved to approve the minutes from the last meeting, and everyone voted to approve them.

Agenda item 1) Jesus introduced the video consortium issue and reviewed what was discussed at the last meeting. He and David Murray developed a table for members to fill out to help clarify lending policies at member institutions. Jesus volunteered to compile information from members and send the resulting chart to Fernando to be put on the LANE website. The chart was passed around for comments, and Marisol suggested adding circulation period to the list of items.

Agenda item 2) Cesar talked about the digitization of Yale finding aids that are being put online. He said that 25% of the finding aids have been digitized so far, and talked about two of those collections in particular: the Andean Collection and the Cuban Revolution Collection. The links to finding aids are embedded into the catalog records for each collection. He asked for feedback. Miguel mentioned that he'd found a Yale finding aid through Google and asked if Yale could provide links to LANE for our website. Lynn said we could do this similar to already existing manuscript collection list in LANE, but also noted that LANE might not be the best place for these links. Martha Kelehan mentioned that the SALALM special collections site could be a good place.

Peter S. asked about SALALM results appearing in Google, noting that the old Cornell-hosted site is the first hit, and asked that David take the old site down. Marisol seconded this and David said he would do this. Martha Kelehan offered to add member's finding aid links to the SALALM page if they would send the links to her.
 Cesar then asked about international trends in finding aids and Peter A. responded that there are two general trends: those guides that area located inside and outside of the catalogs. He mentioned virtual libraries as an example of the trend of putting findings aids outside the catalog. He also noted that his institution is pursuing item-level cataloging of its archives. Geoff said he couldn't think of any digitized European finding aids.

Agenda item 3) David suggested that members make sure each new serial on the LC Rio list is held by some LANE member library, and that LANE created a list to make sure that the group is not missing something. There was some confusion as to the results of prior efforts at this, and if a list already exists. Patricia suggested that it might be helpful for any such list to include older titles, as well. Martha suggested putting together at table to which members would contribute. Irene suggested that we might use this as an opportunity to get institutional commitments to hold certain titles, which Cesar seconded, however David stated that he wanted to keep the project simple. He volunteered to handle the project "on a small scale" but "not forever."
 This agenda item led into a discussion about a related issue: Cesar noted that he'd been facing immense pressure to cancel paper versions of a Brazilian journal that is available through ProQuest and is filmed by Yale as well. He asked if he could be released from a commitment to LANE to keep the paper copy. It was generally agreed that this would be okay. Fernando asked what happened to the hard copy, and Cesar responded that it is thrown away. A student attendee asked if Yale's copies could be donated to her institution, but Cesar noted that shipping issues could get expensive.

Agenda item 4) Jesus mentioned that he has to make cuts to serials every year, and that the situation at SUNY Albany was fairly dire in this respect. For every title he wants to add, he must cut one title. Marisol wondered if LANE had any process by which members notify each other about institutional serials cancellations. She added that it has been difficult for her to convince her library's administration to keep the hardcopy where digital access is available. Jesus noted that ILL costs increase when cancellations increase, and he is sometimes able to resubscribe to a journal by using this argument. David suggested that members never cancel a title for which their institution is the sole holder. Alternatively he suggested getting commitments from members re: individual titles, but noted that the monitoring of this is a huge burden. Fernando mentioned LAPTOC as an existing model for such an agreement, and noted how difficult that has been to maintain.

Agenda item 5) Lynn and Cesar discussed the 3-year collaborative collection development plan that Harvard and Yale are working on for Mexico and Chilean collecting. Lynn noted that this kind of project relies heavily on vendors: they must send the core collection to both institutions and break up the other items between Yale and Harvard. They are using Mexico Norte, Books from Mexico and Herta Berenguer. Collection for Chile has been divided up by topic and Mexico by region, with Yale taking northern Mexico and Harvard taking southern Mexico. They have not yet figured out how well this was working, as ILL data shows few borrowings from Yale in these collection areas (however Yale has never been a top ILL partner for Yale, so this is not necessarily a statement that the collaboration was not having the intended effects). Also, Cesar noted that this hasn't been going on long enough to develop stellar collections. He noted that ephemeral items have not been duplicated and they have saved a little money. Lynn added that it is difficult to explain the collaboration to vendors. She has also identified some gaps in coverage, noting that vendors have little incentive to seek out special items. Pamela asked if this project had been about saving money, noting that deepening collections often increases costs, and Cesar replied that it was mostly aiming to avoid duplication. Pamela asked if new specialized acquisitions are unique to LANE or the country, and Cesar and Lynn agreed that they were not. Cesar mentioned that this project is feasible for 2 or 3 countries, but that more would be too difficult. Miguel wanted to know if Lynn and Cesar were planning on providing documentation of the collaboration and Lynn said there was a possibility of a shared database to identify titles and promote seamless ILL between Harvard and Yale. David mentioned that we need to try incentivizing vendors to provide more peripheral materials, and suggested defining the core ourselves. Jesus mentioned that the core differs between institutions, and David responded that right now we've given vendors the ability to determine that, and that he thinks the goal should be having the widest range of unique materials as possible.

Item agenda 6) Martha K. said that there was interest from other SUNY Center libraries in the Albany and Binghamton collaborative collection development project that she and Jesus have been working on. The two have negotiated a group rate for the Chicano Database, and are deepening their Puerto Rican collection. All items are acquired on a firm order basis, divided by subject between the two institutions, and there have been only four duplicates in the past year. Jesus noted that they use an excel spreadsheet to work out who orders what. They both received extra money for this project, but Martha wonders if the current tight budget situation will effect future years. Jesus noted a preexisting desire on the part of their respective institutions to do this, and expressed hope that it would survive budget cuts. Both Martha K. and Jesus noted that hard to find books were not arriving as part of the collaboration, and mentioned that they would have to press the vendor to supply those sorts of titles.

Item agenda 7) Lynn looked at Calafia, LASER and MOLLAS sites for information about their current collaborative projects. MOLLAS invites faculty to meetings and Lynn suggested this as a possibility for LANE meetings, too. She noted that other consortia are discussing the same A/V issues as LANE, and suggested that perhaps we could move some of the discussions into the SALALM A/V committee. Marta noted that the Interlibrary Cooperation Committee might also be an appropriate place to raise this issue.

Agenda item 8) Marisol noted that UConn had given the green light for a preservation project involving a Paraguayan newspaper.

Agenda item 9) Fernando talked about his plan to digitize a 900-item poster collection at Princeton. He made a proposal and it's been informally approved. Legal counsel looked into it and advised that the risk was of an acceptable level. A plan is currently being put together.

David noted that the Montalvo Collection (900 Bolivian pamphlets from 1840s-1920s, 50% of which are duplicates with Harvard holdings) were being digitized. There is extensive bibliographic control, but no catalog entries.

Patricia spoke about the Travelogues Project at Brown. 900 titles before 1923 have been identified for digitization through a new co-op relationship with the Open Content Alliance. The first batch of materials will be sent offsite this summer. The entire project will take a few years. She also mentioned that there were insurance issues for this project, involving questions of how to appraise the collection before sending it offsite, and wanted to know if other institutions were facing similar questions. Her administration is convinced that insurance is necessary and they will need to be convinced otherwise.

Pamela spoke about a cooperative project between Columbia and the University of Maryland involving human rights web archiving, and they got a grant for this calendar year to move this difficult issue forward. The project involves capturing, selecting, saving and making available web content.

Peter A. spoke about 4 digital projects in Berlin involving pamphlets, weekly serials, old maps to 1880 and photos (glass negatives) of places in Peru that no longer exist. Some of the projects involve downloading web-based items, and the Institut has gotten permission to download, save and make these items available. He noted that getting permissions has been difficult.

Irene noted that the IADB has granted money for an institutional repository. Items are digitized and metadata added. It involves photos, audio and print materials. Accessibility is limited to what each government allows in the public domain. The project will take several years.

Teresa is working on a portal of law journals from Latin America. Yale and other law libraries are creating a union list, which includes links to the catalog. She will send out a link to this list.

At this point Martha noted that we were running out of time and suggested skipping Agenda item 10 and moving on to the comments from the Margarita about the special collections in her institution.

Margarita talked about the Instituto de Historia de Centraoamerica, Jesuito Archives, a multi-format special collection at UCA-Nicaragua. It is one of the most important collections of its kind in Latin America because so much of the material is unique. El Centro de Investigaciones y Documentación de la Costa Atlántica--CIDCA (http://www.uca.edu.ni/centros/cidca) has created a huge multi-format archive related to the region, including photos and video. It is a documentary collection that compiles and microfilms materials on issues such as ecology, law and the indigenous cultures of the region. Two universities are working on this. She noted that preservation issues are a huge concern given the environment. The collection was moved to her institution for digitization, and a portal is being built for the documents. They are currently creating an inventory and finding other partners to aid in the digitization work. There are partnerships with the University of Indiana to digitize videos from the 1980s relating to Nicaragua. There are also judicial manuscript collections as well.

Last item: Cambridge University Library was invited to become a LANE member.
Meeting adjourned.

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