Minutes

May 17, 1997
Rockville, Maryland

rec. by Pamela Graham

Present: David Block (Cornell); Angela Carreņo (NYU); Edmundo Flores (LC); Pamela Graham (Columbia); Dan Hazen (Harvard); Denise Hibay (NYPL); Joseph Holub (Penn); Peter Johnson (Princeton); Eduardo Lozano (Pittsburgh); Cesar Rodriguez (Yale); Peter Stern (UMass); Luis Villar (Dartmouth); Darlene Waller (UConn); Alfredo Montalvo, Editorial Inca.

I. Announcements and Welcome

Two colleagues interested in participating in LANE, (Luis Villar from Dartmouth, and Eduardo Lozano of Univ. of Pittsburgh) along with the new Latin American Studies Librarian at Columbia University (Pamela Graham) were welcomed.

It was unanimously decided that Denise Hibay (NYPL) will remain Chair of LANE. Minutes from the Fall 1997 meeting were approved.

We agreed on the need to have a LANE homepage. Luis Villar volunteered to create one.

II. Statement of Purpose

The first agenda item concerned the LANE Statement of Purpose. A draft of a two page statement was distributed. The statement defined LANE, listed a set of goals and outlined the organizational structure of the consortium.

Shared Purchases

We discussed Goal #3 [To develop and coordinate formal collection development agreements in order to maintain or enhance the "consortium collection.". . .] . Three Title VI Resource Centers now exist among LANE member institutions (New England, NYU-Col umbia, and Cornell). Members of the New England Consortium said that they would cooperate with each other over purchases, sharing lists of existing holdings to plan and coordinate future acquisitions. There was discussion over possible conflict or ove rlap in coordination efforts within LANE vs. among Title VI consortia. Does cooperative work within Title VI Consortia splinter LANE? What happens when Title VI funding is not available?

Access issues were also mentioned. Would purchases of materials through Title VI consortia be available to other LANE members? The differences in access policies among the public and private institutions was noted, along with the difficulties of making many different access agreements among ourselves.

David Block emphasized notification of what we hold and what we intend to acquire as an important first step in cooperative collection development. Access issues could be dealt with later, as a next step. Perhaps we don't need to put everything in writ ing at this stage and can focus on notification of others regarding purchases.

Peter Stern noted that given the size of LANE, it made sense to see cooperation within smaller groups of LANE members.

Angela Carreņo commented that LANE had been a useful forum for the video project--for creating arrangements or exceptions to ILL policies. The existence of the LANE consortium might help with creating greater access to each other's institutions.

It was suggested that we post ILL/general access policies on the LANE homepage.

ACTION/ASSIGNMENT: We will keep thinking through issues of access and cooperative collection development/purchases, and should get feedback from our administrators on this issue. Dan Hazen will look into the possibility of inviting someone within the Harvard library administration to our Fall LANE meeting, where we will continue to discuss this issue.

III. Newspapers

Denise Hibay is continuing her work on compiling an updated list of newspapers held at LANE institutions.

LANE's list of priorities for filming was mentioned--a list originally made for Scholarly resources, but now to be viewed by Jason Hicks at UMI. [??? am I missing some history here??]

Dan Hazen mentioned that Harvard's ability to film in-house was diminished, not because of a lack of funds but due to being pressed for capacity. This brings up the issue of their out-sourcing filming.

ACTION: Denise will continue working on the newspaper list, and will request help from anyone whose list requires updating. Ideally the list will be available for our Fall meeting.

IV. Video Consortium

Angela Carreņo reported on the status of the project. She recently posted a list of videos and film on her web pages (http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/soc/lat-am/filma_m.htm). She also distributed NYU's collection development policy for vid eos so that we know what fits within the scope of their collection interests.

We discussed the issue of refreshing/restoring videos--should NYU be a repository for video? Refreshing videos is not the same as creating a preservation copy. Digitization may be a means of preservation.

Angela mentioned that she tends to get U.S. distributed videos with clear rights (public performance rights, ILL etc.). She pointed out that not all vendors have information about these rights and suggested we continue to work out policies on how to de al with this issue.

There was also some discussion of formal procedures for contributing funds to the video project. Cornell has contributed $500. At this point there is not a lot of pressure for contributions, and the project will rely on voluntary contributions.

Darlene Waller distributed a list of Latin American Studies videos held at UConn Libraries. It is available on the library web site (http://www.lib.uconn.edu/Storrs/referencefindingaids.htm click on Latin American Studies Videos). Many video purcha ses have been based on faculty requests.

Angela reminded us that we need to check BOBCAT (telnet version) for holdings information on the videos/films listed in her guide.

V. Microform Sets

There were unconfirmed reports that Darlene Waller had been designated as compiler of a joint list of holdings of microform sets. We discussed possible formats for a list (by institution, a unified list, creation of an index??).

Going with the principle that more is better, we discussed using a database program (Filemaker??) to collect the information. We could then have a searchable database available through the web page. We could also have the option of sorting and printing the listings in various ways.

Dan Hazen distributed a preliminary draft of a list of Harvard's holdings. This prompted a discussion of what information to include in the lists--what bibliographic info. to include, format of each record. Which led to discussion about the purpose of the lists. Are they tools to help users access items, or are they collection development tools for us?

ACTION: For the Fall meeting we will bring a list of our microform holdings on Latin America (brief bibliographic information and size of set).

Peter Johnson mentioned that the NACLA set is now available, and a guide to the set is expected by the end of the year. It contains materials on political and social movements from the 1950s forward, including ephemera and good coverage of the Dominican Republic.

VI. The Modest Proposal: filming current newspapers

David Block introduced Alfredo Montalvo of Ed. Inca who briefly went over a proposed arrangement between Ed. Inca and LC for the filming of newspapers. (A fuller presentation of the proposal was scheduled for a later SALALM session.) Ed. Inca would borrow LC microfilming equipment, so that they could film current newspapers in Miami. No plans to film backlogs of newspapers have been made, and Montalvo did not yet have an estimate of costs per reel of film created through this arrangement.

He was interested in knowing what titles we would be interested in having filmed. Alternatively, it was suggested that he let us know which titles/countries he could do, and we could let him know our level of interest. Interest was expressed in having indexes to papers, although it was acknowledged that copyright issues might exist.

Overall, copyright issues seem to be an important stumbling block, and some LANE members expressed reservation on this issue, along with getting film in a timely manner.

Montalvo may call on us to show support for the filming proposal--depending on how the plan develops and our own reactions to the proposed arrangements.

VII. Other business

Edmundo Flores distributed a list of newspaper holdings at LC for all world areas.

Serial Cancellations: we discussed notification of cancellations via lists, and as a side note Peter Johnson mentioned that he has sample issues of journals he can offer to others for free.

Peter Johnson gave a brief report on his recent trip to Mexico (along with Cesar Rodriguez and Hortensia Calvo of Duke) in connection with the ARL project on NGO pu blications. They identified 30 serial titles with few holdings in the U.S. He noted th e labor intensive nature of identifying and collecting NGO publications, and recommended the use of well-connected and knowledgeable agents for gathering these types of publications. He was scheduled to give a fuller report on the project at the ARL Lat in Americanist Project session scheduled for later in the SALALM meetings.

NEXT MEETING: Fall at Harvard

Postscript: In an effort to further inter-regional group communication, Denise Hibay and Pamela Graham attended the end of the CALAFIA meeting. Denise reported on current LANE projects, including the newspaper and microfom set lists.

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