Minutes
Fall Meeting
November 15, 2002
The New York Public Library

Afternoon session

V. Bases de datos de CSIC

The meeting resumed in the new training facility in the newly built South Court of the NYPL. Patricia Figueroa demonstrated several databases produced by the Centro de Información y Documentación Científica of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Spain. The set of subscription databases is accessible over the internet. The CINDOC website [http://www.cindoc.csic.es] has information and limited access to the databases. There was some discussion regarding the coverage of the CINDOC databases compared to the MLA or other major resources. The CINDOC website also contains a directory or list of serials published in Spain, which could be a useful collection development resource. There was also discussion of other products: the Bibliografía de Literatura Española, produced online and on CD by Chadwyck-Healey, and Infolatinoamerica, the former Info-South database of news abstracts that was acquired by NISC and now produces some full-text news summaries in addition to the old Info-South files. A lot of World News Connection/ FBIS content appears in Infolatinoamerica.

VI. Digital Projects

LANE members made announcements regarding various digital projects that are taking place. Dartmouth is launching a Latino Studies Journal. César mentioned that Yale is considering some projects that might involve recently microfilmed Latin American materials, and mentioned a collection of approximately 6000 photos from the Cuban Revolution that could form a digital project. Lynn stated Harvard has been filming, digitizing and cataloging pamphlets, and has requested funding in its most recent Title VI proposal for future cooperative digital projects. The University of Pennsylvania is interested in joint projects and Joe expressed his interest in receiving suggestions for possible collaborations, noting Penn’s strengths in the areas of Golden Age, Native American studies, 19th century plays, and late colonial Mexican pamphlets. Miguel Valladares mentioned that Darmouth is processing Spanish and Latin American plays, and wil be organizing a panel of Spanish and US libraries, to discuss creation of a portal for 19th century/early 20th century theater, and to consolidate the catalogs of the Instituto del Teatro de Barcelona and the Fundación Juan March. Hopefully the Cervantes Digital will participate.

Fernando showed the group some websites of various digital projects underway at the NYPL, including the Mid-Manhattan Branch’s digital photo collection, [http://digital.nypl.org/mmpco/] and a website on Fernando Ortiz on the Schomburg library’s website [http://digital.nypl.org/schomburg/ortiz/ortizfront.htm]. Future digital image projects will hopefully include Latin American content.

VII. 20th Century literary manuscripts

We returned to this agenda item, originally scheduled for the morning session. César has been gathering information from LANE members on holdings of papers and manuscripts of Latin American writers. Harvard, Princeton, Pittsburgh and Yale have all reported on their holdings. The question of the scope of what should be reported was discussed. For now we will not gather information on non-literary materials, but archives with items related to Latin American literature or writers could be included. We can send URLs for any existing guides or finding aids, to be included in the brief descriptions on the LANE page. César mentioned finding correspondence of Nicolás Guillén among the papers of Langston Hughes, so others should be aware of similar possible sources of Latin American materials.

Action item: LANE members who have not done so should report their holdings to César sometime this spring.

VII. Report from SALALM President, Darlene Hull

Darlene recently posted a site visit report to LALA-L and to the SALALM website. She briefly described her visit and the plans that are underway for SALALM in Cartegena, Colombia. Several local scholars may be participating in panels but Darlene is interested in hearing of any possible LANE panels. There was some discussion of who will be able to attend from LANE. Issues of the cost, and possible concerns or institutional limits on travel to Colombia were discussed. Darlene will look into drafting a general letter addressing safety concerns that could be used by participants when making travel requests.

VIII. LAMP/Memorias Progress Report

Edmundo Flores provided an update on the microfilming of Memorias, as part of the ongoing LAMP project. The Library of Congress recently supplied film of Memorias from Argentina, Chile and Uruguay to LAMP, although the film had not previously been designated for LAMP. LC will continue the project this year, filming Memorias from the Ministerio de Instrucción Pública of Guatemala. NYPL and the University of Florida will also be filming some of their holdings.

IX. New microform sets

This item will be discussed over email or at the next meeting

X. Miscellaneous items

Lynn Shirey announced that she has almost completed an Access database of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American videos held throughout the Harvard campus. She is promoting the LANE consortium as a source of videos but none of us have a sense of how well this is working. Other LANE members are working on similar projects involving lists or databases of videos, including Dartmouth. There was some discussion of the need for such lists and databases given the limitations in searching and finding videos in library catalogs.

Action item: add information about lending policies of various institutions to the LANE page.

We discussed BorrowDirect, the expedited inter-library loan service among Brown, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, Pennslyvania, Princeton, and Yale. LANE members from participating institutions explained how the service works: an integrated catalog of member libraries allows patrons to do “known-item” searching (title, author, isbn) and generate a loan request that goes straight to the lending library. Material should be available within 4 working days. Pamela mentioned that administrators at Columbia have broached the possibility of expanding or initating cooperative collection development projects in the context of this service.

XI. Announcements

NYPL: Fernando mentioned some special purchases: artists’ books from Mexican writer Carmen Boullosa; 3 more artists’ books from Consuelo Gotay, book artist from Puerto Rico. In addition, NYPL has bought books from a New York-based Mexican artist, Laura Anderson Barbala, who travels to Venezuela and works with the Yanomami, teaching bookmaking. All of these artists’ books will be held in Special collections. NYPL is experiencing budget cuts, mostly in branch libraries. The General Research Division is now closed to the public on Mondays, and will promote early retirement packages, but book budgets will not be cut for now. The NEH grant continues, and will include the filming of some 19th century Mexican newspapers that UT Austin had expressed interest in filming. [Other institutions in LANE may contribute to UT’s filming project, although in many cases the newspapers they need are too fragile or brittle to travel and will be preserved by owning institutions.]

Columbia: Budgets have not yet been decided for this fiscal year at Columbia, due to a vacancy in the AUL for collections position that normally manages this process. While no cuts will occur, it’s not known if the budget has increased for this year. Pamela announced that the Research Reading Room project continues. The deadline is now May 2003 instead of Dec 2003. Finding books has been challenging since only duplicate copies of materials can go in the non-circulating reading room, and many materials are out of print. There have been no additional funds earmarked for supporting Reading Room collection purchases. Deacidification projects continue, targeting Latin American literature. Approximately 1400 volumes were treated last fiscal year, at a cost of $25,000.

Univ. of Connecticut: Darlene announced the acquisition of the Curbstone Press archives. Endowment funds created from a donation will be used for microfilming newspapers.

Harvard: Renovations continue at Harvard, and the new catalog (Aleph) has been installed. The OPAC has been working well but there have been problems in the technical services parts of the catalog. There may be a 5% cut in collections budgets. Special purchases include microfilm of El Excelsior and El Universal; the CIDOC History of Religiosity collection, and retrospective book buying covering 1990-2000 with the help of the Garcia Cambeiros.

Univ. of Pennsylvania: Joe announced the purchase of the Primary Source Media collection on the Inquisition (based on British Library holdings).

Library of Congress: The Hispanic Division website has new portals to Latin American information, and Edmundo advised regular visits to the page to see newly added content. LC is working with the National Library of Brazil to digitize materials dealing with the history of European expansion. The Handbook of Latin American Studies vol 58 has been published. In the new fiscal year, LC will sustain a $500,000 cut in serials budgets, and a $75,000 cut in blanket order purchasing from Latin America. A moratorium on new subscriptions is in place.

Dartmouth: A new library has opened at Dartmouth, and there will be a 6% cut in materials budgets.

Brown: Patricia announced the addition of several subscription databases and new serials subscriptions (30 titles in Hispanic studies; 52 in Latin American history and social sciences, including 17 from Brazil; 48 titles in Portuguese and Brazilian languages and literature—there is overlap among these numbers) She will purchase the Coleccion documental de la historia del Peru from Iturriaga. She has also written a report on the collections, documenting her activity during the last year and outlining ongoing needs.

Yale: A new catalog (Voyager) has been installed, and this has lowered overall productivity as problems with technical services are resolved. No budget cuts have occurred; César announced purchases of backfiles of Mexican, Argentinian, and Brazilian newspapers; parts of the Brazil’s Popular Groups microfilm set. Yale is almost finished with the Latin American manuscripts projects (17th century to 1920s), with collection processing, finding aids in their final stages. At least 200 reels should be available for purchase, and hopefully finding aids will be available on the web. Yale also acquired about 100 CDs from the Projeto Resgate in Brazil—images of documents related to colonial history.

Univ. of Pittsburgh: Eduardo announced that there are no budget cuts in the Latin American area this year. He was not able to take his annual buying trip, as his funding is trapped in the Argentine banks. He is purchasing the Latin American History and Culture collection from Yale; the Latin American Independence pamphlets microform set. Pittsburgh now has all of the National Archives State Dept files. The Latin American Reading Room was opened. It contains most of the Latin American reference materials, 100 periodicals, 20 newspapers, and a lecture room. The Latin American collection has received three big donations from prominent scholars: Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Cole Blaiser, and Harold Sims. The Library’s annex has opened, housing technical services.

Afternoon minutes recorded by P. Graham.

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