Minutes
Fall Meeting
November 7, 2003
John Hay Library, Brown University

Present: Lynn Shirey (Harvard, chair), Dan Hazen (Harvard), Patricia Figueroa (Brown), Angela Carreño (NYU), Eduardo Lozano (Pittsburgh), Pamela Graham (Columbia), César Rodríguez (Yale), Darlene Hull (U Conn), Miguel Valladares (Dartmouth), Fernando Acosta-Rodríguez (Princeton), Edmundo Flores (Library of Congress), Katherine McCann (Library of Congress), David Block (Cornell, recording)

After coffee, pastries and a visit from Brown's University Librarian, Merrily Taylor, Lynn directed a march through the agenda.

I. Web page administration

Despite Fernando's move to Princeton, the website http://www.nypl.org/research/LANE/index.htm remains on the NYPL server. For the time being, Fernando is willing to continue as webmaster whether he transfers the pages to a Princeton computer or edits remotely to NYPL.

Action item: send new material, especially any updates to the union lists to Fernando by February 2004 for posting

II. 20th Century Latin American Literary Manuscripts

César reported receipts from four LANE institutions and wondered if it were not now time to prepare what he has for posting to the website. We decided to ask César to prepare his receipts in two phases, first Latin America and second Iberia. To reflect the widened scope, we will change the name of the project to Special Collections on Latin America and Iberia and make this known to ARL's Special Collections Task Force. César predicts a spring 2004 posting.

III. Digital Projects

Fernando reported on Princeton's ongoing collections and filming of pamphlet materials, the Princeton University Library Latin American Microfilm Collection, and mentioned that the University Librarian was keen to reproduce at least some of these materials in digital formats. He solicited cooperation from other Lane libraries for materials to film or for names of possible technical evaluators for the project. At the end of the discussion, Dan suggested that Fernando should consider involving LAMP or CRL in the project.

Miguel described his project of digital collection Spanish theater materials mounted on. He hopes that this site will expand into a portal for 19th century Spanish theater and perhaps for Latin America as well.

IV. Latino Newspapers

Pamela passed out a summary of newspapers produced by Latino communities in the Northeast. She noted that only a few of these would be considered significant circulation sources and suggested that the group concentrate its resources on the collection and filming of Diario and Hoy. We will contact Denise Hibay at NYPL and encourage her to share information on holdings of these papers in that collection.

V. Gifts and exchanges

Attenuation or disappearance of Gifts and Exchange operations is common among LANE libraries. David wondered if there were anything that we might do in the breech. Florida International University is now testing an Amazon.com-like list on the web. (ask Cathy Marsicek for details) Dan mentioned that if donation were the objective, the Sabre foundation www.sabre.org distributes materials in developing areas and has compiled lists of other institutions handling donations.

VI. Guest presentation

Marcelo García Cambeiro gave a presentation on new services that Librería García Cambeiro is offering its clients.
MARC 21 minimal level records-- gratis
Electronic invoices-gratis
Tables of Contents-- $2 per toc
Binding and safety stripping-- $6.80 per title

Marcelo also briefed us on the negotiations with the Buenos Aires newspaper, Clarín, for rights management, filming and distribution of the paper which is set to begin soon and to compliment the Library of Congress microfilms which end in 2000.

VII. Modes of Acquiring Electronic Resources

Using the examples of El País and NERL, we offered opinions on the suitability of both purchasing models in certain circumstances. We agreed that one big advantage that NERL offers is its extensive experience with licensing. Angela mentioned the possibility of translating the NERL licenses into Spanish as a way of making research library standards known to Latin American and Iberian publishers. We applaud her efforts.

VIII. Round Robin/Announcements

Flat budgets were the rule for all participants with the notable exceptions of Princeton and Columbia. Individual presentations follow.

Cornell has reorganized much of its humanities and social sciences operations and created a World Area Collections division that subsumes all global and area studies operations, with the exception of Western Europe (see http://www.library.cornell.edu/iris/org.html) . Cornell and Pittsburgh have been awarded Title VI status for the coming three-year cycle. The University's new President is interested in international studies and has supported the creation of and International Studies Advisory Board, with a librarian member. Building plans include a large expansion of the library's offsite storage facility, hopefully in time to keep central campus libraries from exploding.

Columbia is facing cuts to its operating budget this fiscal year, and some of theses cuts will affect the Libraries. We anticipate losing several support staff positions. We did sustain an 8% increase to our materials budget, although this will translate into about 5% increases for most monograph budgets. Throughout this summer and fall, there's been a push to convert paper subscriptions to electronic-only, including some foreign news sources. The objective is not so much to reduce spending on materials, but to save on check-in and binding costs associated with print holdings. We are also reviewing our Gifts and Exchanges program, looking for less labor-intensive means of maintaining these relationships. During the summer, Columbia Libraries migrated to Voyager from Notis. The blackout of August destroyed access to the data in the Notis system, including information that had not migrated to Voyager. Limited access is being restored, although since August we've been working with little or no information about acquisitions from previous fiscal years. The Institute of Latin American Studies lost its Title VI status and funding, applying this time with Georgetown Univ. The Latin American Studies Reading Room opened in Butler Library this summer, although only about 25% of Room's collection have been moved into the space. An official opening is planned for the end of the academic year.

UConn institutional news acquisitions:

1)Continues to build, through restricted endowment funds designated for acquisition of materials from Mexico or Guatemala, a collection of historic
non-Mexico City newspapers. Decision to focus on non-Mexico City papers made after discussions with César Rodríguez, Yale, so as not to duplicate
what is more heavily collected there. To date UConn has acquired (from Scholarly Resources):

Diario de Yucatán, April 1941-Dec 1990
Diario del Sureste (Yucatán), 1941-1972
El Norte (Monterrey), 1941-1967

Once the endowment interest $$ accumulates again, UConn will continue to purchase El Norte up to latest available at SR (currently thru 1997)

2) UConn has shipped 86 titles (100s of issues) of Mexican historic newspapers to UT Austin to be filmed as part of the NEH(& LAMP supplemental)
funded filming project. Additionally, Darlene has been in communication with James Simon, CRL regarding possible inclusion of two Bolivian newspaper
titles in the ICON project (Diario, La Paz, 1904-1917 and Epoca, La Paz, 1845-1867).

3) UConn has received a USIA funded linkage grant with Univ. San Carlos in Guatemala City. This grant supports faculty and librarian exchange. Two
librarians from San Carlos spent 3 weeks at UConn, March 2003. Darlene will travel to Guatemala for 3 weeks in March 2004 to present workshops and
consultation to librarians at San Carlos as well as do some book buying.

Yale

- An announcement recently came from the provost about university-wide budget cutbacks. All departments are being asked to identify possible ways to cut our operating budgets by 5%. We are to do this by the end of the calendar year, and actually make the cuts by the end of the fiscal year at the latest. This will probably mean eliminating positions that are currently open. Any new positions that become vacant will have to be carefully reviewed before filling them (both by the library and the Provost's Office). Except for the endowed funds in the library, the collection budget did not get an increase in its general appropriation funds.

- The collection has started buying the microfilm collection of La Reforma (Mexico City) and Universal (Caracas) from Libros Andinos. We are also filling in gaps in our holdings of the Princeton microfilm collections.

- The processing and microfilming of Yale's Latin American manuscript collections was completed in February 2003. The finding aids to these collections will soon be available in the online catalog.

- Yale is contributing to the microfilming project of Mexican 19th century newspapers being done by University of Texas at Austin. As of last count, we've sent approximately 125 titles to Texas.

- The Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies received Title VI funding for the next three years. Some of the funds will be used for library acquisitions, travel for acquisitions trips, and a new proposed Latin American Collection Library Fellowship Program (more on this when it is more fully developed).

IX. Demonstrations

The meeting concluded with demonstrations of new electronic resources with Latin American content.

• Paper of Record http://www.paperofrecord.com/ which has an interesting collection of 19th and early 20th century Mexican newspapers.
• Factiva, http://www.factiva.com/ the Dow Jones business resource with a surprising number of Latin American publications included.
  
• ElPais.es http://www.elpais.es/ the full-text, archived version of the Spanish paper of record.
  
• CECbase http://www.fl.ul.pt/centros_invst/comparat/cecbase/base/cecbase.htm the University of Lisbon's bibliography of comparative studies in Portugal.

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