III. New Projects

A. Microforms

1. Cesar Rodriguez distributed his list of microfilm at Yale.
2. CALAFIA did a combined list. LANE is not preparing a combined list. At the request of Denise Hibay, each institution will prepare their own list to be made accessible on their respective home pages.

IV. LANE and ARL Project

Dan Hazen: the serials project is starting to jell. There has been a substantial increase in hits reported by UT-LANIC. Texas is adding 50+ Brazilian serial titles to the project. Recent project costs are related mainly to refining and enlarging the table of contents database. The project has been living off the $3,000.00 base contributions, but these funds are almost gone. Future budget issues have not been resolved, and source of future funding is unknown. Dan is "freelancing" to assess prospects of future funding from participant institutions.

Dan: ARL has a rather diffuse decision-making structure. Politics and personalities both seem to play prominent roles. Affiliation with ARL was extremely beneficial in getting the Latin Americanist Resources project underway, but those benefits may now be on the wane. The project Advisory Board, which is chaired by Debby Jakubs and which includes seven librarians and academics, should be addressing the project's organizational structure in the near future.

A discussion issued regarding the processing problems that the participant libraries are having in providing their share of serial titles to UT-LANIC. These problems are tied mainly to logistical and staffing shortages.

Joe asked about ILL requests. Dan responded: "data not available."

LANE members favor a continuation of the Resources Projects. Most participants would like to reevaluate the arrangements for inputting table of contents information for their serials. Some institutions might be able to do more inputting (in return for financial compensation - perhaps partial or complete exoneration from membership fees), while others would lack the capacity for this kind of work and would thus prefer to do less.

B. Monograph Phase

Effectively initiated recently, but no statistics available yet. No out-of-pocket costs incurred yet. Dan thinks it can roll along for a while. Denise asked: Could this be done by a regional group? Denise recommended revising the title of "Monograph Assignments" to make it more palatable to managers. Her suggestion: "Collection Focus." Dan: Everyone can recommend their choice on their homepage. (chuckles).

C. Government Documents: Collecting Priorities

Eduardo Lozano: There is a need to determine who is collecting regional and municipal reports. Edmundo will compile list of regional government documents that are available on CD-ROM and received in LC and place titles on our list-serv.

CRL is trying to play a role as a storehouse for National Gazettes. LC is filming back issues. CRL hopes Gazettes will eventually be digitized.

Peter, Pamela Graham and Joe Holub will form working group on government documents and will report at Puerto Rico meeting.

D. NGOs

Peter Johnson: The Mexican Proposal is now back on track. They are asking for a 3 to 4 year committment to collect NGOs. The disk royalties would go back to the consortium. Another consortium would have to buy into consortium with respect to the Argentine NGOs.

Our home-page team was reconfigured to include: Peter, David Block and Fernando Acosta-Rodriguez.

V. Announcements

Member Reports

Edmundo: LC's National Digital Library (NDL) is expanding to include Puerto Rican publications Several 19th and early 20th century Puerto Rico-related monograph titles are now being added to NDL. Works by Salvador Brau, Abbad y Lasierra, Luis Muñoz Rivera and Cayetano Coll y Toste make up part of the project. The full-text of these works should be accessible on the Internet in the spring of 1998. LC continues to microfilm U.S. telephone directories but not Latin American directories. It was agreed that Edmundo and Denise will confer regarding future filming of U.S. and Latin American telephone directories in LC.

Peter: NACLA (Latin American pamphlets) filming (300+ reels) will be completed in February 1998 and be made available by Scholarly Resources, Inc. Peter is preparing a guide; NYU is cataloging.

Joe: 40 percent of the reference collection at main library (Penn) has been moved. The library is facing a space problem. Move is not expected to have a major impact on researchers.

Darlene: "Latin America Holdings of New England Consortium" is now on U. of Connecticut's home-page. Printed version will be updated. The Reference Dept. is being renovated and the study room being expanded.

Lynn: Harvard's Law Library has been renovated.

Dan: Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard is expanding and taking shape. Among other activities, the Center has received a grant from the Mellon Foundation in support of the "Program for Latin American Libraries Archives." This program's purpose is to meet a variety of preservation and/or access needs among Latin American repositories by offering small grants (average $10,000) to institutions holding rare or unique research materials. The program is about to begin its third year of operation. Grants are for 1 year.

Angela: Angela has been working with Pamela in pooling their resources. She mentioned the desire/need to encourage young librarians to join SALALM. Some SALALM members are setting up a 2-day institute (seminar) to train young librarians on matters related to Latin American acquisitions, reference, faculty relations, etc. Angela is preparing a proposal for key SALALM members to review and approve before meeting in Puerto Rico. She hopes that the PR meeting will provide a forum for practical discussions on the institute.

Pamela: NYU and Columbia are on Title VI track.

Cesar: Yale joined the New England Consortium. The agreement includes reciprocal borrowing privileges. Sterling Library has run out of space. 20 percent of exiting collections are going off-site. Librarians have encountered strong resistance from faculty on this issue. Other LANE members reported similar experiences.

VI. LANE and SALALM

A. Panel in PR?

Denise is not proposing a panel for Puerto Rico. Perhaps something on newspapers later on.

B. LANE as a Conference Host?

Vanderbilt and Arizona are competing for the 1999 SALALM Conference. Dan: Harvard willing to help host SALALM conference in the year 2000 and also willing to explore logistical assistance from LANE.

Denise: David Block had put Cornell forward.

David: (via e-mail message): I notice that Cornell is mentioned as a possible SALALM site. I believe that this is a possibility, where it was not in a previous regime. But I suspect a LANE-sponsored conference taking place in Ithaca would have a much better chance of getting approved, and it sounds like Dan is proposing the same thing for Harvard. (We'd rather be in Boston, believe me.)

On programs, is there any interest in the thread that snaked its way through lala-l, i.e., the creation of a Latin American library education syllabus? It would take some doing, but it could be done, and we might get the ball rolling in PR, where there is a Spanish-speaking library school (with our old friend Ivan Calimano on the faculty).

C. Next Meeting

Denise would like our next meeting on Saturday morning, before the beginning of committee meetings.

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