Minutes
October 30, 1998
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Present: Fernando Acosta-Rodríguez (NYPL), Pam Graham (Columbia), Peter Stern (U Mass), Denise Hibay(NYPL,chair), Cesar Rodriguez (Yale), Frank Fonseca and Peter Johnson (Princeton), Joe Holub (Penn), Eduardo Lozano (Pitt), Edmundo Flores (LC), David Block (Cornell).

Joe provided some of Penn's legendary food service, for breakfast and lunch, and lovely meeting space in the Van Pelt Library's Woody Room.

I. Working group reports

A. LANE homepage

Denise and Fernando presented the new homepage design and asked for comments. The members are all pleased with the choice of icons (from Codex Becker) and with the categories of information that the page summarizes. A discussion suggested several changes: rethinking the classes of information that the homepage shows (dividing the space between two columns, one with contents more appropriate for members, "LANE's Working Documents," and a second intended more for public consumption, "About LANE,"); a short text that introduces the page and its organization for readers. At the second level, we suggested that the table that organizes data on member libraries have its columns labeled "Library Home Page," "Library Catalogs," "Latin American Resources," and "Library Access Policies." We also agreed that each member representative would provide Fernando with appropriate URLs for each category. We concluded this part of the meeting with discussion of the union list(s) of newspapers, current events magazines and business magazines, that decided on a descriptive passage to introduce the list and, without resolution, how we might best access the three components of the list, currently internally hyper-linked to each country and within each of these to their news and business sources.

B. Business/News Union lists

There is a difference of opinion on the uses of these (this) list(s). One faction favored a "collection development" approach which emphasizes the use of our compilation as an internal document, relevant principally to show overlap and lacuna. This group advocated a single, country-of-origin listing, in which each source is listed only once. A second group favored a "reference" approach which stresses public uses of the document and thus the need to reflect the subject content as well as country-of-publication information. This conflict remained unresolved at the end of the day and will be continued by each of three genre coordinators: Denise for newspapers, Cesar for business magazines and Frank for news magazines. LANE representatives agreed to review the current list, that Denise passed out at the meeting, and update it, sending corrections to each of the coordinators who will in turn send updates for the web site to Fernando. In addition, Eduardo Lozano agreed to provide us with a list of Latin American-focused current events publications published in continental Europe.

C. Government documents

At the close of the homepage demo, David had demonstrated a world government site uncovered by his assistant last week. This resource, styling itself "World Government," appears at www.gksoft.com/govt/en/world.html and appears extensive and very up-to-date. David suggested that if this is to be an ongoing enterprise, the Latin American Government Documents Project should yield its work in connecting readers to Latin American governments themselves and perhaps concentrate on the publications that these sites produce on the WWW.

Pam presented her compilation of member-submitted information on individual holdings of the Chilean documents contained in the second edition of Gloria Westfall's Guide to Official Publications of Foreign Countries . Following Pam's lead, we felt basically that the glass appears half full. Though there is one set, Fallas del mes, that no Lane collection holds, that if Chile can be considered representative, current acquisitions policies (these works are largely serial publications) are adequate for assuring access to these materials in our region. We agreed that for the fall meeting we would check the Westfall work's compilations for Guatemala, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic and send the results to Pam. We also agreed that it would be important to verify which of these publications is now manifested on the Internet-- Joe will work on this especially..

Peter Johnson again raised the need to give attention to the publications of major metropolitan areas for Latin America. He will give us an analysis of these documents for Brazil at our fall meeting.

II. Announcements, etc.

Peter Stern, U Mass, reported that the Northeast Title VI consortium had made its first cooperative purchase, the NACLA archives, to be housed at U Mass.

David Block, Cornell, announced that the Peruvian regional newspapers (La Industria and El Correo), that form the core of his institution's commitment to the ARL cooperative program, are now being received and microfilmed.

Cesar Rodriguez, Yale, described his library's renovations and the plans for a "Library Shelving Facility" (nee off-site storage). The LSF, now under construction, will hold several million items, each with machine-readable records and available for campus use within 24 hours.

Joe Holub, Penn, described similar overcrowding problems at his library.

Peter Johnson and Frank Fonseca of Princeton continued the description of off-site projects, giving details of Princeton's well developed and faculty-accepted program. Interestingly, Peter has selected a certain amount of currently-received fiction for storage. They also reviewed their relationship with Scholarly Resources, the enterprise that films and markets Princeton's extensive collections of current Latin American ephemera.

Eduardo Lozano reported on his annual acquisitons trip to Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay and reminded the group of the importance of analytics for major microform sets. He will soon be releasing Pitt's extensive list of Latin American microform holdings over the Internet.

Pam Graham talked about renovations at Columbia, especially Butler Library. She and NYU have made a cooperative purchase of LC's compilation of Brazil's Popular Groups. Pam continued the discussion of off-site facilities, noting that Columbia now has three, and that the library is trying to rationalize policies and cataloging notations.

Edmundo passed out some current issues of the Library of Congress's The Gazette which give details of current digitizing projects carried out at LC; he pointed out the while most of these enterprises are in the realm of "American Memory", web sites on the Spanish-American War and an upcoming Puerto Rican project would be of interest to Latin Americanists. Edmundo also circulated a preliminary list of Editorial Inca's first microfilmed newspaper titles.

Denise and Fernando announced that NYPL is trying to assemble a comprehensive collection of the Dominican newspaper, Listín Diario, through purchase and in-house filming. Fernando noted that the Puerto Rican El Mundo has resumed publication after several years of silence.

We ended our meeting with a brief discussion of possible workshops. From a previous meeting, Angela Carreño, had agreed to try to arrange a "pre-conference" type offering on Latin American librarianship. Angela has been stymied by the absence of a director at her library and is on the verge of a six-month Fulbright residence in Peru. So we set our sights on SALALM. Our distinguished colleague, Cesar Rodriguez, is president-elect, and he floated a couple of ideas for themes at the 2000 meeting, to be held in Los Angeles. One of these is the role of consortia in Latin American librarianship.. We also agreed that Denise would contact Richard Phillips and reserve a time slot for a LANE workshop in Nashville, possibly on the topic of "Overcrowding in the Northeast," i.e. remote storage, weeding, selection for preservation.

Action items for members: review union lists of newspapers, current events magazines and business magazines and submit changes to genre coordinators; search Guatemala, Mexico and Dominican Republic entries in Westfall and report results to Pam.

Attachments: LANE Union Lists, Member Holdings of Chilean Offical Documents, Memo from Terry Peet to Edmundo Flores showing preliminary list of newspaper microfilming from Montalvo

 

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