Committee on South Asian Libraries and Documentation
Minutes of the Meeting -- Spring 2011
Association of Asian Studies
Room 301, Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii
Thursday March 31, 2011, 1:00-5 PM

[Please send comments to James Simon at simon@crl.edu
with a copy to Philip McEldowney at pm9k@virginia.edu.]

1. Attendees 2. Approval of minutes and treasurer report 3. . Round Robin 4. Other notes of interest. 5. Digital South Asia Library Update 6. SACAP Cooeration update 7. CONSALD business 8. Library of Congress Report 9. Taylor & Francis focust group report 10. World Newspaper Archive 11. Adjournment

l. Attendees: Judith Alspach (CRL); Bronwen Bledsoe (Cornell); Monica Ghosh (Hawaii); Gary Hausman (Princeton); Zbigniew Kantorosinski (LC); Aruna Magier (NYU); David Magier (Princeton); Adnan Malik (Berkeley); Samip Mallick (Chicago); James Nye (Chicago); Edward Proctor (Duke & UNC); Sarbjit Randhawa (UBC); Rich Richie (Yale); Uma Sharma (Syracuse); Andrea Singer (Indiana); James Simon (CRL); Xian Wu (Michigan State)

2. Approval of Minutes:
The minutes or notes of October 2010 were accepted as corrected.

Treasurer Report:
Balance stands at $245.00 - no expenses on books, but may need money for future years to cover Web hosting. CONSALD has not had a funding drive in a very long time. CORMOSEA has applied to the SEAC for funding of this sort. CONSALD may consider the same. Action: new Executive committee to take this up as early business

3. Round Robin:

  • Center for Research Libraries: Has reinstated the SAMP guides to collections page. Recently completed the retrospective cataloging of all LC-Delhi microfiche.
  • Syracuse: Budgets challenged. Emphasis on electronic database, e-books. SACAP profile adjustments. New Director for South Asia program. Adding Pakistan and Afghanistan Studies. (overlapping areas). Health-related programs seeing increasing interest, necessitating interdisciplinary work.
  • British Columbia: Focusing on Subject Guides: may need assistance for working on Tibetan language. The department of Asian Studies is going to build Persian language program this year and hope for offering courses in near future. A Post doctoral fellow for South Asian History coming aboard from U. Philadelphia. Started offering Masters in Panjabi.
  • Princeton: Purchased India Raj & Empire. Purchased all three FO India digital products. Still working on establishing its LC-Delhi profile. Will take on Tamil, also some Urdu [interested in discussing collaboration] - former South Asia librarian at UCLA has joined Princeton for Slavic selection.
  • David Magier (Princeton): Some related efforts: Cooperative project with NYU, Columbia, and Cornell for digitization of Arabic-language materials. Taking a more aggressive tack (than Google). Pulling together lists of content; will prioritize. Borrow Direct has added Harvard & MIT. "Enhanced ILL" mechanism, patron requested. AULs have formed a group to drive the agenda toward CCD. Meeting in June with the AULs plus ULs. Already hearing that Area Studies is an ideal area for collaboration. Princeton & Cornell are collections of record for German Studies. Received an NEH grant for endangered manuscripts from private archives in Yemen, fyi.
  • NYU: Established Manhattan Research Libraries Initiative (MARLI) (NYPL, Columbia, NYU) - reducing duplication, enhancing collections. Borrowing privileges. Accessible to faculty, PhD students (not everyone). Not ILL, but access privileges. Support coming from institutions.
  • Bibliography of Asian Studies: Adding new journals, expanding coverage.
  • Hawaii: Ongoing collection/budget challenges. University placing emphasis on Pacific islands. Working on photo collection digitization (Gandhi, USIA press information bureau collections).
  • LC Field Office: still no chief (Beecher Wiggins acting), no Program Officer (vacant).
  • Yale: Rich is acting Curator for South Asia. Job opening for assistant curator for S. Asia, a one-year appointment. Yale initiative for India ongoing… new UL appointed (Susan Gibbons)
  • Indiana: Filling the Indian program position internally, when Andrea Singer retires in December 2011. Mid-East section working with Illinois on collections. Possible conference next year on collecting global resources.
  • Berkeley: major UC cuts on budgets. Allan Urbanic retiring in June (Slavic will not be filled) - Jim Spohrer will act as Area Studies head. South Asian Studies launching a Pakistan initiative in fall 2011.
  • Ranganathan Center for Digital Information (RCDI): Est. July 2010. Distinct from DSAL, built on U Chicago's commitment to South Asian access. Computational means for enhancing research. May extend beyond just South Asia: working with Center for Latin American Studies on campus, for instance.
  • Chicago: Mansueto library will open in October 2011. Expect 20 year storage. Use will begin this spring, however. Selector-driven what goes to closed stacks vs. open stacks.
    Reallocations in Southern Asia program in library has allowed Jerry Hall to expand to reader services, official publications work, more.
    University opening center in Delhi (advanced research). Progress ongoing. Projected in 2012 in Delhi. Will be a role for the library in the Center. Adding faculty in anticipation
  • Cornell: Seeing increased interest in South Asia. A new Anthro/Feminist studies position is in the works. Working on 2CUL, the
  • national collection
  • project, and other collaborations in building collection. Bronwen traveled to India & Nepal, acquiring thousands of new items - ephemeral material (roadside sales, national languages, popular culture materials).
    2CUL is ongoing, with successive refinements (round 3) as well as expansion into certain areas. Other areas have advanced more aggressively (single selectors in Slavic area and Southeast Asia; some cooperation in East Asia).
  • Michigan State: Have hired an India faculty member (film major). Asian Studies Center is expanding interest. Library resources - focused on collecting Indian comic books (part of popular culture focus). Students in the classes are helping with the cataloging.
  • Duke / Chapel Hill: Hired new dean (Laurie Patton, historian of religion, Sanskrit). Budget cuts are in the process of being determined across the library. Small digital projects underway - Shama (Urdu literary journal), Bengal Studies Conference Proceedings (from Tony Stewart, NC State). Chapel Hill is looking to hire S. Asia history faculty. Duke new hire in Anthropology (focused on obesity in India - "Globesity").
    • .

4. Other notes of interest (Nye):

  • Endangered Archives - Urdu program is back on table, at the request of the BL.
  • Prospects for collaboration in Sri Lanka (will discuss @ SAMP)
  • News from Delhi - Met with Secretary for Culture re: BL collaboration) and related activities. Archaeological Survey may open its photo archives. Possible government funds to flow to libraries (including National Library , Khuda Baksh, Central Secretariat).

Back to the top5. Digital South Asia Library update:
Simon discussed the outcomes of the last round of TICFIA funding, including ongoing development of the South Asia Union Catalogue, digitization of the audio recordings of the Linguistic Survey of India, and the indexing of some 80,000 articles in journals from South Asia in the vernacular and English. Mallick demonstrated the indexing pilot interface, which allows searching based on keyword, author, title, and year. Can browse by title, can search in scripts. Links to page images where available. Can create a PDF on the fly, citations, etc. DSAL welcomes input on the design and functionality of the index.

One challenge discussed was how to search across various calendars. David Magier said there was a script that can run a cross-year search, and will follow up.

Nye and Mallick described the work undertaken as part of "Audio, Maps, and Images of South Asia," the new Department of Education grant. It will incorporate three major areas:

  1. Graham Shaw's private collection of postcards is being scanned (approximately 50% of 11,000 cards completed to date). Working on refinements of specs for metadata. Would there be interest in helping recommend scholars to write essays on the units of collection? Anyone to help review the spec of the postcards?
  2. Maps: Delays caused by administrative hurdles in UK. As a result, some matching funding was foregone, so had to go back to drawing board. May not be able to get the optimal set (last maps before the end of colonial period). Still, DSAL will achieve coverage from the ˝" up. Still looking into the 1" level. Specimen maps from BL "so-so," but Gaihozu maps from Japan (reprints from Survey of India) are very good. Jerry working on shapes for GIS level down to secondary level [district] from the 1930's. Hope to push to the 3rd level. Samip has been working on program to take in images, geo-coordinate based on neat lines.
  3. Audio - BL agreed to give MF of the music catalogs for all EMI productions (Gramophone Co. and HMV going back to 1901). Producing page images for DSAL, also being used for selection of materials. In addition to semi-annual catalogue (succinct entries), the monthly "new release" notices also contain details as well as full text of many recordings (essentially complete transcriptions).
    EMI has given full rights for non-commercial use. In terms of availability, we had thought EMI had complete recordings from Calcutta. However, there was a 'cut off point' (not certain when that was). Dum Dum collection has gone through 5 owners. So tracking exact holdings is ongoing.
    Technical developments - IRENE (2d imaging of the record surface) is showing great promise. They are also experimenting with 3d imaging for wax recordings: can apply to discs as well (which helps take into account the differences in production - flat bottom vs. sharp bottom of the groove).

Q: Connection to old India radio? A: Not through this grant, but potential collaboration in India? Lots have been destroyed.

DSAL site - visits have increased to over 3.8m per month. Exceeding 85k unique visits per month.

DDSA - in the pipeline includes Kitabistan (Hindustan-English). Received 5 (of 8) vols of the Maharashtra sabdakosa (Marathi). Carter's Sinhalese-English dictionary (Sinhala). Di Si Buks' Malayalam-English Dictionary (Malayalam) and Gundert's 2v. Malayalam and English Dictionary are going to be available. Reviewing previously released materials to correct errors. Need feedback and suggestions on the dictionaries.

A pending proposal to fund new dictionaries and new functionality (Drupal implementation, adapting for mobile devices, multi-dictionary search, annotation by users). But, at minimum will allow speed of production to increase.

Census - submitted grant proposal to key 1931 British census of India, Maldives, and Ceylon. Also submitted proposal to Indo-US Science and Technology Forum for a workshop with scholars and census creators in India & US. The primary focus is on public health, but will bring together many fields.

Q: OIOC image collections. Still "under development." Any possibility of development?
A: See "Archaeological Survey" above. Also, possibly the 8x10 scans of images from BL photo collection. Could perhaps link to Falkner's database of images.

Back to the top6. SACAP Cooperation update:.
Simon and Bledsoe reported on the successful workshop conducted in October. He reviewed the process leading up to the event and the activities of the day. The results were disseminated to participants and to CONSALD list. In general, it was successful in reducing high-overlap areas (India English) and moving up representation of lesser-collected content. Cornell, for instance, increased its collections in Sri Lanka (agro-economics, fisheries, etc.) and Bangladesh. Focused more on social sciences, rather than Hindi literature. Wisconsin responded differently by reducing some content in SACAP and focusing collecting publications not covered by SACAP.

Possibilities for next meeting:

  • A recap of the SACAP profiles. Perhaps adding Pakistan?
  • Addressing Serials overlaps (major agreement from attendees)
    • Publishing from other areas of the world on South Asia topics.
    • Publishing from Japan, for example, or Western Europe. In Russian, Australia, Canada, Netherlands, etc.?
    • Diaspora studies

These ideas were discussed, along with challenges (for instance, many budgets are broken out by area of publication: cannot volunteer material from Japan without approval of East Asia librarian). As for serials, it was agreed this is a major area of interest. One alternate model to discuss is to fund acquisition centrally at CRL rather than coordinating locally. Simon emphasized that CRL is still considering its serials policy and generally favors distributed responsibility in this area.

Back to the top 7. CONSALD business

Elections - nominating committee appointed: Bronwen Bledsoe, Adnan Malik. Will ballot by email.
Consider a ballot over next 3 weeks. Election w/in 6 weeks. New committee takes office immediately.
Dues? CONSALD needs to consider taking up dues to cover Web costs (see above). Request funds from South Asia Council?
Web site - still not in public release. Will need to be taken up as an urgent topic by new committee.

Executive committee should take up revisiting the issue of our relationship with SAC (maintaining scholarly link, faculty liaison, and funding possibilities).

8. LC Report

Update on IFORS. Scoping Requirements completed, being reviewed. Follow-on testing in Oct 2012.
FY12 invoices I&O rates coming soon. (last yr was 20% Delhi, 37% Islamabad)

Delhi -Maldives expansion to SACAP participants in 2012. Est. $500 per year? Shipping will be expensive.
FY12 - will offer graphic novels (currently only via Circulars).
Maharashtra, appointed 2 bib reps.
Atish Chatterjee going to NE states to search for reps.
Delay in Bengali cataloging.
New Nepal representative.

Islamabad - changes in shipping routine ongoing. In general, shipments are going out once they reach 100 kilos or 3 mos. 1st Shipment in April.
Journal TOC experiment. Supplements BAS.
Serial titles with fewer than 2 in the US. Interest in exploring a project?
Conducted Web archiving 1 yr of government websites. Capturing nationalism websites.

9. Taylor & Francis focus group report
10 faculty, 10 librarians were invited to discuss collection of Bengali material received by T&F. Personal collection from an SSRI scholar - ephemera, film, secondary resources; trade returns in English… covered 1750-1950. Quite a "mixed bag" of content. Librarians advised that it needed to be organized more before anything could be decided. A lot of content was public domain.

10.World Newspaper Archive
Simon raised the issue of OCR for vernacular scripts. This is causing delays. Would page image access be acceptable in the short- to medium- run? General consensus was yes.

11. Meeting was adjourned.

Submitted by James Simon
April 25, 2011

Back to the top Back to the top

OR return to Minutes or committee on south asian libraries and documentation


Webbing - Philip McEldowney, University of Virginia
Last update -