Minutes of the Meeting -- Spring 2009
Association of Asian Studies
Parlor F Sheraton Hotel Chicago IL
Thursday March 26, 2009

[Please send revisions and corrections to Andrea Singer at singer@indiana.edu
with a copy to Philip McEldowney at pm9k@virginia.edu.]

1. Introductions 2. Review of minutes 3. "How best to reconcile the increasing costs of South Asian acquisitions with the decreasing acquisitions budgets at universities" (Mary Rader) 4. CONSALD Web Site move to Bluehost (Philip McEldowney) 5. CONSALD budget (Andrea Singer) 6. Co-Chair Proposal Liladhar Pendse and Jeff Martin) 7. Bibliography of Asian Studies update (Aruna Magier) 8. DSAL/DDSA/SAUC update (Jim Nye) 9. Charleston Advisor (James Simon) 10. South Asian Language Periodicals Online (Sam Wright) 11. Adjournment

Attendees: Bindu Bhatt (Columbia), Bronwen Bledsoe (Cornell), Rajwant Chilana (UICU), David Faust (Minnesota), James Gentner (LC), Gerald Hall (DSAL), Lauren Hartley (Columbia), Xiang Li (Colorado), Raymond Lum (Harvard), Aruna M agier (BAS), Avinash Maheshwary (Duke/TRLN), Adnan Malik (U of California, Berkeley), Samip Mallick (Chicago), Jeff Martin (Michigan), Philip McEldowney (Virginia), Lise McKean (UIC), Susan Meinheit (LC), Carol Mitchell (LC Islu), Laila Mulgaokar ( LC Delhi), James Nye (Chicago), Lilidhar R. Pendse (UCLA), Felicity Pickup (Toronto), Edward Proctor (Missouri State), Mary Rader (Wisconsin), Sarbjit Randhawa (UBC), Uma Sharma (Syracuse), James Simon (CRL), Andrea Singer (Indiana), Mel Thatcher (Gen. Society, Utah), (Sunita Vaze (NYPL), Sam Wright (Washington U)

1. Introduction
1. Chair Liladhar Pendse opened the meeting and invited attendees to introduce themselves.

2. Minutes The draft minutes of the Spring 2008 meeting in Atlanta and the Fall 2008 meeting in Madison were approved with corrections, and can be given final status on the CONSALD web site.

3. Mary Rader led a discussion of issues, problems, and cooperative opportunities in view of current budgetary problems in North American Universities. NOTE: See attached power point presentation.

 She presented contextual information ranging from an overview of issues, a count of libraries' expected collection budget shrinkage and growth prospects reported by collection officers from large universities during the ALA midwinter meeting, a snapshot of LC-Delhi's IODA database, and a discussion paper from SACAP as well as notes from a phone interview with David Nelson (Penn).

Discussion was structured so that issues such as perceived overcollecting by SACAP which were raised by Merry Burlingham (Texas), who could not be present, SACAP policies and procedures (Laila Mulgaokar), and non SACAP concerns were discussed before turning to cooperative prospects.

Laila Mulgaokar stressed that what is not revealed in IODA is the quantity of material which is eliminated by the LC evaluation and filtering system. Costs per item in the snapshot over time indicate that the ratio of more expensive books to less expensive is increasing. Meanwhile the options for choosing additional materials through circulars has provided flexibility for those who choose additional material.

The discussion turned to what North American libraries are not seeing when they rely only on SACAP - perhaps an estimated 10% of total output (Jim Nye). The new approach at Penn to order monographs from dealers --at present most English language books from Eastern Book Corp.-- probably results in higher costs per piece and shorter delivery times.

When the discussion turned to cooperation, James Simon (CRL) described the CRL policy of selecting newspapers and microfilm, gift monographs, and serials which fewer than five participants have selected. (LC fiche are no longer arriving at CRL.) He briefly described pdf archiving projects.

Mary reviewed the cooperative selection she, Bronwen, and Bindu have done thus far with Nepali serials, South Asian theater, and art catalogs using SACAP profiles, the strategy of Penn to collect something different, and the need to communicate via the CONSALD listserv when we are collecting something different.

Avinash urged us to think more broadly about less common languages and Bindu described the need to think about formal agreements which are not dependent on current bibliographers' informal agreements.

4. CONSALD Web Site move to BluehostPhilip McEldowney reported on the progress of the website renewal project. Phases 1 and 2 of the project (purchase and move to new Bluehost site) have been accomplished, and the re-design has started. Philip appreciates all suggestions and volunteer efforts. See: http://consald.org/

A short break and announcements followed.

 The group warmly applauded James Gentner, who will be retiring from the Library of Congress in a week.

 A final hand count was taken for the CONSALD dinner to be held this evening at the India Garden restaurant. Samip Mallick kindly coordinated arrangements.

5. Andrea Singer reported on the CONSALD budget. We began the year with $499.90. A single disbursement of $250.00 was made for 36 months of Bluehost service. The balance is $249.70.

The group discussed planning for a revenue stream. Possible needs for the future in addition to web site maintenance include money for AV access at meetings, travel subsidies both for international visitors to our meetings and possibly our own executive.

 Andrea suggested we might approach the South Asia Council for help with some of these items, and might point to our new web site when we have added additional user friendly content. Lauren Hartley suggested that a recommended readings list or other new book list might be appealing to both scholarly and popular audiences. Mel Thatcher suggested adding a donation budget to the new web site.

6. Co-Chair Proposal Liladhar Pendse led a discussion with Jeff Martin about how to handle meeting responsibilities if chairs are not able to attend meetings because of budgetary constraints, and suggested a co-chairship. The pros and cons of making constitutional changes were discussed, and agreement on informally asking a previous chair or another member of the Executive Committee was the preferred solution.

7. Bibliography of Asian Studies update Aruna Magier reported on Bibliography of Asian Studies fast track indexing for titles such as Deccan Studies, India Review, and Journal of South Asian Cinema. She invited attendees to suggest e-journals and other titles which are not yet covered. Comments and questions related to whether indexing would begin for vernacular languages (undecided), and whether the fast track title list might be added to the CONSALD web site (yes).

8. DSAL/DDSA/SAUC update.
Digital South Asia Library (DSAL): http://dsal.uchicago.edu/
Digital Dictionaries of South Asia (DDSA): http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/
South Asian Union Catalogue (SAUC): http://sauc.uchicago.edu/
James Nye reported on an upcoming proposal to be submitted to the National Science Foundation for a digital project for the historic decennial Census of India from 1872-1941, which would complement an Australian project. Scanned pages, OCR and table data presented in a form that would permit number-crunching are proposed. Maps, GIS, and polygon vectors for selected historical boundaries would be developed as well as GIS points instead of shapes for some data. Approximately 140,000 pages would be digitized in this proposal.

Another project which Samip Mallick is developing is the Libraries and A rchives in South Asia Wiki: https://coral.uchicago.edu/display/lasa/Home

This list of research sites can be edited by anyone and everyone can add entries and relevant information.

Other DSAL/DDSA enhancements include three new dictionaries.

The deadline for the fourth funding cycle for TICFIA proposals is here. The new proposal focuses on audio, maps, and images.

9. Charleston AdvisorJames Simon reported on CRL's collaboration with The Charleston Advisor (TCA):
http://www.charlestonco.com/

CRL and TCA expect to make analytical information about electronic resources and analysis of archiving available to the collection development community. James would like to hear about particular databases South Asianists would like to review, and receive contributions and feedback.

10. South Asian Language Periodicals Online. Sam Wright led a discussion on the benefits of creating an online database for South Asian language periodicals. He demonstrated that scattered holdings of print volumes and scattered issues online are now often are held by several institutions Discussion about the limits and promise of GOOGLE digitization, the indexing proposal Wisconsin wrote a few years ago, and resources at CRL ensued. CRL and SAUC will work with Sam to experiment with a short run of titles in Tamil, Urdu, and Bangla.

11.Adjournment The meeting was adjourned at approximately 4:30 p.m.

Respectfully submitted by Andrea Singer
4/2/09

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