~ B & D Committee Meeting Minutes ~

Miranda Remnek (chair), Karen Rondestvedt (recorder)

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I. Transitions, brief announcements

1. The passing of Kay Shaffer, SUNY Albany, on September 16, 2006, was noted with sadness.
2. Karen Rondestvedt, editor of Slavic & East European Information Resources, issued a call for papers for upcoming issues.

II. Reports of B & D Subcommittees

1. ABSEES (Terri Miller, Chair). ABSEES has a new managing editor (Irene Kolchinsky) plus graduate assistants. Entries haven't been uploaded since May, but that should occur by the beginning of December. The subcommittee reviewed the core journals list. They want only those that will be indexed cover-to-cover to be listed; this will include non-English titles. They will also compile a wish list of journals that they want to have indexed. They will ask for volunteer indexers; the web interface is easy to use. EBSCO is having technical difficulties, but apparently not specifically with ABSEES. Miranda will look into these issues. EBSCO is thinking of acquiring EBSEES.


2. Collection Development (Michael Brewer, Chair). A survey of librarians is being developed. The subcommittee will propose a panel on "Collection Matters." They discussed putting such information as rates of inflation for countries in the region up on a website, so that each Slavic bibliographer does not have to repeat the same research. They are also working on ways to measure campus impacts of what the library purchases. The subcommittee has three new members.


3. Copyright (Janice Pilch, Chair). The subcommittee is involved in education and training, with the goal of serving as a resource. It has fielded 150 queries to date. A website is coming; it will be linked from the B&D site and from the AAASS one. Included on the website will be an FAQ, in order to reduce the number of queries. The subcommittee plans to organize a practical panel for next year's AAASS on copyright of non-text material (not including music). Librarians are providing input to the Section 108 Study Group. Section 108 deals with the copyright exception for libraries and archives. The study group has a website, http://www.loc.gov/section108/. Transcripts of meetings are available.


4. Digital Projects (Andy Spencer, Co-chair). The terms of two members are ending, and the subcommittee has one new member. They have started the Digital Slavist wiki, http://digitalslavist.xwiki.com/xwiki/bin/view/Main/. It welcomes contributors. It includes an FAQ, a listing of conferences, selected projects and a link to the subcommittee’s Inventory of Slavic Digital Projects, among other things. The Inventory has been accessed 25,000 times and harvested by OAISTER. The subcommittee is also working with vendors, for example, East View for Vestnik Evropy and NewsNet. There will be another digital workshop at the University of Illinois in the summer of 2007.


5. SEEMP (Janet Crayne, Chair). Two new members-at-large have been elected: Ksenya Kiebuzinski, University of Toronto, and June Farris, University of Chicago. A new chair will be elected later. The newspaper Oslobodjenje needs to be re-filmed; the filmer's work was unacceptable. SEEMP has its meeting scheduled immediately after this one. A report will come by e-mail.

III. Report of B&D Committee (Miranda Remnek, Chair)

1. Revamping B&D meetings and publicizing the work of B & D. This year the committee tried a new meeting format. Instead of two public meetings, there was one public meeting, preceded by a working meeting for committee members only (but with silent observers if they wanted to come) for in-depth planning regarding current issues. Members agreed that this allowed for productive discussion, and reduced conference overcrowding for others. Publicizing: not many in AAASS know what B&D does. Miranda wrote a report for the board, and will write one for Newsnet. She also proposed that the chair of B&D attend board meetings, a proposal that the board is considering. Perhaps it would help if the committee changed its name; this will be discussed more later.


2. Subcommittee issues: scheduling problems, reviewing content, soliciting members. At the committee’s working meeting, it was agreed that B&D does not have too many subcommittees. However, it would help with scheduling if each person is limited to service on no more than two subcommittees. The B&D Chair will begin requesting subcommittee reports before the AAASS meeting, because AAASS asks for reports from B&D beforehand.


3. Digital Resources Workshop. B&D has been holding these every other year for interested people attending AAASS, but there will probably not be one in New Orleans in 2007: organization is difficult in locations without a strong Slavic presence (as in Salt Lake). If B&D is to continue these workshops, more than one coordinator is needed. We will aim to have a workshop in 2008 in Philadelphia.


4. Digital repository initiative. This is an important national need and several approaches have been taken by the chair of B&D. NDIIPP funding was a possibility, but is devoted to finishing projects already underway. LOCKSS has also been consulted. Now, plans for a different partnership are underway.


5. Large gift collections. These, especially collections from faculty members, can be an effective means for filling gaps and otherwise developing collections. But there needs to be a good match between the collection offered and the library accepting it, so that the collection is neither out of scope nor mostly duplicates. Karen Rondestvedt is developing a website to facilitate the gift process for both donors and libraries. Libraries—especially those with small Slavic collections—interested in learning of available gift collections should contact her. This is also something that may be referred to the Collection Development Subcommittee.


6. Seeding new initiatives. At the working session it was agreed that B&D will not usually take on issues itself (except in special cases such as the repository issue—since the chair of B&D is a Digital Projects co-chair). Instead, it should identify issues and refer to subcommittees as appropriate (eg referring the inflation data and gift collection issues to the Collection Development subcommittee).


7. Miscellaneous: Vendor presentations. To reduce meetings it was suggested to return them to the B&D meeting time (but this would not work with the shorter format), or hold them over lunch (but it was pointed out that people visit the exhibits over lunch). In the absence of consensus, they will be left to a regular session for the time being.

IV. Announcements from Consortia, Institutions and Individuals

1. ACRL SEES and special presentation (Brad Schaffner). ACRL SEES will meet on Sunday this year. Brad presented to Murlin Croucher a Festschrift with contributions from people who have worked with him. It is entitled Books, Bibliographies and Pugs, and is volume 16 of Indiana Slavic Studies.


2. East Coast Slavic Consortium (Wanda Wawro). They are seeking consortial pricing for CEEOL (Central and East European Online Library). They had their spring meeting at Cornell. IDC tried to sell them the Comintern archive. They are trying to coordinate collection development.


3. Pacific Coast Slavic Consortium (Michael Biggins). The group is investigating the idea of doing collection assessment using OCLC software. They are sharing information about collections, particularly films and large microform sets. The duplicate exchange continues to be successful, with the addition of a new routing slip that includes brief information on which subjects, countries and date ranges particular libraries would like to receive.


4. Midwest Slavic Consortium/CIC (Jon Giullian, Janet Crayne). This group, started by Brad in the 1990s, was formerly referred to as the Kansas Consortium. They are still deciding on a name for the group; the preliminary name is Library Alliance for Central Eurasian Studies. They are working on a website, on coordinating collection development, on consortial subscription rates, and on sharing information about their collections. They intend to expand to include libraries that don't belong to a consortium yet. They're trying to advance the place of Slavic in CIC, but CIC doesn't include everyone who is in this consortium. They are thinking of having an added meeting during the year every two years; the place may rotate.


5. COSEELIS [Council for Slavonic and East European Libraries and Information Services, Great Britain] (Lesley Pittman). They have been acting as an advisory committee to CoFoR (Collaboration for Research). The funding ran out for the Slavic group in CoFoR, COCOREES. They are looking to see if the CoFoR methodology can be expanded. EBSEES is negotiating with EBSCO. EBSEES is entirely dependent on volunteers. An evaluation of jobs in relation to pay is underway. COSEELIS’s next conference is planned for April 2-3, 2007. Libraries are working on a rollout of non-Roman scripts in OPACs.


6. Other Announcements. Terri called for contributions for the SEES Newsletter. Janet Crayne mentioned the successful NEH institute on use of images in teaching held at the New York Public Library in June 2006.

V. Presentation: Russian Sociological Data Archive (Larisa Kosova)

This is an archive of public opinion polls, conducted by leading organizations in Russia. The archive is supported by the Ford Foundation. The data are freely available. Its users are researchers and teachers; 10% of users are from outside Russia. Its website is: http://sofist.socpol.ru/. There is some information in English, but more in Russian. There is also an interface in English.

VI. New Business

1. ALCTS (ALA Association for Library Collections and Technical Services) Task Force on Non-English Access, September 18, 2006. There is a 76-page report, and they want comments by December 1. They need to establish priorities for which scripts to implement. There are also indexing and sorting issues. The ACRL/SEES Automated Bibliographic Control committee has been involved in this effort.


2. OCLC Import Difficulties (Janet Crayne). Importing doesn't work for adding vernacular to existing records, although it works for new records. We should establish a site that lists libraries providing vernacular records, so that others can use those records.

VII. Proposals for Panel Topics for AAASS 2007 in New Orleans

It was decided not to set a formal limit for the number of library-related panels, despite the scheduling difficulties. Possible topics include off-site storage, panels by subcommittees, and interdisciplinary electronic resources on the events of 1989.

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