University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (Nelly Gonzalez):
Collection development funding has been somewhat stabilized,
although funds still remain inadequate to fulfill a solid collection development
program. The Library does, however, have an approval plan with several large
European publishers in which we automatically acquire, according to a profile,
European monographs published about Latin America and the Caribbean. We also
have a blanket order for Latin American materials and an approval plan with
Blackwell of North America in which they supply us with U.S.-published books
about the region, including those from all University presses.
The University has taken on two bibliographic projects to be made available
online: Black Caribbean Bibliography and the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Bibliography.
The first is an extensive bibliography about the experience of the Black Caribbean
and its Diaspora. The second is dedicated entirely to the life and work of the
Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author.
The University also sponsors the publication of Bolivian Studies Journal, the
only scholarly journal in print dealing exclusively with Bolivia, both in the
social sciences and the humanities. Volume 11 was published in Fall 2004 and
Volume 12 is planned for Fall 2005. This year we also reprinted Volumes 1-8
and succeeded in completing many library collections of the journal.
The library continued its strong participation in HAPI and LAPTOC indexing.
Important acquisitions include the completion of the collection of Lutte Ouvriere,
a somewhat rare Haitian serial.
Our special collections library has an important archive of papers and documents about colonial times. For more information about the library, see their webpage: http://www.library.uiuc.edu/rbx/
The Library has a link for browsing our video collection, but will only loan
the videos in special circumstances. The list has recently been updated and
will be presented to the MOLLAS membership during the SALALM conference.
New Microfilm acquisitions include:
University of Iowa (Marsha Forys):
Collection Development and Management
As reported earlier, I took on collection management responsibilities in January
2004 for Latin American Studies as well as Spanish and Portuguese literatures
on top of everything else I did. On November 1, 2004, I had the good fortune
to become a full-time bibliographer after being Coordinator for Instructional
Services for over 16 years. After working closely with the new instruction coordinator
to transition all materials, projects, etc. to her, I moved to a new office
and began the transition to my new position. I am now Latin American Studies
librarian half-time and the other half of my time have collection management
responsibility for Iberian literatures, communication studies, journalism and
mass communication, and political science. This has been a year filled with
many learning opportunities.
We contributed funds for a CRL shared purchase proposal consisting of 40 reels of Brazilian Workers' Party (Partido dos trabalhadores) microfilm.
I discovered that the details of the existing Latin American and Peninsular approval plans were contained in a series of past emails rather than in individual documents, so I drew up a profile document for each one.
When International Programs wanted to know the size of our Latin American collection, I developed catalog search parameters.
Instructional Services Provided
Since July 1, 2004, I taught a total of 35 one-shot course-related instruction
sessions. 30 of those sessions were for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese,
and I conducted 16 of those in the Spanish language. Of the 30 classes for the
Department of Spanish & Portuguese, 2 were cross listed with the Latin American
Studies Program.
I gave 1 one-hour workshop for 11 new Department of Spanish & Portuguese teaching assistants during their orientation week. And I gave a tour to a candidate for a faculty position in that department.
Other
I volunteered to become a HAPI indexer and have just begun doing that.
General
Overall the library got a 5% increase to the materials budget. The State didn’t
provide the 5% increase. It came from internal university reallocations. There
were many librarian retirements at the end of the fiscal year.
University of Minnesota (Rafael Tarrago):
In the year 2004-05, the University of Minnesota Libraries has made acquisitions, digitized texts, and promoted library instruction in areas related to Latin America.
The collection development budget presented in the fall was more or less the same as last year's. As far as the Latin American Studies collection is concerned, we made a major acquisitions, the microfilm collection _Conquistadors_ (Primary Source). This collection in 105 reels contains microfilms of manuscripts and early imprints related to explorations, conquests, and settlements by the Europeans in the Americas south of Rio Grande between 1492 and 1825. In 2004 we began an approval plan for books from Spain on Spanish and Spanish American subjects. This approval plan is under observation.
In July we digitized _Aqui se contiene una disputa_ (Seville, 1552), a pamphlet in the James Ford Bell Library, in the University of Minnesota, that consists mainly of a summary of the dispute on whether native Americans were natural slaves or free rational human beings between the humanist Juan Gines de Sepulveda and the Dominican monk Fray Bartolome de Las Casas. We did this for inclusion in the University of Wisconsin Ibero-American Texts Electronic Library, to which we contributed in 2003-04 the text _Principios de educacion moral y civica_ (Havana, 1902), by Rafael Montoro.
This year area studies librarians participated in a Study Abroad Fair organized by the Study Abroad Center at the University of Minnesota. Hopefully this will bring attention to our collections and to our expertise from students planning to travel to study in Latin America. Outreach activities of this sort will become important here as emphasis is being placed on programs and resources that are used by the largest groups of people. There is talk of redistributing library funds according to department or programs, and on the number of faculty and students involved.
On a personal note, my article "Sobre la democracia y un libro de Rafael
Montoro" (a commentary on the text that Minnesota contributed to the Wisconsin
Ibero-American Texts Electronic Library in 2003-04) was published in no. 39
of the UNAM journal _Latino America_ (pp. 33-49). This summer my anthology of
poems by 4 Afro-Cuban poets dating from 1797 to 1997 _La libertad de escoger_
will finally come out as no. 16 of the series Biblioteca Critica de las Literaturas
Luso-Hispanicas.
Ohio University (Sandra Seeley): Ohio University Libraries acquisition budget for 2004/05 remained constant, with carryover funds from the previous year allowing the purchase of some existing gaps in the Dept. of State, and Princeton University pamphlet microform collections. I also purchased the Robert J. Alexander Papers microform collection.
Ohio University again offered early retirement incentives, resulting in the retirement of approximately 10 librarians. In the last 2 years, O.U. Libraries has lost 25 people due to this, (with approximately 75 librarians remaining employed at the main campus library). This has resulted in huge shifts of responsibility within the organization, and consequently has required lots of patience and initiative among the remaining staff! Due to budget restraints, a hiring freeze is still in place at the university, so few replacements have been hired in, and remaining staff has had to double up on responsibilities.
My instruction component once again involved the entering Latin American Studies graduate students (14) this fall in both classroom instruction, as well as one-on-one for their seminar topics.
I am sorry to say that at this moment, it is doubtful that I will be continuing as the Latin American bibliographer after June 30, 2005- O.U. and I could not reach agreement as to compensation for this portion of my job responsibilities. I will miss this aspect of my position, and the camaraderie of the MOLLAS and SALALM groups. I enjoyed meeting and working with you all for the last 2 years. When I am sure of who the person will be handling this position, MOLLAS will be the first to know. Hopefully, if there is a MOLLAS meeting this summer, the new person will be able to attend the conference.
University of Michigan (Nerea Llamas): The most important change for us this year is having both our University Librarian and Provost resigning their positions. Bill Gosling, former UL is now in Special Collections as Curator for Children's Books. He has been very supportive of Latin American Studies and generous with funding, (including hosting last year's SALALM conference), so I am sorry to see him change roles. A search committee is already forming for the search. We have an interim director, James Hilton, Associate Provost for Academic, Information and Instructional Technology Affairs, who is leaving the day to day affairs to the Associate University Librarians.
Shortly after Bill stepped down, the Provost also decided to return teaching full-time. The Provost has been a great supporter of the Library, so this is another great loss. We are not sure how the search for the new Provost will affect the University Librarian search, but hopefully both will move forward quickly.
I think I reported last year on our Programmatic Review. This was a review
of all of the functions and services within the University Library. The
process took several weeks and involved virtually every librarian and staff
member. I can now report that the outcome was a positive one.Some of the recommendations
have been implemented already. For example, we are no longer cataloging literature
in Dewey (yeah!). We are now involved in the programmatic review of collections.
This is basically a process for requesting an increase in base funds from a
pool of funds that were set aside for give-back last year. In the last few days,
I have drafted what I hope will be a successful request for Latin American funds.
Also related to collections, I was able to purchase two sets of microfilm this year, Listin Diario (the Santo Domingo daily) and Part I of the Cuban Exile Collection. And, yes, I will add these to the microfilm list.
As most of you know, Michigan joined the ARL project last year. I have not
made much progress in choosing titles for LAPTOC yet. However, I can report
that I have chosen the subject 'Women's movements' as our distributed resources
area. I am working with the Women's studies
librarian to develop this further. Along with actual collection development,
we are hoping to develop guides to collecting in this area.
In November, I spent a few days in Mexico City before attending the book fair in Guadalajara. Along with visiting bookstores, I went to the Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres, where I was given a number of excellent publications. I say 'given' because the Instituto does not sell their publications, they only give them to individuals and libraries by request. Some of the their publications are also online at http://www.inmujeres.gob.mx. The Instituto also has a Centro de Documentacion where they welcome researchers (and librarians, of course). If anyone is interested in visiting, I can provide the address and contact information.
Only slightly related to Latin American studies, I would like to report that
much of my time since last November has been spent working on the
Shoah Visual History Archive Project. Michigan partnered with the Shoah Foundation
in Los Angeles to provide access to their Visual History
Archive locally. The archive includes 52,000 digitized interviews with Holocaust
survivors and liberators. The interviews were filmed in 56
countries (including Latin America) and in 32 languages (1356 in Spanish and
566 in Portuguese). I can provide more details about the project if
anyone is interested.
Finally, I have purposely not mentioned the word 'google' in this report because
you have all probably heard enough about it. However, I will be
happy to answer any questions.