Present: Russ Davidson (University of New Mexico), Luis González (Indiana University-Bloomington), Nelly González (University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana), Jana Krentz (University of Kansas), Molly Molloy (New Mexico State University), Nerea Llamas (University of Michigan), Ted Riedinger (Ohio State University), Sandra Seely (Ohio University), Scott Van Jacob (University of Notre Dame), Mary Jo Zeter (Michigan State University)
Absent: Jim Julich (U. of Iowa), Rafael E. Tarragó (U. of Minnesota), Luis Villar (U. of Wisconsin)
Convener: Scott Van Jacob
Welcome to new members -Scott began the meeting by welcoming Russ Davidson and Molly Molloy, of the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State, to MOLLAS.
Future MOLLAS meeting -Jana reported that due to renovation and staff reorganization within the Kansas Libraries that it would be very difficult to host MOLLAS this coming August. After considering pushing back the Kansas meeting to October 2004 (LASA is in October), June 2005, and August 2005, the group came to a general agreement that June 2005 or August 2005 would be the best choices.
Possible digitization project -Scott noted that there are now 20 full-text works in the Ibero-American Electronic Text Series of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The group affirmed our interest in pursuing a similar project. Questions and remarks on the feasibility of a collaborative digital project also surfaced later in the meeting, with Russ Davidson inquiring about what kinds of texts had been digitized at Madison (out of copyright history and literature), and Jana recalling the idea of digitizing texts that appear on Masters' reading lists.
Preservation -Jana would like to see MOLLAS collaborate in a preservation program, such as the one Brad Shaffner had organized for the Slavic librarians while he was at KU. In this model, titles of brittle books that are good candidates for preservation photocopying are circulated among librarians; the more copies of the photocopy that are ordered, the lower the price per copy. There were general expressions of interest in such an effort. The possibility of a SALALM-wide program was also mentioned. Scott related that when he had a preservation photocopy made of a brittle book from his collection, the company also provided the text on a disk, in .pdf format, for $25.
Institutional Reports
Russ reported that the University of New Mexico had reviewed its serials exchange program, which involved 350 active titles. The review found the program too expensive and labor intensive to maintain. 135 of the 350 titles are converting to standing orders.
Because we ran out of time, Scott asked that the rest of the group post their institutional reports* to MOLLAS-L.
Notes by Mary Jo Zeter, on behalf of Rafael E. Tarragó, Secretary
Ohio University (Sandy Seeley):
There will be an overall Library budget decrease in 2004-05, but the acquisitions
budget will be increased. In 2003-04 massive retirements have taken place, which
represent a lost of institutional memory.
University of Iowa (Marsha Forys):
Marsha Forys began acting as Librarian for Latin American Studies in January
2004. Since then, she has done library instruction for students taking classes
in Spanish and Latin American Studies, in addition to collection development.
University of Michigan (Nerea Llamas):
This year the decision was made to migrate from NOTIS to ALEPH. Budget cuts
are expected in 2004-05, and in anticipation there was a journal subscriptions
cancellation project. In order to lessen the impact on the Latin American journals
collection, a 5% reduction in monographs funding has been proposed for fiscal
year 2004-05. Projected cancellations are the print subscriptions of El Pais
and of HAPI. Michigan was the host of the SALALM conference this year.
University of Minnesota (Rafael E. Tarrago):
Collection development funding has stabilized, after reductions in 2002-03.
An approval plan for books rom Spain on Spanish and Spanish American topics
has been established with Iberbook of Madrid. Support for the digitization Ibero-American
Texts project in cooperation with the University of Wisconsin continues, but
the ETRC, the Minnesota site where the electronic texts digitized in Minnesota
were going to be displayed has been dismantled. In April 2004 a book exhibit
was mounted (in cooperation with the international symposium on Isabel I of
Castille organized by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University
of Minnesota), where 16th century imprints owned by the James Ford Bell Library
(http://bell.lib.umn.edu/) were displayed.
University of Notre Dame (Scott Van Jacob):
At the University of Notre Dame there was a budget cut, and further cuts are
expected in the collections budget in 2004-05. A University capital campaign
is being planned that hopefully will raise enough funds to prevent further cuts.
Fortunately the Latin American Studies collection is almost all funded by endowments.
Starting in the fall of 2004 there will be a new endowment for library materials
from and about the Hispanic Caribbean. Prominent rare and manuscript acquisitions
in 2003-04 were 1448-85 issues of the newspaper Corrientes Confederada (Argentina),
and about 100
letters from Julio Roca (purchased by a donor).
Rafael E. Tarrago, Secretary