PACSLAV Meeting Minutes, November, 1997
Pacific Coast Slavic & East European Library Consortium
Meeting: November 18, 1997, Seattle
Minutes
Present: Michael Biggins (Washington), Mischa Buczkowski (Oregon), Mike Markiw (Arizona and Arizona State), Jack McIntosh (British Columbia), Allan Urbanic (California-Berkeley), Wojciech Zalewski (Stanford; Chair)
Absent: Leon Ferder (UCLA), Patricia Polansky (Hawaii)
The 1997 meeting of PacSlav was held in conjunction with the annual national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) and on the eve of the PacSlav-sponsored conference on "Russian-American Library Cooperation on the Pacific Rim," both of which took place during the week of November 16-23 in Seattle.
1) Proposals for SEEMP in 1998:
Allan Urbanic offered Berkeley's collection of Russian independent newspapers (1990-present), consisting of some 400 titles: 50 of them are solid runs, while the rest are either ephemeral or very imperfect runs. It would be ideal to coordinate Berkeley's holdings with Hoover's even more extensive collection for filming. Other future SEEMP proposals might include East European regional newspapers, acquired either through the national libraries or via Ross.
2) Consortial acquisitions:
the following large acquisitions were foreseen for the near future: a) Stanford: the B.L. Modzalevskii collection (card catalog of Russian personalities), on 364 fiche, acquired from Ross. Wojciech Zalewski offered to mediate searches for fellow PacSlav librarians. Stanford would also be acquiring the Russian music journals on Ross's list.
b) Berkeley: Russian women's serials (issued on film by Ross), with a focus on the late 19th century. Allan plans to buy titles in this collection that are not already held by PacSlav member libraries.
c) Washington: has begun acquiring microfilm-and in some cases also hard copy)-of some Russian regional daily newspapers (from Kirov, Nizhnii Novgorod, Kazan, and the Far East), beginning with the mid-1990s. UW will also acquire microfilm backfiles of major Ukrainian daily newspapers. The gift of the complete Latvian Studies Center Library (Kalamazoo, Mich.) is transforming UW's Latvian collection from a conspectus level 2 into a 4 in most subject areas, with current collecting to hold pace.
3) Duplicate sharing:
It was agreed that retrospective items (pre-1990 imprints) should be eliminated from the Consortium's bulk duplicate exchange. Pre-1990 materials should instead by offered on the Consortium's listserv and sent to the first taker. Members expressed interest in receiving Stanford's duplicate sample serial issues, which provide useful information for making subscription decisions.
4) PacSlav Web page:
a) Molly Molloy at Hoover has assumed responsibility for compiling the next edition of the directory of Slavic and East European librarians.
b) UW Russian area studies graduate students are in the process of creating a digital map of Russian statistical data by rayons, parts or all of which may be accessible to the Consortium.
c) It was agreed to create direct links from the PacSlav pages directly to institutions' unique Web resources. 5) PacSlav union list of serials is available at the Consortium's Web site as a work in progress. Stanford has input its complete serial holdings and member libraries are encouraged to begin adding their data.
6) Electronic publications:
Arizona has arranged for access to online versions of six Russian newspapers in late November and early December. Mike Markiw observed that the selection of available titles is less extensive than East View originally projected; at the end of the test subscriptions Mike would report back to PacSlav on Arizona's experience.
7) Cataloging:
backlogs continue to grow at most of our institutions. A plea was made to arrange with our respective cataloging units for quick processing of highest priority and unique materials, so that the entire Consortium has maximum access to information about them.
Recorded by Michael Biggins