PACSLAV Meeting Minutes, November, 1999
Pacific Coast Slavic & East European Library Consortium
Annual Meeting: Nov. 19, 1999, St. Louis, Missouri.
Present: Allan Urbanic (Chair; UC Berkeley), Beth Feinberg (UCLA), Inna Gudanets (Stanford), Patricia Polansky (U Hawaii), Michael Biggins (U Washington), Ruth Wallach (USC), Diana Brooking (U Washington), Mike Markiw (U Arizona/Arizona State)
1) Updates from member institutions
UCLA: The Library is going through some reorganization. A new AUL for Collections and Technical Services, Cindy Shelton, started in Sept. 1999. The Library is also in the midst of bringing up a new online system, DRA-TAOS. Leon Ferder has purchased a new microfilm set, "Gazety kopeiki".
Stanford: The Library is in a transition period right now, undergoing reorganization. The Slavic bibliographer position, that had belonged to Wojciech Zalewski before his retirement, remains unfilled. Cataloging is working on cleaning up some backlogs. Stanford continues working on the Pamiatnye knizhki microfilming project for the 20th century pre-Soviet period, which will probably be finished this year. The Library has acquired a large pre-WWII Polish journal on microfilm ("Przeglad polski").
U Hawaii: No new developments, just working on cleaning up backlogs. Finances remain a problem.
U Washington: The Libraries have undergone some reorganization. There is now a new Assistant Director for collections and technical services (now called "Resource and Collection Management Services"), Joyce Ogburn. The University has received an endowment for a chair in Ukrainian studies (language and literature). There is also an endowment for a chair in Baltic studies, and there continues to be growth in that area. The Libraries have received a three-year Title VI grant to create access to Russian regional information online. The Russian Far East is a potential focus for that project. PACSLAV may want to consider ways to continue this project after the grant period is over.
USC: Ruth Wallach became (on Oct. 1, 1999) the head of the Architecture and Fine Arts Library, but will also continue on as the Slavic selector. The Directory of the Institute for Modern Russian Culture will remain at USC, and he will receive a large increase in budget for the purchase of Russian books, that Ruth will help to select. Already purchased are: a large collection of postcards (about 600) from MKhAT, the journal "SSSR na stroike" (1930s period) and other art and theater-related materials.
U Arizona: No changes to speak of. Mike Markiw continues to function as their Slavic selector.
Arizona State: The Library is undergoing some reorganization. Mike Markiw will no longer catalog Slavic materials (there is a new Slavic cataloger), but he continues as the Slavic selector.
UC Berkeley: This Library is also experiencing reorganization. There is a new AUL for the Doe/Moffit Library, Patricia Ianuzzi, to whome the Area Studies Unit will report. There is a separate AUL for collection development, but this position still has not been permanently filled. Last year Berkeley received, the second $5,000 installment of a $10,000 grant for the study of the Caucasus region. Acquisitions include Caucasian regional newspapers (1994-1997/98). Berkeley also has a $8,000 Title VI grant for acquisitions. They have purchased UMI's collection of "Vecherniaia Moskva", and they are trying to get a copy of "Rabochaia gazeta" from the 1930s. They have also started a project to obtain microfilm of Yiddish newspapers from Russia. The Russian National Library has more money for fiche now, so Berkeley intends to expand the project on 19th century Russian women writers to include the works of 20th century women writers. On Berkeley's Slavic and East European Collections web page there is now a searchable database of Russian Independent Newspapers (1989- )--these holdings are not in Berkeley's main catalog and they are not available for interlibrary loan *except* to PACSLAV members.
General: Only five PACSLAV members are now sharing the cost of the RAS-Online database: U Oregon, U Arizona, Arizona State, U Washington and U British Columbia.
2) PACSLAV Cataloging Survey:
The results of the survey were collated and made available by Beth Feinberg (later will also be on PACSLAV web page). The main issue discussed at this meeting was the lack of language expertise in certain areas. U Washington is experimenting with having graduate students with language expertise work with librarians in order to catalog materials in such languages as Estonian, Hungarian, and Latvian. UC Berkeley has need for language expertise in Armenian and Central Asian languages, but only has high-level visiting faculty with these language skills. Michael Biggins also presented the idea of having a Soros-sponsored visiting librarian (a native speaker of one of the "difficult" languages) come to do cataloging, possibly with some kind of arrangement among PACSLAV members to share this person's expertise.
3) Interlibrary loan:
Allan Urbanic reports that faculty are dissatisfied with the turnaround time for ILL. UC Berkeley and U Texas have a special direct ILL agreement whereby graduate students and faculty (only) can bypass normal ILL channels to borrow directly (and quickly) from the partner institution. This agreement spans all subject areas. The possibility of such an agreement among PACSLAV member libraries was discussed. It was agreed that this idea (and others) should be pursued after UC Berkeley's CDO position has been permanently filled and the other new CDOs get settled in.
4) Subject-specific union lists:
It was decided that PACSLAV would need to have more computer systems expertise at its disposal in order to facilitate the creation of such lists. Again, it was agreed that the top priority would have to be CDO-liaison relations in order to move ahead with new projects.
Recorded by: Diana Brooking, University of Washington Libraries