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Autumn 2002
Vol. 22, Num. 1

Autumn 2002

Message from CRL President Bernard Reilly - Cooperation and Trust
CRL International Resources - CAMP/Title VI African Archives Projects, 1993 - Present
CRL International Resources - University of Chicago, Yale, Other CRL Members Awarded Department of Education TICFIA Grants, 2002-2005
CRL Collection resources: Political Communications and Mass Education in China in the Early Years of the People’s Republic
New Materials Received - February 2002 - July 2002
New Materials Received - FY2002 Purchase Proposals Acquired
CRL Programs and Services - Aberdeen Woods Conference
CRL Programs and Services - CRL Staff News
CRL Programs and Services - Member Driven Acquisitions and Cooperative Collection Development Programs (New Policies Effective July 1, 2002)

CRL International Resources - University of Chicago, Yale, Other CRL Members Awarded Department of Education TICFIA Grants, 2002-2005

Eight members of the Center for Research Libraries were awarded major grants from the Department of Education as part of the new round of funding for the Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (TICFIA) Program.

The purpose of the TICFIA Program is to support projects that will develop innovative techniques or programs using new electronic technologies to collect information from foreign sources. Totaling $1,700,000 for the first year of new funding (2002-2005), ten projects will create, collect, preserve and widely disseminate digital resources that address teaching and research needs in international education and foreign languages.

Three major projects funded by TICFIA feature cooperative partnerships among the Center for Research Libraries and its members:

The University of Chicago, on behalf of a federation of research institutions, has won an award for a project entitled: "South Asian Information Access: A Federated Program to Expand the Resources for Understanding the Subcontinent." As a follow-on to the highly successful Digital South Asia Library (DSAL), this project will significantly expand DSAL's resources through a combination of federally sponsored activities and substantial matching contributions from participating institutions. Through the grant, the project will microfilm, digitize, and create electronic indexes to a select body of information relating to the study of South Asia. Parallel projects featuring digitization of prints and photographs, books, journals and indexes, maps, and political data will be undertaken by the federated institutions. The project will implement the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting for information created during this and preceding grants to provide better access to the resources and allow for integrated searching across distributed South Asia resources at the federated libraries. The Center for Research Libraries will continue to play an important role in this project, as it has done for DSAL, providing assistance in management and project oversight, server hosting and administration, and coordination among the federated participants in the project.

Yale University Library was awarded $145,000 for the first year of the program to lead and coordinate a collaborative database titled "Project OACIS" (Online Access to Consolidated Information on Serials). This project will create a publicly and freely accessible, continuously updated listing of Middle East journals and serials. The listing will identify libraries that own the materials as well as exact holdings, initially for Arabic and English language titles and then for an ever-expanding group of Middle Eastern languages. As it develops, Project OACIS will also serve as a gateway to those serials by enhancing content delivery of those titles. Participating institutions include Cornell, University of Michigan, Ohio State, University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas, and University of Washington. Targeted partner institutions in Europe and the Middle East will also be incorporated.

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), on behalf of the Latin Americanist Research Resources Project (LARRP), will expand access to important, but elusive, "grey literature" research materials from Latin America. The project will digitize publications in the social sciences from Latin American partners, and will apply the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting to these documents to ensure systematic and enhanced Web access to distributed resources. The Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC) will develop the portal service for harvesting the metadata from participating repositories. CRL is a participating member of LARRP.

Several other projects were funded as well:

  • UCLA was also awarded a grant through its Language Materials Project to digitize and make accessible sources of materials for less commonly taught languages (LCTL). The project will compile an online bibliography of sources of authentic material for use in language teaching, develop Web-based pedagogical guides on the use of authentic materials for teaching LCTL, and create an experimental digital archive of material for a subset of languages (to be determined).
  • University of Kansas will work with archives in Saratov, Russia to digitize, preserve, and provide full-text searchable material of the Tiraspol consistory records, an important primary resource for the study of life in imperial Russia. The consistory was the official depository of church records in southern Russia to which Catholic and Lutheran churches in the diocese would annually forward copies of their vital records (births, deaths, marriages, etc.).
  • Michigan State University has received a grant for the "South African Collaborative Film and Video Project."
  • The University of Southern California (USC) was granted two awards. The first project, submitted by USC's Center for International Policy, Planning, and Development (CIPPAD), will create ACCESS INDONESIA, a Web based information dissemination system on Indonesia. The second, proposed by the Annenberg School for Communication, will develop an English-language Web site on developments in Japan in online journalism and information/communications technologies. The project will commission reports and articles from scholars, corporate and public officials, and writers; host online forums and discussions, otherwise make available the burgeoning but largely overlooked resources on ICT development in Asia.
  • University of Virginia has received support funds for its "Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library."
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison has received a grant for the "Portal to Asian Internet Resources (PAIR)." This project builds upon the previously funded Digital Asia Library, which created a Web-based catalog of quality Asian Internet resources, and adds extended functionality (through hierarchical subject browsing functions and bibliographies) and public services (such as instructional support and reference) to the existing site.

Over forty members of CRL are listed as participating in or contributing to one or more projects funded through the Department of Education grants. Project funding officially begins October 1, 2002.

Further information and links to available abstracts and Web sites are found on the TICFIA Web site hosted by CRL.