[Report]
[Highlights]
[1. Acquire materials, provide services]
[2. Manage Overseas Acquisitions plans]
[3. Middle East and Tibetan staff]
[4. Electronic iniatives]
[5. Professional and new skills]
[6. Updates and search engine]
[7.Additional]
[Goals]
Report of the Librarian for Anthropology and
Religious Studies
June 2000 - May 31, 2001
Philip McEldowney [
Resume ||
Email]
Highlights of the year 2000-2001
1) Provide quick and complete information and service in support of
scholarly research at the University of Viriginia, particularly in
selection and deselection of materials, management of funds, supervising
library workers, and communication and instruction with scholars,
individually or in groups. Some examples
a) Digital Scholarly Communication session, web page, and emails
with Anthropology faculty and students,
b)
Selection of Asian and Middle East Languages materials, almost weekly,
with Professor Sawaie and others,
c)
Management of South Asia and Middle East foreign acquisition funds,
programs, and materials,
d) Immediately respond to requests for materials,
e) Supervise and manage the acquisition, processing, and
cataloging of a gift of Persian literature collection to bring it to the
University, photocopy materials for cataloging, and notifying researchers
of its availability.
2) Work with other librarians within the UVa and globally to
promote the expansion of scholarly materials, print and especially digital,
so that the University library will adjust to new and creative ways to
enhance scholarship, specifically to actively work with various librarians
in committees and individually to plan for library programs, projects, and
processes which will support scholarly research in the library of the
future. Some examples
a) Member of the Information Communities committee, focusing on
the development of the Tibetan and Himalayan Information Community, dealing
also with issues of metadata,
b) Continued creation of web information about new journals'
content and co-editor of an online library journal,
c) Member of the Support of Digital Scholarship committee and
chair of the Electronic Theses and Dissertation committee,
d) Continued management of the library's web pages about
selectors and requesting materials.
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1. Continue to develop, strengthen and evaluate service (collections,
bibliographic instruction, reference and information) to University
customers, as the Librarian to the Anthropology Department and Co-Librarian
to the Religious Studies Department and as Selector for the South Asian
history program, and the Arabic, Persian, Hindi, Urdu, and Sanskrit
language programs, in order to meet their teaching and research needs.
Specifically, 1) ensure that materials needed for teaching and research are
acquired in a timely fashion; 2) faculty and students are kept informed of
new Library initiatives via individual contact, email announcements, and
updated Web pages of selective scholarly resources, 3) bibliographic
instruction is offered and provided when requested, and 4) my two
coordinators are regularly informed of issues concerning my departments and
programs, materials budgets and stewarded funds, and review of serials
subscriptions.
Report. **Responded quickly to requests for new print, film, or
CD-ROM titles, whether from email requests, checked catalogs lists, or
personal contact; ordered additional copies of titles when more than 2 or 3
holds were placed on them, so as to ensure needed teaching and research
materials were acquired in a timely fashion. These requests came from
faculty and graduate students of the Anthropology, Religious Studies,
History, Government and Foreign Affairs, Fine Arts, and Asian and Middle
East Languages and Cultures (AMELC) departments. Films on Latin American
and African culture and history were ordered for Anthropology classes; and
lists of South Asia films with English subtitles were identified for a
Spring Anthropology class. Microfilm on East Asian 20th century census
statistics were acquired for Anthropology research in consultation with
Ming Lung. Worked with Anthropology professor H. L. Seneviratne, to
develop bibliographies and order missing titles for two spring courses -
one on Globalization and one on Feminism. [Profressor Seneviratne wrote a letter of appreciation and mentioned me in a preface to his book.] A library special fund
helped purchase Tibetan Buddhist materials (2 dictionaries and 6 digitized
full-text titles) as requested by Religious Studies graduate students and
faculty. Melinda Baumann assisted in making these available to University
customers through the citrix databases. See Buddhist
texts or
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/indexes/citrix.htm#buddhist
**Inform students and faculty of new library resources,
databases, and services through email to departments, announcements at
Conferences, or on updated Web pages. For new South Asia resources, there
was one web page for the Spring
2001 (http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/beyond01s.html)
and another for the Fall
2000 (http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/beyond00f.html).
**Inform prospective and present faculty of library services and
collections. Set up a meeting in January 2001 with the new head of the
Asian and Middle East Cultures and Languages Department, Robert Heuckstedt,
with Ming Lung and myself to inform him about monographic, serials, and
standing order funds, and special requests and services and answer other
requests. I gave three one-hour individualized library tours to canditates
for the Department of History position in modern India history in February
2001: Nita Kumar, William Pinch, and Indrani Chatterjee.
**Provided electronic and bibliographic instruction. During the
Fall semester, instructed new Anthropology graduate students in a bibliographic
session (http://www.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/anthropology/links.html).
In October 2000 provided sessions for undergraduates contemplating
declaring Anthropology as their major as part of the Anth300
class (http://www.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/anthropology/anth300/2000.html).
In the Spring 2001 organized two sessions for Tony Duff to explain and
instruct Religious Studies and other customers on how best to use the
Tibetan digital dictionaries and full-texts. Over the past 2 decades, Mr.
Duff has been an innovative leader in the development of digital full-text
Tibetan manuscripts and English-Tibetan dictionaries, developing a unique
digital Tibetan font to make these texts and dictionaries interoperable for
Tibetan researchers. Mr. Duff continues to be based in Nepal where he
works closely with other Tibetan researchers and translators. I met with
Mr. Duff when he first came to the University of Virginia in October and
November 2000 and then when he visited again in March and April of 2001, in
order to discuss his digital products and to facilitate the library's
purchase of those digital Tibetan texts and dictionaries for our
researchers.
**At first met with my two coordinators, which later changed to
one coordinator, and with other librarians as needed to discuss and inform
them about issues concerning my departments, programs, material budgets,
and library services and priorities. I worked with George Crafts to set up
and conduct sessions for the Religious Studies faculty in May 2001. These
pilot sessions were part of a the university-wide initiative to keep
faculty trained and current with skills to use library services and the
Internet; more faculty sessions with Religious Studies faculty are already
scheduled for the Fall 2001. The May 2001 sessions used two web pages: one
an outline for the sessions (
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/religiousstudies/instruct/2001.html)
and another with links to
Religious Studies library resources (
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/religiousstudies/spring2001.html).
**Joined Diane Walker in mid-January 2001 to present an hour program
about scholarly communication or about the scholarly journal price
crisis and possible strategies and solutions to the Anthropology
faculty at their request. See the hand
out for that session (http://www.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/anthropology/schandout.html).
As a followup, Fred Damon has had two Anthropology graduate students making
an investigation and report on the issue during the Spring 2001 semester.
The students have interviewed Diane Walker, myself, and others asking and
collecting information about scholarly communication locally and
nationally.
**Discussed the separate reading room for Asian researchers, for
which faculty had expressed a need, and which will house the donated
library books of professor Weinstien (the Weinstein
collection or http://www.virginia.edu/topnews/releases2000/buddhist-dec-18-2000.html),
as well as other Buddhist and East Asian materials. Met with my coordinator
to consider the most appropriate name for the Buddhist, Asian, or East
Asian fund or funds in support of these materials and that library reading
room.
**Performed a review of serials subscriptions to meet targets for
serials cancellations, working with George Crafts for Religious Studies
cancellations, and with the graduate students and faculty of the
Anthropology department to decide on titles
to cancel (or http://www.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/anthropology/cancel2001.html).
Newspapers: working with Gary Treadway in March 2001 and consulting
closely with professor Sawaie of AMELC about three-quarters of those
newspapers (or http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/Asia/newssame2001.html)
are slated for cancellation.
**Updated web pages for my departments and
programs, working with Garry Barrow to allow all subject guide pages to
have a similar look. I took on additional library-wide web reponsibilites
by agreeing to manage materials request web pages and scripts, modifying
those scripts four times during the year as requested. Continued to update
other library-wide web pages (or list of web pages
at #library) as requested, listing subject
selectors, interdisciplinary librarians, and selectors' tools and links;
adding this year a Special
Collections section as requested (see http://www.lib.virginia.edu/sublibs.html#spec).
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2. Manage the Library of Congress
Overseas Acquisitions plans so that: 1) relevant selectors
will review materials and select titles, as well as make
suggestions of profile revision; and that Library of
Congress bills are paid by the end of October, 2) my staff
will receive training and develop the skills to process
these materials and serve library customers; 3) materials
will be reviewed and re-located or deselected to improve
access and the quality of the collection.
Relevant selectors reviewed materials and selected
titles from South Asia materials placed on shelves for
review about three times during the last year, and Middle
East selectors and professor M. Sawaie and others reviewed
Cairo lists and made selections throughout the year, as
Library Assistant N. Mahmud entered the selected Cairo
titles into VIRGO for customer information. The Library of
Congress bills were paid early, during the first part of
September.
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3. Help coordinate with staff to
make Middle East and Tibetan materials readily available to
researchers. Ensure cooperation with the Tibetan digital
information community project and support its developments.
Worked with Middle East and Tibetan Staff to make
materials readily available to researchers through reports
and contact with customers.
**Tibetan Digital Information projects and
developments. The Himalayan and Tibetan digital library
continued to develop and proceed (for more see Information
Communities below): with Geographical Information Systems
(GIS) projects and databases, language and cultural digital
video, still, and audio projects in Clemons Media Center;
and textual literature projects continued. N. Thokmey
assisted various scholars with their individual and
collective projects and the development of bibliographic
lists.
**Middle East and Tibetan staff received further training
working with library specialists in cataloging.
**As a supervisor I conducted evaluations of both of my
staff members in September 2000 and participated in pay-plan
training in mid-November 2000.
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4. Continue strong involvement
with electronic initiatives, so that 1) the library's goal
to digitize and add materials to the collection are
furthered, and 2) electronics resources and services for
customers are publicized, improved, and made readily
available. Focus on making an Alert service, scholarly
online communication, and other electronic services easily
available and useful to customers.
Report. **Became more involved with electronic initiatives
through my participation in the a) Digital Content Guidelines committee
through November 2000; b) joining the Scholarly Digital Support (SDS)
advisory policy committee throughout the year; c) actively furthered the
discussion and proposals of the Library of Tomorrow's Information Community
committee during the winter 2000 and early spring 2001; and d) started
discussion and development of proposals about the Electronic Theses and
Dissertation programs at the University of Virginia.
a) Completed participation on making guidelines for the Digital
Content committee.
b) Joined the SDS-Policy
committee (as part of the
3-year
Mellon grant to the University of Virginia library or see http://www.virginia.edu/topnews/releases2000/melloniath-jan-6-2000.html):
during this year fleshed out considerations of traditional cataloging
categories and then began development of digital library categories of
scholarly research for the coming years. See our developing
outline of Collecting in Archives and Libraries or http://www.iath.virginia.edu/sds/outline.html
c) Participated in the discussions, definitions and proposals of the
Library of Tomorrow's Information Communities committee. On my own
initiative, I set up a web site
for this committe, to facilitate interaction between committee members and
provide a record and ready reference for the various proposals and versions
of the Information Communities. See http://www.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/infocomm/ic.html.
**d) Electronic Theses and Dissertations: attended one meeting in
the Spring of 2001 led by Thorny Staples and Cristina Sharretts to consider
establishing guidelines for submission of Spring 2001 electronic
dissertations. I was appointed chairman of the ETD committee to devise
stronger guidelines and proposals for the University of Virginia programs
for ETD. I have set up a web site for
this committee and proposed four basic meetings before our report in August
2001. See http://www.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/etd/etd.html
**Participated in several digital programs. Attended a
3-day international conference at the University of Virginia in early April
2001 on
Tibetan digital (or
http://faculty.virginia.edu/tibet-initiative/library/) initiatives,
partly concerned with establishing Tibetan as one of the "information
communities" under the University of Virginia digital library, with
sessions about online bibliographies, an open-ended Tibetan
encyclopedia (or
http://faculty.virginia.edu/tibet-initiative/library/encyclopedia/encyclopedia.html)
,
language instruction (or
http://faculty.virginia.edu/tibet-initiative/library/literature/literature.html)with
audio and video clips, and full-text
(or http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/tibet/index.html)
Tibetan-language materials.
Discussed, with a national library group (Committee on South Asia
Libraries and Documentation or CONSALD), the future of their newsletter and
journal, South Asia Library Notes and Queries (SALNAQ
(or http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/salnaq/2001/contentsm.html),
to put it online, setting up issues on the web for it. Solicited contents
for this e-journal among colleagues and South Asia researchers.
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5. Identify and pursue appropriate professional
development opportunities so that new skills can be developed or present
skills can be improved that will better serve library customers.
Report. ** Developed new skills, mainly by attending a
variety of training sessions: a one-week set of sessions on mark-up
language, courses on digital XLM, Lexis, audio files and use of Sirsi
work-flow. Also attended short-courses on searching in VIRGO, so I could
pass some of those skills on to my library customers.
Attended librarian meetings: two Ingenta meetings during the year
concerned with document delivery vendors; sexual harrassment session; four
sessions during the year on Tibetan online cataloging or extensive
meta-data development with Daniel McShane and professor Germano.
**Attended two conferences, participating in library organizations,
attending meetings and sessions, and learning more about librarianship.
At the two Asia conferences (Madison, Wisconsin in October 2000 and Chicago
in March 2001) participated as an executive committee member and provided a
web record of the minutes
(Minutes at http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/Lib/minutes.html).
Continue to maintain and add to the Committee on South Asia Libraries and
Documentation (CONSALD)
web site as its webmaster (CONSALD at http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/Lib/consald.html).
Co-editor of the online newsletter, South Asia News and Queries (SALNAQ or http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/salnaq/).
Continue in my elected position as a member of the national executive
committee of CONSALD for the next year.
Promoted information on research sources, persons, and events.
Because Indian history scholar Peter Heehs was interested in
Subaltern Studies and found my Subaltern
web site (or http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/subaltern/ssmap.htm)
at the University of Virginia and wanted to interview me, he travelled from
India to Charlottesville. He spent a week here researching Subaltern
materials, partially in prepration for his History and Theory
article in the fall of 2000 on Subaltern writings. Also, visiting scholar
Zoya Husan contacted me last summer (2000) to learn how to use our
library's catalog and online databases to develop bibliographies for her
interests on law and the constitution in India. Those bibliographies helped
her edit and contribute articles in two Sage books recently published
(Politics and the State in India and Contemporary India
Transitions). When prominet historian Arvind Das died
unexpectedly last summer I worked with professor Hauser to collect and
develop a web
site with a short bibliography of his works and various obituaries (See
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/arvindndas.html.
Furthering digital resrouces, I continued to encourage various
authors, including Ranajit Guha through Sugata Bose for his
Association of Asian Studies conference talk, Harold Gould for his
scholarly articles, and Walter Hauser in his paperback editions with
new introductions, to ask publishers if they were willing to make
electronic editions of various works available besides the print editions.
In the same vein, I contacted the Page-Barbour lecture series about
audio recording and digitizeing the texts of the lectures and received
enthusiastic approval and support from this year's organizers and lecturer;
as a result I will be able to make available online the Spring 2001
lectures by Cambridge University professor of Indian history,
Christopher A. Bayly, in audio-streaming and digital full-text.
**When requested, I provided bibliographic and other detailed information
to the writer of the entry for the new state of Chhattisgarh in India for
the World Book Encyclopedia, especially on the area of Bastar (in
March and April 2001).
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7. Additional.
Gifts. **Worked throughout the year to further the addition and
integration of the donation of the valued Chubak colection Persian
materials (or http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/farsi/home2.html)to the University of Virginia.
Helped develop and get approval of the Chubak bookplate; and
to begin and complete the Feb-April 2001 photocopy of title
pages for outsourcing the cataloging for this material.
Arranged for and accompanied a Persian professor to help
with this process on two occasions in the Alderman basement.
Approved the first cataloging set of these materials in
April 2001.
**Center for South Asian Studies. Attended weekly seminars and
special programs of the Center in order to keep abreast of scholarly
activities among those customers. Contributed with N. Thokmey to two
newsletter issues, informing about library initiatives, services, and
resources. Managed the Center's library fund to acquire their
materials which faculty and students requested.
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--Philip McEldowney, May 2001.
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