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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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, focusing this year on serials evaluation and possible cancellation; 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.

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.

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 the Electronic Theses and Dissertation intiative, on other scholarly online communication, and on various electronic services to make them easily available and useful to customers. Continue to participate in and promote the Scholarly Digital Support project.

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.

--Philip McEldowney, May 2001

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