**TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION AND COOPERATION FOR FOREIGN**

**INFORMATION PROGRAM 1999-2002**

Authorized under Title VI, Part A of the Higher Education Act

**1999-2000 First Year Awards - \$1,035,000**

**American Institute for Yemeni Studies,** P.O. Box 311, Ardmore, PA
19003, Dr. Maria deJ. Ellis, Executive Director- AIYS, 610-896-5412,
<mellis@sas.upenn.edu>

**Title: American Overseas Digital Library**

The Center for Research Libraries, **6050 South Kenwood Avenue, Chicago,
IL 60637, Rebecca Moore, Project Manager (CRL) - 773-955-4545,
<moore@crlmail.uchicago.edu> ; James Nye, Project Co-Director (Univ.
Chicago) - 773-702-8430,<jnye@midway.uchicago.edu>; David Magier,
Project Co-Director (Columbia Univ.) - 212-854-3834,
<magier@columbia.edu>; James Simon, Program Officer (Area Studies)
(CRL) - 773-955-4545, <simon@crlmail.uchicago.edu>**

**Title: The Digital South Asia Library**

**Indiana University**, Main Library, W101A, 1320 East Tenth Street,
Bloomington, IN 47405-1801, Kristine Brancolini, Associate Director,
812-855-3710, <brancoli@indiana.edu>

#### 

#### Title: Russian Periodical Index Digital Project 

**Michigan State University African Studies Center,** 100 International
Center, East Lansing, MI 48824-1035, David Wiley, Program Director,
517-353-1700, <wiley@pilot.msu.edu>, Principal Investigators: Fredric C.
Bohm, <bohm@pilot.msu.edu>, 517-355-9543, Mark Kornbluh.
<Mark@hs1.hst.msu.edu>, 517-355-9300, Michael Seadle,
<seadle@mail.lib.msu.edu>, 517-432-0807, Joseph Lauer,
<lauer@pilot.msu.edu>, 517-355-2366

#### 

#### Title: Accessing African Scholarly Journals 

**University of California, Los Angeles** East Asian Studies Center
Mailcode 148703, 11266 Bunche Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1487,
Professor James Tong 310-825-3464,
[jtong@weber.sscnet.ucla.edu](mailto:jtong@weber.sscnet.ucla.edu/Andersen)
--Andersen School of Management at UCLA, 110 Westwood Plaza, Box 951481,
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1481, Professor Archie Kleingartner 310-825-2527,
[archie.kleingartner@anderson.ucla.edu](mailto:archie.kleingartner@andersen.ucla.edu)

> **Title: Providing Web Based Bilingual Access to Chinese Business
> Education Materials**

**University of Texas at Austin**, P.O. Box 7726, Austin, TX 78713-7726,
Harold Billings, Project Director, 512-495-4350. Drew Racine, General
Libraries, P.O. Box P, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78713-8916.TEL:
512-495-4350, d.racine@mail.utexas.edu; Eudora Loh, Latin American and
Iberian Bibliographer, Charles E. Young Research Library A1540Q, UCLA
Box 951575, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575. TEL: (310) 825-1125,
<eloh@library.ucla.edu>. Carolyn Palaima, ILAS Sr. Program Coordinator,
Tel: (512) 232-2408. <c.palaima@mail.utexas.edu>,
[http://lanic.utexas.edu/]{.underline}

#### 

#### Title: Latin Americanist Research Resources Project 

**University of Washington**, 3935 University Way NE, Seattle, WA
98105-6613, Michael Biggins, Project Director, 206-543-5588,
<mbiggins@u.washington.edu>

##### Title: Central Eurasian Information Source 

**University of Wisconsin**, Room 360 Memorial Library, 728 State
Street, Madison, WI 53706,Deborah Reilly, Project Director,
608-262-2566, <reilly@macc.wisc.edu>

#### 

#### Title: The Digital Asia Library Interactive Project 

**AMERICAN OVERSEAS DIGITAL LIBRARY**

**Sponsoring Institution: The American Institute for Yemeni Studies**

a 501(c)3 consortium of U.S. institutions of higher education acting,
with the cooperation of the

Council of American Overseas Research Centers and the University of
Utah\'s Marriott Library, on

behalf of itself and 10 other American overseas research centers,
representing 15 overseas research

center libraries in Europe, the Near and Middle East, South Asia, and
West Africa.

**Project Director: Dr. Maria deJ. Ellis**

Executive Director, AIYS

P.O. Box 311

Ardmore PA 19003

610-896-5412, fax 610-896-9049, e-mail: mellis@sas.upenn.edu

AIYS website: www.aiys.org

**Target Areas: Europe, the Near and Middle East, South Asia, and West
Africa**

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

**ABSTRACT**

**The Project**

In pursuit of its longstanding commitment to area studies and to the
dissemination of information resources indispensable for American
understanding of the world\'s regions, the American Institute for Yemeni
Studies (AIYS), acting for and with the cooperation of ten other
American overseas research centers (AORCs) and their libraries, and in
concert with the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC),
has obtained grant support from USED for the newly formed American
Overseas Digital Library, maintained by the University of Utah\'s
Marriott Library. AIYS is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 consortium of U.S.
institutions of higher education and is a member of the CAORC
federation, as are the other AORCs cooperating in this project. The
University of Utah is a member of most of these consortia.

American Overseas Research Centers have home bases in the United States
and operate research facilities, libraries, and offices in Europe, the
Near and Middle East, South Asia, and West Africa. An explicit element
of their mission is a long‑term commitment to the maintenance,
improvement and expansion of each institution\'s overseas libraries and
collections of research data in all formats to support the study of
these regions of the world by American scholars. Eleven American
overseas research centers, and their fifteen libraries, led by AIYS and
CAORC, propose to build on this existing infrastructure of center
libraries to create an efficient, centralized, internet‑based mechanism
for the standardization and electronic delivery of important
bibliographic and full‑text primary‑ and secondary‑source foreign
information originating in these countries. The targeted resources in
this project are vital to American research and teaching needs in area
studies, but are currently largely inaccessible to Americans or are only
available for use by scholars physically present in the center
libraries. The individual AORCs have developed and catalogued research
collections in their own libraries and have established collaborative
links with important host country educational and research institutions
and archives. Coordinated by CAORC, the overseas centers have surveyed
their technological needs, evaluated the procedures needed to improve
access to their libraries and research collections, and have developed a
master plan that will maximize the potential of the valuable foreign
information resources they control. The current proposal supports Phase
II of this plan, wherein the centers begin to leverage the research
value of these far‑flung and diverse collections and connections to
other foreign library resources by converting unique bibliographic and
full‑text data to standardized electronic form and creating a
centralized infrastructure to disseminate it via an on-line digital
library to be maintained by the University of Utah\'s Marriott Library.
The project utilizes new electronic technologies in innovative ways to
maximize the value of the unique strengths and local access of each of
the participating centers.

AIYS and the other participating AORCs, all constituent centers of
CAORC, utilize local resources, foundation and government grants, and
other third party contributions to support the needs of Americans
carrying out research in each of the host countries and regions where
they operate: Italy; Jordan; Tunisia, Morocco, and the rest of the
Maghreb; India; Egypt; Turkey; Greece; Cyprus; Israel, Yemen, and
Senegal and Francophone and Anglophone West Africa. By collaborating on
this project, the AORCs take advantage of the complementary strengths
and unique local expertise of their overseas libraries; attain a
standardized sustainable level of technological infrastructure necessary
for them to contribute continuing digital content to the newly formed,
centralized American Overseas Digital Library (AODL); support, in
dramatic new ways, the needs of the U.S. educational establishment in
area studies research and international education; take advantage of the
overlapping spheres of influence, contacts, and activities of these
libraries; and focus on unique regional and interregional resources
whose accessibility and value can only be fully exploited through this
collaborative technological approach. The University of Utah, itself a
member of many of the AORC consortia, will house the consolidated
overseas bibliographic full‑text and multimedia data, as a distinct
on-line resource using the existing web‑based library‑catalog database
operations and staff of its own library.

This project capitalizes on the interdisciplinary and multi‑regional
nature of the aggregate of the American Overseas Research Centers and
their libraries. The value of the project derives from the strength of
the collections and the new resources to be made available and is
leveraged by building upon an existing base of libraries with a proven
record of use by American research fellows, affiliates, visitors, and
research teams. The collection in each center reflects the particular
character, history, and tradition of research done there, in some cases
for more than a century. The range of resources and benefits that each
center can immediately bring to the digital library project will vary
due to their differing needs for networked infrastructural development:
the project will address these local needs to create a centralized and
interlinked electronic infrastructure that will present material that
was previously completely inaccessible or hard to find in any consistent
or standardized way. The internet‑based dissemination of the digital
library will ensure that the benefits of the local resources are made
available to a wide constituency that greatly surpasses the current
users of the collections *in situ*. Effective electronic access to this
wide variety of foreign information resources and research materials
will benefit U.S. area studies scholars at home and abroad by allowing
efficient preparation, planning, and implementation of research projects
and teaching initiatives, thus allowing them to maximize their research
time abroad and to engage in international research and teaching even
where foreign research travel is not possible. This extension of access
is particularly significant for area studies students and faculty
located at small colleges and universities beyond the traditional
constituencies of the larger federally-funded National Resource Centers
(Appendix A of the application).

The proposed project is cost‑effective because it works with existing
U.S. overseas libraries that have a long history of and mechanism for
international cooperation, are well placed with strong connections in
local governmental and academic spheres of activity to enable unfettered
collaboration, and have accumulated or have access to unique collections
of area studies resources in their world regions. The project achieves
further cost‑effectiveness by strategic application of selective
one‑time investments in infrastructure development and data conversion,
after which it will attain self‑sustainability through established
long‑term institutional support and recovery of costs from nominal fees
for system‑related services such as full‑text delivery. Administration
will be streamlined through CAORC, which already functions as the
subgranting agency charged with program coordination and supervision of
USIA and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation programs operated by its member
centers, and has a proven record of efficient program and financial
administration.

The selection of content, and the mechanics and implementation of the
digital library will be carried out in stages according to priorities
established by a broadly representative panel of regional studies
scholars and librarians already involved in Title VI-supported
scholarship.

**A[bstract]{.smallcaps}**

**The Digital South Asia Library: Electronic Access to Seminal South
Asian Resources**

**Applicant**: The Center for Research Libraries; 6050 South Kenwood
Avenue; Chicago, Illinois 60637

**Key Contact Information**

**Project Director**: Donald Simpson; President; Center for Research
Libraries

**Co-Directors**: James Nye; University of Chicago Library
\<j-nye@uchicago.edu\> 773-702-8430

> David Magier; Columbia University Libraries \<magier@columbia.edu\>
> 212-854-8046
>
> **Project Management**: James Simon; Center for Research Libraries
> \<simon@crlmail.uchicago.edu\> 773-955-4545
>
> **Computer Implementation**: Mark Olsen; University of Chicago \<
> mark@barkov.uchicago.edu\> 773-702-8687

**Project Web Site**:
\<www.lib.uchicago.edu/LibInfo/Subjects/SouthAsia/dsal.html\>

**Project Dates:** October 1, 1999 - September 30, 2002

**Overview of the Project**

The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) proposes a three-year
collaborative project to maintain and improve access to vital resources
for the study of South Asia. The project will provide the following
digital research materials to users both in the United States and
throughout the world via the Internet: 1) full-text documents such as
select journals, pedagogical resources, statistical data and government
documents; 2) electronic images such as maps and photographs; and 3)
indexes to select journals in the regional languages of South Asia.
Through this project academic researchers, business leaders, public
officials and citizens in general will be able to find and receive from
overseas by the Internet essential materials concerning South Asia not
now accessible in the U.S.

It has become increasingly evident that in an era of static or
decreasing budgets, research libraries need to develop innovative and
collaborative strategies in order to acquire and maintain the resources
necessary for research. In no area of study is this necessity more
apparent than in the case of South Asia. Given the size and diversity of
interest, both inside and outside of academia, it is clear that
cooperative acquisition alone can not provide readers with the
increasingly vital materials in South Asian regional languages or
certain highly sought after resources in an effective or timely fashion.
The proposed project addresses these issues by building upon a
successful two-year pilot project, the Digital South Asia Library
(DSAL), funded by the Association of Research Libraries' Global
Resources Program and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The Center for Research Libraries is a not-for-profit corporation
established and operated by scholarly and research institutions to
strengthen the library and information resources for research and to
enhance the accessibility of those resources. Founded in 1949, the
Center functions as a cooperative, membership based research library
dedicated to acquiring, storing, preserving, providing bibliographic
access to and lending/delivery from a collection that complements and
supplements the local collections of the major research libraries of
North America. Through its programs, the Center supports individual
member libraries in meeting their local users\' needs for research
materials.

**Authorized Activities**

The DSAL includes all seven of the "authorized activities" outlined in
the legislation providing for this grant. The DSAL will facilitate
access to resources for the study of South Asia from both the
subcontinent and elsewhere by producing an electronic index of select
journals in South Asian languages, a bibliographic database of official
government publications, an index of the Oriental and India Office
Collection's approximately 250,000 historical photographs, and a
searchable database of the cartographic holdings concerning South Asia
in the British Library. These access tools will be produced with the
collaboration of institutions and consortia in the U.S., South Asia, and
the U.K.

The DSAL will also directly deliver documents in South Asia identified
from the aforementioned access tools through the Internet to readers in
the U.S. and elsewhere. For a select number of South Asian journals the
DSAL proposes to provide full-text versions accessible over the Web.
Similarly, the DSAL will develop a site for full-text versions of
parliamentary debates from South Asia. In addition, key statistical
data, selected maps, and selected photographic images will also be
available for immediate downloading to readers through the DSAL. In
order to assist teachers of less commonly taught South Asian languages
the DSAL proposes to digitize a number of text-books, grammars and
readers previously created with government support as well as number of
dictionaries and paleographic guides. For still other material
identified by the use of the access tools of the DSAL, microfilm or
paper copies will be scanned with the cooperation of institutions in
South Asia and elsewhere to create electronic files for transmission to
patrons. At the same time, the DSAL will identify documents in need of
preservation microfilming to be carried out by collaborating consortia
such as the South Asian Microforms Project.

In order to accomplish these goals the DSAL proposes to use not only
existing software and technology, such as Ariel for windows and the
Mekel Microfilm Scanner system, that comport to existing international
standards but also to create new software. In collaboration with ARTFL
(American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language), a
leader in developing digital technologies for library initiatives, the
DSAL proposes to create software that allows the linking of statistical
data with cartographic images to create innovative visual
representations. Furthermore, the DSAL will use the experience of ARTFL
to continue implementation of the Unicode encoding standard as means of
displaying texts in the numerous scripts of the regional languages in
South Asia. For all of its proposals, the DSAL will build upon a network
of established collaborative relationships with institutions in the
U.S., the sub-continent, and Europe.

**Need and Significance**

As a site of major civilization for more than four thousand years, South
Asia continues to comprise an enormous geographical and intellectual
domain representing more than twenty-percent of world\'s population.
More than forty years of sustained government support for language
training and acquisitions has produced a sizeable body of informed
scholars whose contributions to the study of South Asia have been
unmatched outside the subcontinent itself. The Association of Asian
Studies lists more than 760 members with South Asia as a major focus of
academic interest. The number of American citizens tracing their
heritage to the subcontinent is increasing so that in 1990 one in every
two hundred Americans identified themselves as having ancestors from the
sub-continent. With government funding for acquisitions through the
Library of Congress ending this year, a consortium of U.S. research
libraries is collaborating to ensure that the aggregate national
collection of South Asian resources remains strong. However, with
interest increasing and the number of publications proliferating rapidly
the inherent dependence of cooperative acquisition upon inter-library
loan can not adequately meet the needs for certain core materials or the
less widely collected material in regional languages. The DSAL proposes
to meet the challenge outlined above as well as achieve improved levels
of coverage by providing electronic access to seminal resources from the
subcontinent for the study of South Asia over the Internet.

**Project Design**

The DSAL will continue to use the models of collaboration and sustained
growth established by the pilot project to increase participation in the
project with the eventual aim of making it a self-sustaining
institution. In the U.S. the project will rely upon the experience of
the founding institutions of the DSAL pilot project, the University of
Chicago and Columbia University, together with the Center for Research
Libraries and ARTFL to ensure that the commitment to uniform
international standards are maintained. The considerable resources and
expertise of the British Library will also be invaluable to this
project. In the subcontinent two founding members of the DSAL, the Roja
Muthiah Library and the Sundarayya Vignana Kendram, will continue to
foster cooperation among other South Asian institutions that have
pledged their support. Together with its present and future
collaborators the DSAL will enlist the aid and advice of prominent
scholars in the various disciplines involved in the study of South Asia
in order to select materials for inclusion in the project and to
evaluate its performance. The DSAL hopes to share its experience and the
expertise developed by ARTFL not only with other projects receiving
grants under this rubric but also with other research libraries in the
hopes of building a "new library movement" in South Asia responsive to
local needs and ready to join in international collaborations. The
collaborative nature of the project together with its established
quality has contributed to its success in garnering offers of support
not only from participating research institutions but also charitable
foundations.

**Resources, Management, and Evaluation**

The support requested for the DSAL is modest relative to its benefits.
Contributions of staff time and support from the participating
institutions have reduced the labor costs. The DSAL will benefit from
the expertise of motivated project assistants recruited from the
University of Chicago's South Asia Language and Area Center. In addition
computing facilities and material infrastructure are already in place in
the U.S. Travel expenses will be modest and scheduled to coincide with
national South Asia meetings. In the subcontinent, the DSAL has already
benefited from the capable administration and technically proficient
staff of its partner institutions as well as considerably lower costs
for labor and materials. The DSAL will purchase a limited amount of
special equipment needed by collaborators in South Asia. A grant from
the Department of Education will enhance the likelihood that sister
institutions in the subcontinent will also receive support from
governments and foundations in the region. Along with the present grant,
the DSAL can expect to benefit from future subscriptions and
contributions in kind from collaborating institutions, charitable
matching funds and the proven-track record of its proposed directors in
obtaining and managing grants.

Management and evaluation of the DSAL will be the responsibility of the
principal investigator, two co-directors, a project manager, advisory
board and selection panel selected under procedures outlined in the main
body of this proposal. They will assess the progress and success of the
program not only by soliciting evaluations from users but also by an
empirical consideration of the costs per transaction as well as a highly
specific computer record of resources actually used by patrons.

**Conclusion**

Building upon an established project of technical collaboration with
institutions in the U.S. and elsewhere the DSAL will maintain and
augment the resources available for the study of South Asia to the
mutual benefit of all concerned. The DSAL will particularly benefit
readers with significant and expeditious material with which to continue
and expand the body of knowledge on South Asia.

***Russian Periodical Index Digital Project***

***(Letopis' Zhurnal'nykh Statei,* 1956-1975)**

Indiana University, P.O. Box 1847, Bloomington, IN 47402-1847

Kristine Brancolini, Associate Director, Indiana University Digital
Library Program

Main Library W101A, 1320 E. Tenth Street, Bloomington, IN 47405-1801

Phone: 812/855-3710; Email: brancoli@indiana.edu

The Indiana University Digital Library Program proposes digitizing and
offering on the World Wide Web a twenty-year portion of *Letopis'
Zhurnal'nykh Statei* (1956-1975), a serial publication that indexes
Russian periodicals from 1926 to the present. It covers more than 1,700
journals, series, and continuing publications of academies,
universities, and research institutes in humanities, sciences, and the
social sciences. Yet it also covers the popular periodical literature.
As one librarian describes it in a letter of support for this project,
*Letopis' Zhurnal'nykh Statei* is "the Russian language equivalent of
*Readers Guide, Humanities Index* and *Social Sciences Index* combined."

This project will use digital technology to organize, preserve, and
widely disseminate this unique Russian information resource to students
and scholars worldwide. The index is an invaluable reference work that,
despite the vast range of topics it covers, is largely unavailable to
scholars of Russia and the former Soviet Union. Only about 15 to 20
universities in the United States have backfiles or current
subscriptions to it, and most of these holdings are incomplete. As a
reference work, the index is not available via interlibrary loan. Even
for those scholars fortunate enough to have access to selected parts of
the series, the research can sometimes be more frustrating than
rewarding. The journal series lacks an integrated index, and the indexes
it does have are of various quality, appearing at different intervals
and for different geographic regions. Searching for items manually is
cumbersome and time-consuming. Digitizing *Letopis' Zhuranl'nykh Statei*
will make this extraordinary research tool highly searchable (by
keyword, for example) and available worldwide via the Internet.

We propose digitizing the portion of the index that covers the years
1956-1975. These volumes cover an important historical period, yet were
printed on highly acidic paper which has become extremely brittle.
Consequently they now require preservation treatment. Earlier volumes
have been reprinted, but those reprints end with 1955. Digital treatment
will preserve the information recorded in the paper volumes, disseminate
more widely that information, and vastly improve the searching
capabilities. Although *Letopis' Zhurnal'nykh Statei* is a rare and
difficult-to-use periodical index, the periodicals indexed in the work
are relatively accessible. Many major universities have extensive
collections of these journals. Copies of articles are available through
interlibrary loan.

Indiana University will scan all the pages of the volumes and convert
them to computer text files using Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
software. We then will encode the text following the Standard
Generalized Markup Language (SGML) guidelines, and provide keyword and
other types of searching over the World Wide Web. The project will
digitize approximately 250,000 pages of bibliographic entries and index
entries. We propose establishing an informal partnership with
ABBYY/BitSoft, the company that developed the Russian OCR software, Fine
Reader 4.0. We will work with ABBYY/BitSoft to evaluate the software for
this application -- bibliographic data -- providing input to them that
might improve new releases of Fine Reader for future digital index
projects.

Indiana University is perfectly suited to digitize *Letopis'
Zhurnal'nykh Statei*. Not only are the university's programs in Russian
and East European Studies among the finest in the United States, but the
IU Digital Library Program has considerable expertise in projects of
this type. Consider the university's strengths: Indiana University is
home to the highly regarded Russian and East European Institute, long a
federally funded National Resource Center, that attracts students and
faculty with exceptional Russian language skills. IU's Department of
History has a particularly strong concentration of Russian specialists.
And the IU Libraries Slavic Collection, comprising more than 550,000
volumes and 1,6000 serial subscriptions, provides unique reference works
for scholars from around the nation and the world. Furthermore, the IU
Digital Library Program has proven itself a leader in mounting large
digital collections on the World Wide Web and providing sustained
support for network access to these collections. Most notable is the
*Victorian Women Writers Project*, a collection of SGML-encoded texts
that has earned national awards and recognition. IU is a member of the
Digital Library Federation and is currently administering an Institute
of Museum and Library Services grant to digitize textual, audio, and
image collections.

**A Project of Title VI SEC. 606. Technological Innovation and
Cooperation**

**for Foreign Information Access**

Michigan State University, African Studies Center

100 International Center, East Lansing, MI 48824-1035

David Wiley, Program Director/Principal Investigator

Tel: 517-353-1700 - Fax: 517-432-1209 - E-mail: \<wiley@pilot.msu.edu\>

Co-Directors:

Mark Kornbluh, Executive Director, H-NET, \<mark@hs1.hst.msu.edu\>,
517-355-9300, Fredric C. Bohm, Director, MSU Press,
\<bohm@pilot.msu.edu\>, 517-355-9543, Michael S. Seadle, Digital
Services Librarian, MSU Library, \<seadle@mail.lib.msu.edu\>,
517-432-0807 Joseph Lauer, Africana Librarian, MSU Library,
<lauer@pilot.msu.edu>\> , 517-355-2366

**Accessing African Scholarly Journals: Sustainable Electronic
Publishing and Indexing of African Journals through International
Cooperation**

***Abstract***

In collaboration with the African Studies Association (ASA), the
Michigan State University (MSU) African Studies Center, MSU Libraries,
the MSU Press, and MSU *MATRIX (with H-Net: Humanities and Social
Science Online*) propose a major project of collaboration between U.S.
and African scholars and librarians to publish journals online from
Africa. With the co-sponsorship of the African Studies Association and
guided by an International Advisory Committee drawn from the scholarly
and library communities in Africa and the U.S., the project will
increase broad academic, policy-maker, and other user access to African
scholarly journals and the research they contain that now are not widely
available in the U.S., across the globe, and even in Africa.

The project is inviting co-sponsorship by the Association of African
Universities (AAU), the African Academy of Science (AAS), and the
Council for the Development of Economic and Social Science Research in
Africa (CODESRIA).

The project aims to design an economically sustainable cost-recovery
system that provides fair recompense to African publishers and access to
U.S. scholars.

This project will undertake the following major activities:

[Electronic publication of African journals]{.underline}

1.  On a pilot basis, the project will provide global access to 10
    African scholarly journals (adding additional titles to a total of
    20 if the budget allows). The journals will be selected initially
    from the social sciences, humanities, and international development
    fields. They will be published in full-text on the worldwide web and
    in CD-ROM format, to be disseminated under the imprimatur of the
    invited participating collaborators - the African Studies
    Association, the Association of African Universities, CODESRIA, the
    African Academy of Science - and by the Michigan State University
    Press;

> The project will negotiate copyright regimes and a reasonable cost
> recovery system that is shared between the original African publishers
> and the project web publishers so as to create an economically
> sustainable and continuing electronic distribution system;

[Expanding bibliographical indexing of African journal
articles]{.underline}

The project will work to insert this African scholarship into the
relevant international bibliographical databases;

> The team will develop a plan for accessing of the corpus of African
> journal scholarship by assessing their availability in the U.S. and
> developing a proposal for a national plan for distributed acquisition
> of that African journal literature that is not now widely available in
> the U.S., specifying what electronic publishing is needed for widened
> access.

This project will implement five goals of the new Title VI *Program for
Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information
Access*, namely to:

\(1\) facilitate access to or preserve foreign information resources in
print or electronic forms;

\(2\) develop new means of immediate, full-text document delivery for
information and scholarship from abroad;

\(3\) support collaborative projects of indexing, cataloging, and other
means of bibliographic access for scholars to important research
materials published or distributed outside the United States;

\(4\) promote collaborative technology-based projects in foreign
languages, area studies, and international studies among grant
recipients under this title; and,

\(5\) develop new means of shared electronic access to international
data;

This program will implement recommendations of the national report of
the *Association of Research Libraries* and the *Association of American
Universities* for increased access by U.S. universities and libraries to
library and research materials abroad, including from Africa.

There are many and diverse U.S. audiences with an interest in obtaining
access to this journal literature from Africa, including government
researchers and development specialists, classical area studies
specialists, scholars studying comparative global issues, teachers
seeking data and analysis on particular countries and issues, and a
surprisingly burgeoning body of U.S. citizens interested in Africa. An
electronic publishing project to meet the needs of these important U.S.
constituencies will succeed only if it is sensitive to the concerns and
interests of African publishers and scholars.

A recent effort to increase U.S. scholarly and library access to African
theses and dissertations revealed the suspicions and resistance that
many African librarians and administrators have concerning freely
releasing materials not available in libraries in the North. Africans
often have viewed as self-serving the call for open access to the
products of African research by scholars from North America and Europe
who already have favored access to published journals, research funding,
and publishing outlets for their research findings. In a period when the
African universities and libraries are under severe financial constraint
and some institutions are in crisis, Africans understandably consider
very seriously the possibility of cost-recovery from wealthy users in
the North.

Therefore, we believe that this project of providing Internet access to
African journals will require a foundation of trust between the African
publishers and the U.S. web-publishers and a serious effort of careful
consultation with African libraries and universities with fair
negotiation on the issues of copyright and economic rights. A fair
cost-recovery system will be required to make web publishing of African
journals sustainable. We will seek to identify the common ground between
the interests of African publishers and of U.S. users to obtain access
to these scholarly works at a reasonable and fair price.

Through this plan, the African journal scholarship can be more
efficiently distributed within the scholarly community, priced
differentially to provide a benefit for African users, and develop a
more sustainable system by producing a revenue stream from electronic
journal publication that makes continued publication possible in Africa
and through the electronic outlets.

In undertaking this effort, we will benefit from the many models being
tried and tested in the young and fast-developing field of e-
publishing, particularly by those that are undertaking publication of
scholarly journals from the South. These organizations include the
*Journal Storage Project* (JSTOR) funded by the Mellon Foundation, the
*International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications*,
and the *Electronic Publishing Trust for Development*, among others
described in the proposal.

The faculty of the MSU African Studies Center have a long history of
cooperation with African universities and with the scholarly
organizations that we invite to co-sponsor this project. The leadership
of this project at Michigan State University combines five co-directors
with broad experience in scholarly publishing, libraries and their
technologies, electronic networks, and scholarship concerning Africa.

The project is designed to develop a self-financing mechanism that will
allow for non-profit sustainable online publishing of Africana journals
that will become available to U.S. users and also worldwide. MSU is
committed to continuing this project beyond the three-year limit of
federal funding under this program by exceeding the 33% match required
by the statute, and the actual match, including personnel and facilities
not costed for this grant but required by the project.

**A Project of Title VI, SEC. 606: Technological Innovation and
Cooperation for**

**Foreign Information Access Program**

The University of Texas at Austin General Libraries

P.O. Box P, Austin, TX 78713-8916

Harold W. Billings, Project Direct/Principal Investigator

Tel.: 512.495.4350 Fax: 512.495.4347 Email: billings@mail.utexas.edu

Collaborators:

Nicolas Shumway, Institute of Latin American Studies, 512.232.4537,
shumway@mail.utexas.edu

Laura Gutiérrez-Witt, Benson Latin American Collection, 512.495.4520,
lauragw@mail.utexas.edu

Duane Webster, Association of Research Libraries, 202.296.2296,
duane@arl.org

Deborah Jakubs, AAU/ARL Global Resources Program, 919.660.5846,
jakubs@acpub.duke.edu

Eudora Loh, ARL Latin Americanist Research Resources Project,
310.825.1125, eloh@library.ucla.edu

Alfredo Montalvo, Fundación Biblioteca Inca, incabook@albatros.cnb.net

**International Cooperation to Expand the Range, Accessibility, and
Availability of Research Materials for Latin Americanist Students and
Scholars**

**Abstract**

**Description of the Project**

Repeated surveys and studies have demonstrated that students and
scholars in the United States lack effective access to many scholarly
journals published in Latin America. Many of these journals are not held
in the United States. Even when they are, relatively few titles are
indexed so that users can identify the articles they need. The
Association of Research Libraries\' Latin Americanist Research Resources
Project, a consortium begun in 1994 that now encompasses some forty-two
major research libraries in the United States with strong Latin American
collections, in conjunction with the University of Texas at Austin\'s
General Libraries and Institute of Latin American Studies, proposes to
address this gap through a project to enhance and expand a web-based
journal table-of-contents database maintained by The University of Texas
at Austin-Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC). This
searchable database links directly to the participating libraries,
enabling users to electronically request copies of the articles that
they need. The project will more than triple the coverage of articles
from scholarly and academic journals published within all areas of Latin
America and the Caribbean. The project will also improve and build new
capabilities into the database, including a feature enabling users to
download or e-mail bibliographic citations and a current awareness
service geared to individual research profiles.

**Authorized Activities**

The project encompasses six of the \"authorized activities\" delineated
in the enabling language for Section 606. It will facilitate access to
print resources by providing powerful, key word searching of article
citations through a database fully accessible on the World Wide Web.
Document delivery requests will be electronically submitted and
full-text articles then delivered to users through high resolution,
electronic transmissions utilizing Ariel document delivery software.
Journals held by the forty-two U.S. participant libraries, together with
the journal holdings of new Latin American partners, will be joined
electronically by means of the project database. This database will
continue to be created through the collaborative efforts of project
participants, each of which is responsible for subscribing to a
predetermined set of Latin American journals, and then inputting the
table-of-contents information by means of a web-based template. The
participants also provide priority cataloging for their assigned
journals.

The Web database will make readily available articles in a broad range
of subjects and materials, in all languages of the Latin American
region, for classroom instruction and use. While the database now
emphasizes journals in Spanish and Portuguese, the project will expand
into regions where materials are published in French, English, and
indigenous tongues. A special effort will be made to include materials
written in the less commonly taught languages of the region, especially
Quechua and Aymara from the Andean region; Guaraní from Paraguay and
neighboring zones; dialects of Nahuatl and Maya from Mesoamerica, and
various creole dialects of the Caribbean basin.

The project, based on its successful collaborative model, will expand
beyond our national borders by applying its principles of distributed
collection resources, collaborative indexing, and electronic document
delivery to new foreign partners. The first such institution will be the
\"Fundación Biblioteca Inca,\" a private, non-profit research library
located in the Bolivian Andes which has built a collection of over 2,000
journal titles from the six Andean countries. Three additional Latin
American partners will follow in order to build electronic and
institutional connections with areas not now represented in the project.
Central America, the Caribbean basin, and the Southern Cone countries of
Uruguay and Paraguay will thereby join the Andean region, ensuring
database coverage for all of Latin America.

**Need and Significance**

Latin America is a major world region whose strong historic connections
to the United States, shared Hemispheric identity, evolving trade
relationships, and ancestral links to increasing numbers of U.S.
residents have spurred broad-based programs of research and teaching in
American colleges and universities. However, library collections to
support these programs face the ongoing challenges of poor national
bibliographies, journal indexes, and bibliographic tools; incomplete
holdings; and insufficient funds for acquisitions. Materials budgets
have not even kept up with increased book prices, while publishing
output continues to grow. Meanwhile, Latin Americanist scholarly inquiry
increasingly relies upon research resources that were once dismissed as
out-of-scope and inaccessible. A general action plan to address the
declining rate of foreign language acquisitions in U.S. libraries was
articulated in 1993, under the joint auspices of the Association of
American Universities and the Association of Research Libraries. With
funding from both participants and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the
AAU/ARL Latin Americanist Research Resources Pilot Project soon took
shape as the first of three \"demonstration projects\" to find new
solutions. The country\'s greatest Latin American libraries, along with
many others, quickly joined in, since even they were unable to acquire
the full range of Latin American publications required by their users.

The Project from the first sought to combine cooperative action with
technological innovation to improve access to Latin American journals, a
category selected in light of its significance to Latin Americanist
scholarly communication. The project thus focused on creating an
innovative, electronically searchable, Web-based table-of-contents
database. Since its 1995 start, the project has grown to encompass
forty-two libraries that have divided responsibilities to subscribe to
and contribute information from more than four hundred journals
published in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. The resultant database,
hosted at LANIC, now includes some 4,300 table-of-contents, representing
about 65,000 articles. Seventy-two percent of the journals currently
covered by the database are not indexed in any other source.

We propose to expand this database to cover journals published
throughout the region, and to add records for journal issues published
prior to the project\'s start-up date of 1995. Journals from the Andean
countries, Guatemala, and the other areas we will emphasize tend to be
particularly obscure. Even for the Argentine, Brazilian, and Mexican
journals already represented in the database, an additional 2,900 tables
of contents, or about 44,000 articles, must be added to provide complete
coverage back to 1990.

The table-of-contents index is available on the World Wide Web without
restriction to users wherever they may be. The project\'s electronic,
user-initiated request module links each article to the
project-designated holding library. Users can then easily obtain the
articles they need to consult. Additional programming, requested in this
proposal, will ensure that the database interface conforms fully to
contemporary interlibrary loan and document delivery standards. The
installation of work stations with scanners, printers, and ARIEL
software in each of the Latin American partner institutions will ensure
high quality electronic transmissions over the Internet, guaranteeing
the availability of materials not held anywhere in the United States.

The Latin American Research Resources Project represents the
overwhelming majority of Latin American studies programs in the United
States, and has taken shape with the guidance and support of
organizations representing the widest possible scholarly and research
constituency. The project\'s audience is the national community of Latin
Americanist scholars and students. In the broadest sense, however,
anyone with curiosity about the region is a potential user.

**Quality of the Project Design, Personnel and Services**

The Latin Americanist Research Resources Project was a pioneer in
utilizing electronic technology to link a distributed, cooperative
collection model with the added value of a Web-based table-of-contents
database. The project will now expand to Latin American partners, in the
process testing on an international scale both an improved and updated
electronic document delivery module and the web template for data entry.

The personnel who will carry out these activities include Latin American
area specialist librarians, library administrators, and scholars of
major Latin American studies institutions. The project\'s Advisory
Committee, which consists of seven senior scholars, library directors,
and specialist librarians, offers guidance with regard to policy and
strategy. The forty-two project bibliographers are directly involved in
day-to-day operations. Latin Americanist bibliographers, who enjoy a
long history of successful cooperative efforts, bring both experience
and confidence to their collaborative work. LANIC staff designed the
Oracle table-of-contents database and will supervise the contract
programmers who implement the database enhancements. LANIC has received
numerous awards from major Internet monitors, and was selected by the
National Endowment for the Humanities as one of the twenty best sites
for education in the humanities.

**Adequacy of Resources, Quality of Management Plan and Evaluation**

Project resources will be utilized to enhance the structure and features
of the database per se, and also to expand its coverage by means of
Latin American partnerships and additional contributions from U.S.
participants. The participant matching share for grant funds will
increase during the life of the grant, as the project builds toward
self-sufficiency at an expanded level. The senior LANIC staff
responsible for database design will provide technical support, and also
recruit and then supervise programming consultants. These consultants
will therefore be hired at a mid-range salary. Travel costs comprise the
bulk of proposed expenses to develop Latin American partnerships, which
in all cases will require on-site consultations. Payments for new
tables-of-contents are based on actual costs at The University of Texas
at Austin.

The project\'s management plan ensures full consultation between
librarians and programmers in reassessing and refining the roster of
database enhancements proposed for the second and third years. The trips
to develop Latin American partnerships will be spaced so that the
librarian coordinator can learn from previous experience. Questionnaires
and other surveys will continue to be periodically prepared in order to
assess project progress and solicit participant feedback. Statistical
reports on both database use and table-of-contents record creation will
be generated at LANIC to accurately document contracted activities. The
Advisory Committee will monitor all of these materials and suggest
changes as appropriate. Effective, flexible, cost-effective project
management will thereby be assured.

**Conclusion**

The Title VI, Section 606 call for applications has arrived at a very
opportune time. The Latin Americanist Research Resources Project is
poised to accept the new challenge of international partnerships. With
the cooperation of Latin American participants and the resources
requested in the grant, we believe we can build in three-years a unique
research tool that will cover the entire region.

***Providing Web-Based Bilingual Access***

***To Chinese Business Education Materials***

(http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/research/japan/whatsnew/china.htm)

A Joint Effort of

Beijing University Guanghua School of Management

UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management

UCLA Center for East Asian Studies

# Professor Archie Kleingartner -Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA 

110 Westwood Plaza, Box 951481

Los Angeles, CA 90095-1481

Tel: 310-825-2527 /Fax: 310-576-4935

E-mail: archie.kleingartner@anderson.ucla.edu

# Director James Tong- UCLA East Asian Studies Center 

Mailcode: 148703

11266 Bunche Hall

Los Angeles, CA 90095-1487

Tel: 310-825-3464 /Fax: 310-206-3555

E-mail: jtong@weber.sscnet.ucla.edu

## **Rong Jiang- Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA** 

110 Westwood Plaza, Box 951481

Los Angeles, CA 90095-1481

Tel: 310-825-2527 /Fax: 310-825-0218

E-mail: rjiang@anderson.ucla.edu

In partnership with the Guanghua School of Management of Peking
University and China's trade-related government agencies, the Anderson
Graduate School of Management and the Center for East Asian Studies at
UCLA jointly propose a three-year project to construct and maintain a
"Global Window: China" website to provide a one-stop, user-friendly,
internet-based business information on China. Its features include
different curricular modules that are basic in business education in
current MBA and other educational programs specializing on China. The
new website builds on and extends the "Global Window: Japan" website
created by Project Director Professor Archie Kleingartner of the
Anderson School which has won four international awards since its
construction in 1997, including the "Yahoo Pick-of-the-Week" Award, *The
Net Magazine*, and mention in the "American-on-Line Internet Business
Reference Guide".

The fundamental objective of the GLOBAL WINDOW CHINA website is to take
advantage of the dramatic diffusion of information technologies and
ongoing advance of digital technology to foster a fuller understanding
of the culturally grounded subtleties and nuances that permeate
international businesses' activities in China and to fill a pressing
need for business education and information by providing, in a single
source that is accessible through the internet both nationally and
internationally.

As we envisage, the GLOBAL WINDOW CHINA website will provide business
education materials and information on the Chinese economy, its business
practices and cultural norms, and its ongoing administrative, legal and
financial arrangement. All the topics will be consistently organized
into 12 distinct fields. Each of these fields will have hyperlinks to
existing worldwide websites, with Chinese-language full-text features
accessible with a built-in Chinese-language software that website users
can download to access Chinese language materials. The site will also
provide an electronic text and companion guides on basic business
courses on China - the Chinese economy, China's foreign trade and
investment bureaucracy, financial institutions, the legal and regulatory
framework, Chinese contractual norms, conception of intellectual
property rights, and business language terminology. In addition, it will
provide an electronic manual for the business executive in various
stages of doing business in China that are generally found in disparate
sources. These include market research, establishing contacts with
Chinese government officials and company managers, the formal procedures
and legal requirements of setting up manufacturing facilities and
representative offices in China, how to conduct business negotiation,
and disputes resolution through the court and arbitration systems.

The Website also has the following features:

Number range level0Number range level1Number range level2Number range
level3Number range level4Number range level5Number range level6Number
range level7•. The Business Guide

•. China Finance Barometer

•. China Foreign Trade Bureaucracy Directory

•. China Business Resource Center for 30 cities

We see the strengths of our web-based information source as follows:

•. Easy and Convenient Access

•. Portable Electronic Business Library

•. Instantaneous Chinese Full-Text Access

•. Depth and Timeliness

•. Downloadable, Editable Capability

•. Tool For Teaching Chinese Business Language

•. Low Cost

The main target audience of the China website are: 1) faculty and
students in U.S. business and management schools; 2) the academic and
media communities interested in China; 3) present and prospective U.S.
and international investors and traders interested in China; 4) business
service sectors (law, banking, finance, accounting, consulting,
advertising, transport) specializing on China; 5) U.S. and international
scholars, students, tourists and business travelers to China.

A consortium of four participating institutions will collaborate on this
project. The project team is headed by Professor Archie Kleingartner of
UCLA's Anderson Graduate School of Management, who creates the original
"Global Windows Program" concept. He serves as the Project Director and
Chairman of the Leadership Board. He will provide leadership and
coordination among the four participating institutions, each of which is
represented in the consortium as a Co-executive producer on the
Project's Leadership Board. Ms. Rong Jiang serves as the project manager
of the website.

Bringing China area knowledge and contacts to the project is the Center
for East Asian Studies of UCLA, which is designated by the Department of
Education as a National Resource Center for East Asian Studies. The
Center has organized, co-organized, and co-sponsored conferences,
seminars, and colloquia on China's State Council Intellectual Property
Delegation, the State Council Delegation for China's Accession to the
World Trade Organization, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Delegation led by Politburo member Li Tieying, U.S. Ambassadors James
Lilley and Nicholas Platt, Hong Kong Chief Secretary Anson Chan and
Finance Secretary Donald Tsang. Drawing on the expertise of 30 UCLA
China studies faculty members in law, education, social sciences and the
humanities, as well as those of Los Angeles' leading China-related
community and business organizations, it will serve as a co-executive
producer of the website. Its director James Tong is a member of the
Website's Leadership Board. Clayton Dube, its Outreach Coordinator and
East Asian Studies Website creator will be manager of the project team
for the Joint Center.

Among the major Chinese participating institutions is the Guanghua
School of Management of Peking University. As the premier university in
China, Peking University has access to China's finest university library
and is a remarkable storehouse of national, regional, and local
information on trade policies and practices, business law, and profiles
of Chinese consumers and producers. The Guanghua School of Management is
the leading business school in China.

The project's Advisory Board include Professor De La Torre of the
Anderson Graduate School of Management, managers for the China Services
of KMPG Peat Marwick and Deloitte and Touche, the Commercial Attache of
the Consulate-General of the People's Republic of China in L.A., Tom
Plate, East Asian columnist for the L. A. Times, and Richard Baum,
Director of the Center for Chinese Studies at UCLA.

**A CENTRAL EURASIAN INFORMATION RESOURCE:**

#### ABSTRACT

University of Washington Libraries

University of Washington Russian, East European and Central Asian
Studies Program

The Evergreen State College

South Seattle Community College

Co-Directors:

James D. West (Chair, UW REECAS Program): jdwest@u.washington.edu /
206.543.4829

Michael Biggins (UW Slavic & East European Librarian):
mbiggins@u.washington.edu / 206.543.5588

This application for funding under the Title VI Technological Innovation
and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access Program is submitted by a
consortium of educational institutions in Washington State\'s Puget
Sound Region, consisting of the University of Washington (UW), The
Evergreen State College (TESC) in Olympia, and South Seattle Community
College (SSCC). The proposal requests funding for several activities
that form parts of a long-term plan that embraces the acquisition of
information from the Eurasian area in electronic and conventional forms,
its archiving, digitization as needed, dissemination and presentation
for use by specialist and non-specialist researchers, business and
professional users, teachers, students and the general public. The
specific projects for which the Consortium is requesting Title VI
funding are parts of a coordinated plan which includes some activities
already initiated by its member institutions and progressing with
limited funding.

Access to the resource, the **Central Eurasian Information Resource**
(CEIR), will be through an interactive atlas format which will serve as
a more systematic organizing structure than any currently in use, and
promises a more general revitalization of online area studies
information delivery. The project will focus its efforts on the Russian
Federation and Central Asia, and at a subsequent stage, Eastern Europe,
the Baltic states and the Caucasus. The Russian, East European and
Central Asian Studies Center at the University of Washington's Jackson
School of International Studies, in cooperation with the UW Libraries
and other UW programs, has already made major headway in developing some
of these new REECA-related electronic information sources, and in
providing access to existing commercially provided resources. Title VI
funding will allow early completion of those parts of the CEIR project
that (1) acquire or create new electronic information, (2) broaden
access to existing electronic resources, and (3) bring both types of
resource together with original curricular materials in an online format
that can serve as a new organizational model for area studies
information pertaining to any region of the world.

The kinds of foreign information that will be acquired or digitized and
made available within the structure of the CEIR include:

-   Online subscriptions to newspapers, news services, and periodicals,
    including specialized publications dealing with business and
    economics.

-   Statistical data of many types, including economic, political and
    geographical, presented through interactive map displays.

-   Bibliographies, indexes and directories at local and regional as
    well as national levels.

-   Specialized topical maps of the region.

-   Data related to business and economics.

-   Digitized visual images, covering art, architecture, history and
    other aspects of the region.

Funding is sought for the following four groups of activities:

-   ***Acquisition and archiving of online textual information and
    numerical data***, and establishment of new sources of information,
    accelerating the completion of a program already in progress.
    Regional socio-economic data of any significant degree of definition
    are not commercially available in electronic format, and are
    difficult to acquire even in printed format. By obtaining and
    digitizing data that at present are dispersed widely among Russia\'s
    regional statistical agencies, and is generally available only in
    printed form, and even then with difficulty, the CEIR project will
    be making an important contribution to the national and
    international knowledge base on Russia\'s regions. The CEIR project
    addresses the lack of current and balanced online news from and
    about Russia\'s regions by negotiating with publishers rights to
    establish searchable, full-text archives of daily and weekly
    regional news publications on the CEIR server.

-   ***Development of an Interactive Statistical and Thematic Atlas***,
    presenting in digital map form statistical information published in
    the target countries, supplemented with other data collected by
    faculty and students of the consortium institutions. This project is
    at a prototype stage at the UW. The information made available in
    this format will cover the economy and the business world, political
    and electoral data, geography and natural resources, agriculture,
    land and water use, the environment and other themes.

-   ***Image digitization and cataloging***, using the innovative
    CONTENT multimedia database tool already developed for this purpose
    at the UW, to add a visual dimension to the study of the area. A
    substantial start has been made with a major database of the
    architecture and cities of the region; funding under this program
    will be used to enhance the technology employed in building the
    image archive, the means of search, retrieval and display, and the
    range of visual information.

-   ***Integration of foreign area information into instruction***, in
    fulfillment of the goals described in Section 606 (b). Online
    curricular materials developed as part of the CEIR project will
    enable up-to-date area information to be brought to the classroom,
    producing a catalytic effect on both the content and the
    instructional methodology of area studies courses. The greatest
    obstacle to study of the REECA region is a shortage of easily
    available materials that both appeal to non-specialists, and fulfill
    their need for detailed, immediately current information.
    Information in electronic formats helps to alleviate this problem,
    but can seldom be used in its raw state, and we attach considerable
    importance to the processing of electronic foreign area information
    for use in 'hybrid' courses that incorporate both traditional and
    online materials. The techniques developed for this educational
    purpose also make possible use of the information by a business and
    professional clientèle. We are committed to ensuring that a
    substantial proportion of the new foreign area information finds its
    way into the classroom and the boardroom.

> Very preliminary versions of several modules of the CEIR are
> accessible on the World Wide Web at
> http://weber.u.washington.edu/\~reecas/atlas/ceir-1.htm

Although the three-year project will see the development of a very
extensive original electronic resource by the Puget Sound consortium, it
is expected that institutions in the Pacific Coast Region and nationwide
will eventually contribute information acquired from the region using
their own resources. The CEIR is expected to develop a broader
sponsorship, including non-governmental organizations, business
enterprises, museums and non-academic institutions, a process that will
naturally increase its visibility and use as well as the extent of its
content.

**The Digital Asia Library (DAL)**

University of Wisconsin-Madison

(*Lead institution in partnership with University of Minnesota and Ohio
State University)*

General Library System, Room 360 Memorial Library, 728 State St.,
Madison, WI 53706.

# 

# Principal Investigator: Kenneth L. Frazier, Director of Libraries, General Library System

# Tel. (608) 262-2600, Email: <frazier@macc.wisc.edu>

# Contacts: Louis A. Pitschmann, Associate Director, General Library System

Tel. (608) 262-2795, Email: <alap@macc.wisc.edu>

**Deborah Reilly, Project Director, 608-262-2566,**
<reilly@macc.wisc.edu>

#### 

The United States has long held vital economic and strategic interests
in Asia. Such interests are likely to continue well into the
twenty-first century for economic, demographic, strategic, and political
reasons. As such, informed citizens must understand Asia and Asian
events not only from American perspectives, but also from the
perspectives of the people and governments of Asia broadly defined to
include the span of countries from the Indian subcontinent through the
Pacific Rim and China.

Beginning in 1999 the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of
Minnesota, and The Ohio State University, will join forces to create a
Web-based Digital Asia Library (DAL). The DAL will provide a Web-based
user-friendly, searchable, catalog through which users can access the
growing number of Web resources originating in Asia. It will provide the
scholarly, policy, and/or business communities with streamlined access
to Internet sites which project librarians have reviewed and evaluated
to exclude resources which are of low quality or relevance to
understanding of Asia. In doing so, DAL will establish an entry point
through which any World Wide Web user can access quality Asian materials
that too often are neither easily identifiable nor useable due to the
limitations of existing search engines.

The project has identified the research and curricular needs of the
higher education community as the focal point of resource identification
and selection, but also anticipates interest in and use of the resource
by business, government, media, and other audiences. At the end of three
years, the DAL Web site will include up to 10,000 reviewed,
authoritative, active links to Asian web sites. In addition, the DAL
partnership will work with the Association of Research Libraries and the
Association for Asian Studies to explore the viability of creating a
refereed electronic journal for Asian studies in the United States and
overseas.

The Wisconsin-Minnesota-Ohio partnership is organized around the area
studies library strengths of the research libraries of the respective
institutions. Library specialists in China and Southeast Asia at
Wisconsin, South Asia at Minnesota, and Japan at the Ohio State
University will identify, evaluate, select, and catalog on-line
documents available from a range of academic, government, and commercial
sources originating in their respective regions. During these processes,
project librarians will consult with faculty and staff affiliated with
National Resource Centers in South, Southeast, and East Asian Studies,
Centers for International Business Education and Research, and/or
National Foreign Language Resource Centers at the respective
institutions.

Overall project development will be guided by an appointed advisory
board which will ensure that project parameters and priorities meet the
needs of such centers and programs. This board will be chaired and
appointed by the principal investigator, and will include specialists in
area studies and electronic information from the partner institutions,
the Association for Research Libraries, the Association for Asian
Studies, and other bodies as appropriate.

The DAL Web site will be maintained on the University of
Wisconsin-Madison General Library System server, and will include
English-language resources and those published electronically in Roman
and non-Roman alphabets in such languages as Chinese, Japanese, Hindi,
and Thai. Materials in the DAL will support teaching and research at the
undergraduate, graduate, and faculty levels, and will be of particular
benefit to scholars who do not typically have access to the expertise of
area bibliographers or the resources of a major research library.

The catalog will include current information and data suitable for use
as reading materials and/or research resources, such as Asian
newspapers, journals, governments, and other primary documents used in
lieu of or in addition to published textbooks. It is expected that
instructors who are developing digitized reading materials for courses
in the less commonly taught languages, for which standardized texts
often are not available, will benefit from access to Asian-language
resources selected for the DAL. Other resources, particularly
English-language electronic publications, may be appropriate for use as
outreach programs and/or by the policy community.

Designed to accommodate diverse information location and retrieval
strategies, the DAL catalog will feature a user-friendly interface and
will offer three major vehicles through which users can locate
resources: hierarchically organized topical menus for browsing, searches
using pre-determined categories either singly or in combination; and,
open-ended keyword searches. It will establish links to resources that
are retrievable in one or more of the following electronic formats:
indexed references and/or full text documents that are now available as
Web publications; downloadable publications in PDF format; materials
available through on-demand document delivery services; sound; and/or
video.

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