¾«¶«´«Ã½

¾«¶«´«Ã½Midwinter Meeting
New Orleans Morial Convention Center, room 383
Saturday, January 19, 2002 3:00-5:30pm

Presiding: David Griffiths, IDTF Coordinator

Secretary: Kristina Waldron

David Griffiths called the meeting to order at 3:04.

Changes to the agenda.

David Griffiths moved Suzanne Edam’s report on the OECD so that it would follow Marian Shaaban’s IDTF Agency Liaisons report.

The Minutes of the 2001 Annual Conference Meeting were approved.

Committee Liaison Reports

1. Cataloging Committee, Kristina Waldron. The Cataloging Committee meets Sunday, January 20.
   
   
2. Education Committee, Angela Bonnell. The Education Committee meets Sunday, January 20. The committee’s discussions of user studies, information literacy and e-compliances (in cooperation with GITCO) will be relevant to IDTF.
   
   
3. Government Information Technology Committee, Eric Forte. GITCO meets Sunday, January 20. Work relevant to IDTF includes the CD-ROM documentation project. GITCO seeks volunteers to contribute documents that they have written about CD-ROMs, such as user guides. The GITCO e-competencies that may be of particular interest to IDTF include web skills and knowledge of statistical package software.
   
   
4. Legislation Committee, Susan Pinckard. The Legislation Committee is concerned about "take-down issues." This refers to the removal of information from the World Wide Web. The Legislation Committee is considering drafting statements about their concerns, and establishing procedures as to who has the authority to take down information from web sites, what information may be taken down, and how the information may be removed.
   
   
5. Publications Committee, Angel Batiste. Angel proposed two projects to the Publications Committee, and distributed handouts to IDTF that described these proposals. The first proposal is for the creation of a web page for NGOs and IGOs related to Sub-Saharan Africa. The second is for the publication of a guide to Africa-related U.S. government reports and Congressional hearings. In this part of the agenda, Angel described the Publications Committee’s response to the second proposal. The Publications Committee made two recommendations: that IDTF develop the project as a book including both historical information and information on all developing countries. The IDTF members discussed Angel’s second proposal. Some members felt that the information could be obtained through available indexes like Congressional Universe. The publication would have limited and specialized interest. IDTF would have to clarify the recommendations of the publications committee. Since there was no consensus on the proposal, David Griffiths recommended that IDTF would leave this proposal and continue with the liaison reports.
   
   
6. Rare & Endangered Government Publications, Jackie Druery. This committee meets Sunday, January 20. Their focus will be completing the Serial Set inventory.
   
   
7. Ad Hoc Committee on Digitization of Government Information, Chuck Eckman. The Ad Hoc Committee’s draft report contains three recommendations: first, that the GITCO website be expanded to include lists of volunteer mentors to digital imaging projects, public access to GITCO’s database of digital projects, and a resource list for digital projectssecond, that GITCO encourage digital projectsthird, that GITCO sponsor a pre-conference. Chuck asked that comments about the Ad Hoc Committee’s draft report, which is available on the Ad Hoc Committee’s web site, be directed to the Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee.
   
   
8. IFLA, Debbi Schaubman. Debbi attended the 2001 IFLA meeting in Boston. She is the new information coordinator for IFLA. IFLA is soliciting papers for the Glasgow meeting, translating into English papers presented at a previous conference, and considering plans for a workshop for the 2003 IFLA conference in Berlin.
   
   
9. David Griffiths asked for a volunteer to finish Carol Hunter’s term as liaison to the Program Committee. David hopes for a volunteer to complete the current term and serve in the next term. David asked that any interested member please speak to him.
   
   
10. The IDTF Agency Liaison Program Reports, collected by Marian Shaaban, will be appended to these Minutes. Marian distributed seven agency reports and one publisher report. Two Agency Liaisons are unable to continue their work, so Marian seeks liaisons to the OECD and the Council of Europe. At the suggestion of ITDF members, Marian would like to add ASEAN and Organization of African Unity liaisons to the program. Marian asked that any interested member contact her.
    
    
11. Suzanne Edam offered to answer IDTF members’ questions. She had given a presentation that morning quot;Where is SourceOECD Heading?"Suzanne asked that anyone who would like the notes from her speech please send her an e-mail request. She commented on the success of Turpin as distributor. Suzanne advised that a person requesting missing older issues of a periodical should e-mail the OECD Washington center. If the missing issues are the most recent issues, the person should contact Turpin. Suzanne distributed a brochure that describes SourceOECD.
    
    

Old Business

1. The IDTF members agreed that it is acceptable for David Griffiths to maintain the IDTF website.
   
   
2. David Griffiths circulated a copy of the letter sent to the UN regarding the UN Treaty Database license agreement. Gunda Trumkalne, a member of United Nations Publications who was present at the meeting, updated IDTF on the status of the license agreement. Gunda and the other members of the UN Publications Department shared librarians’ frustrations with the license agreement. The license agreement did not take into account that the librarian is not the end-user of the database and cannot be held accountable for all the actions of the user. The UN Publications Department is communicating with the UN Legal Department. The Legal Department has completed a draft of a revised license, but the Publications Department has yet to see this draft. The Publications Department will communicate with IDTF.
   
   
3. David Griffiths asked if there is interest in creating an online directory of international documents specialists. Helen Sheehy described the proposed IFLA directory, which would be very similar. Helen has, in the form of an Access database, the information gathered from responses to a letter sent by IFLA to Latin American and European institutions. In addition to names, postal addresses and e-mail addresses, the information includes areas of expertise and language abilities. Debbi Schaubman volunteered to serve as the liaison between IDTF and IFLA in the creation of the database. Sandy Peterson and David Griffiths volunteered to assist Debbi.
   
   
4. David Griffiths provided to IDTF an update to a survey conducted by Jim Church of IGO digital preservation practices and plans. After a discussion of where the survey might be published, Church Eckman made a motion that IDTF ask Jim to post the results of his survey on the IDTF website, to provide information on the criteria he used to select the IGOs he contacted, and to provide more information on the response rate. In addition, IDTF would ask Jim if it could assist in following-up on IGO responses. The motion was carried.
   
   

New Business

1. Kristina Waldron said that John Stevenson, Chair of the GODORT Cataloging Committee, is interested in integrating the IDTF Toolbox for Processing and Cataloging International and Foreign Government Documents with the Cataloging Committee’s Toolbox for Processing and Cataloging Federal Government Documents. In response to his proposal, Kristina made two suggestions. First, IDTF will continue to maintain its Toolbox as a separate product. Second, IDTF will form a toolbox working group, lead by Kristina, to assist the Cataloging Committee in the development of a new, integrated toolbox. There will be some redundancy between the integrated and IDTF toolboxes. A motion to create the toolbox working group was made and carried. Susan Pinckard and David Griffiths volunteered to join the working group.
   
   
2. Angel Batiste described the first of her proposed projects, a web page for IGOs and NGOs related to Sub-Saharan Africa. Angela estimated, conservatively, that 500 regional African IGOs would be included in the project. The Publications Committee recommended that the project include other developing countries. IDTF members discussed options and interest in the project, and the nature of HTML lists of IGOs. Such lists are useful for researchers and as collection development tools. However, the initial enthusiasm for creating these lists often fades because of the work involved. Then the sites become stale. In order to create support for the project, it was suggested that the editorial and technical infrastructure be developed. The proposed project might be a pilot for converting HTML lists to searchable databases. These searchable databases would contain metadata that would allow users to isolate IGOs by characteristics, like a focus on a region or country. David Griffiths noted the high level of interest in the project. Because of the amount of work involved, IDTF agreed to include only African organizations. David Griffiths made a motion that a working group be formed to write a report, which will be sent to IDTF members before the annual committee, to describe the workflow of the proposed project. The report would explore the possibility of a database as the result of the project, the data that might be included, and a host institution for the technological infrastructure of the project. The motion was carried, and David sought volunteers for the working group. Christof Galli, David Griffiths, Angela Batiste and Debbi Schaubman volunteered.
   
   
3. There were no ideas for a pre-conference for the 2003 Annual Conference.
   
   
4. Chuck Eckman requested that IDTF seek some acknowledgement of the many years of work and commitment of Rosemary Little. Chuck made a motion that the Chair of GODORT write a letter commemorating and praising Rosemary’s work, and that this letter be presented at the ¾«¶«´«Ã½annual conference. The motion was carried.
   
   

1. Updates on products and services Pat Finney, of the Center for Research Libraries, described projects related to CRL’s Foreign Official Gazettes Collection. The Center seeks gazettes that need to be filmed. A list of needed gazettes is available at . In addition, the CRL Foreign Official Gazettes Task Force seeks gazettes from Africa that have not yet been microfilmed. A list of needed African gazettes is at . Pat asked anyone who would be able to help the project to please contact her at CRL. Her telephone is (773) 955-4545 ext.328. Pat’s e-mail is finney@crlmail.uchicago.edu .
   
   

Andrea Morrison invited IDTF members to attend the 2 ^nd meeting of the Publications Committee on Monday. The Publications Committee hopes to establish Task Force subcommittees to help people with great ideas get their work published.

The meeting was then adjourned.