Dear Peter

my apologies for missing another meeting. I have extended my maternity 
leave to one year and will not be back at work before January 2007. warm 
regards to all 
Yasmin


On Jul 14 2006, Peter Colvin wrote:

>MELCOM (U.K.)
>
> 
>
>Minutes of the 75th Meeting held at the Institute for Ismaili Studies on
>Wednesday 11th January, 2006.
>
> 
>
>The meeting was preceded by an illustrated talk by Paul Auchterlonie on
>Libraries in Kurdistan
>
> 
>
>Present
>
>Ahmed Abu Zayed                     Exeter
>
>Dominique Akhoun-Schwarb       SOAS
>
>
>Paul Auchterlonie                       Exeter
>
>Jasmine Ansari                          Al-Furqan          
>
>Heather Bleaney                        SOAS
>
>Simonetta Calderini                    Roehampton
>
>Peter Colvin                               SOAS
>
>Delia Cortese                             Middlesex
>
>Shah Hussain                            Institute of Ismaili Studies 
>
>Nadeem El-Issa                         Joppa
>
>Shellina Karmali                         Institute of Ismaili Studies
>
>Alnoor Merchant                        Institute of Ismaili Studies
>
>Martyn Minty                             Oxford Oriental Institute
>
>Meline Nielsen                           Birmingham
>
>Eric Ormsby                              Institute of Ismaili Studies
>
>Maureen Pinder                         Leeds
>
>Geoffrey Roper                           Instititute for Study of Muslim
>Civilizations
>
>Stefan Seeger                            Instititute for Study of Muslim
>Civilizations
>
>Waleed al-Shubaki                     Manchester
>
>Roderic Vassie                          Microform Academic Publishers
>
>Colin Wakefield                          Bodleian Library
>
>                        
>
> 
>
> 
>
>1.         Apologies for absence
>
>Yasmin Faghihi, Anne Poulson, Kathy Lazenbatt, Colin Baker, Debbie Cox,
>Mastan Ebtehaj, Humeyra Ceylan, Mamtimyn Sunuodula, MuhammadIsa Waley,
>Waseem Farooq
>
> 
>
>2.         Minutes of previous meeting and matters arising
>
> 
>
>Corrections to minutes of previous meeting included the incorrect spelling
>of Neilsen and the extension of the exhibition mentioned in item 9 to 2
>October, not December. Mingana had been incorrectly beatified. 
>
>Geoffrey Roper was the assistant editor for the Middle Eastern Section of
>the “Oxford companion to the book”.
>
> 
>
>In response to an enquiry made at the previous meeting Colin Baker reported
>by e-mail that the British Library donated the IDC Microfiche publication
>The creation of Modern Iraq, British India Office Files, c 1914-1921, and a
>number microfilms of older Iraqi publications held in the BL that were
>selected by the Iraqi National Library.
>
> 
>
>3.         The accounts were presented by Nadeem el-Issa.
>
>As requested by the meeting in Durham £500 had been transferred to the
>Reserve account from the current account. 
>
>The current sums were:
>
>Current account:  £742.19
>
>Reserve account: £2,776.49
>
> 
>
>4.       Publishing and preserving Middle East Collections.
>
> Roderic Vassie gave a power point presentation on the work of 
> “Microform Academic Publishers” in preserving and publishing 
> collections of papers, records and documents and printed works on 
> microform and in digital form. He stressed the fact that a great deal of 
> extra value was added to a collection by making it available to a large 
> number of researchers by these means, and that royalties earned by sales 
> can be ploughed back into the preservation of the collections themselves.
>
>Having worked in microform academic publishing since 2004, after a career
>that included time in the Arabic Section of the British Library and in the
>Persian Gulf setting up a library, Roderic is on the look out for materials
>in the following areas: 
>
> Oriental manuscripts, colonial administrators’ papers, missionary 
> records, early printed books and periodicals, and travellers and 
> explorers accounts.
>
> He also started a discussion on the relatives merits of microform and 
> digital means of preservation, pointing out that the former was a tried 
> medium with an already long history, while the latter was still untested 
> and already faced difficulties of the constant changes in programmes, and 
> the fact that items of information were always lost in the digitisation 
> process.
>
>
> 
>
>5.         Annotated Bibliography Project 
>
>Geoffrey Roper introduced a new project of the Institute for the Study of
>Muslim Civilisations
>
> that he is editing. This is intended the bridge the gap between 
> scholarship on Islam produced in the West and in the Muslim World itself 
> “by providing systematic bibliographic indexes and abstracts of 
> works concerning Muslim civilisations, published in most of the languages 
> and countries of the world…The first phase (2006-07) will be a 
> substantial and comprehensive annotated bibliography of modern 
> encyclopaedias on and from the Muslim world…Later phases of the 
> project will cover in turn the main fields of the humanities and social 
> sciences: history, law, philosophy, theology, education, literatures, the 
> arts, geography, anthropology, sociology, economics, politics, 
> etc.”
>
> 
>
> 
>
>6.         Possible implications for Middle Eastern Studies of the Current
>Terrorism Bill 2005-6
>
> Ahmad Abu Zayed started a discussion on the threat to libraries of 
> certain sections of the government’s bill on terrorism, and in 
> particular the clauses on the criminalizing of the disseminating of 
> materials on terrorism.
>
> In view of the fact that the bill was in the process of passing several 
> readings and was about to be presented to the Lords for the second time 
> in a few days, it was agreed that the Chairman would write to associate 
> MELCOM UK with the letter written by CILIP, and expressing its particular 
> concern as representing collections full of materials on the Middle East, 
> including materials on terrorism.
>
> 
>
>7.         Pearson Memorial Lecture
>
> The Chairman said that a speaker had been approached and had agreed to 
> deliver the next Pearson Memorial Lecture, but that a title had not yet 
> been agreed upon.
>
> 
>
>8.         MELCOM International Conference
>
>The 28th MELCOM International Conference will be in Istanbul from 19th-21st
>June 2006 and the hosting institution is the Ottoman Bank Archives and
>Research Centre in the historic neighbourhood of Galata.
>
> 
>
>9.         BRISMES Council
>
>Ian Netton would be asked to report to the next meeting by e-mail, if he
>will be unable to attend in person.
>
> 
>
>10.        Developments in member libraries and reports on periodicals
>
> 
>
>Birmingham
>
> The Mingana Collection gained the MLA’s Designated status as 
> ‘an outstanding collection of national and international 
> significance’. This has prompted the development of a strategic 
> plan which includes improving access to the collection in terms of plans 
> for digitisation of the printed catalogues, full text digitisation, 
> possibly from the microfiche of the collection, online cataloguing of the 
> manuscripts, website development and conservation; improved relationships 
> with academic departments to make better use of the collection, and 
> collaborative activities with institutions that hold similar collections; 
> and its general promotion to a wider audience.
>
> 
>
>Cambridge
>
>Yasmin Faghihi will be on maternity leave until ca. mid July. For any
>queries you can contact Catherine Ansorge [log in to unmask] who, will together
>with Dan Davies, will replace her during this time.
>
> 
>
>Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation (Cairo and Cambridge) - summarised by
>Dominique A-S.
>
> 
>
> 1; The centre of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of 
> Cambridge agreed to host The Islamic Manuscript Association (TIMA) as an 
> affiliated project; 2. Negotiations over next year’s Islamic 
> Manuscript Conference in Istanbul are underway; 3. More libraries have 
> offered their full support to TIMA (including the National Library of 
> Austria, Royal Library of Denmark, the Vatican library, and others 
> libraries in Hungary, Iran, Saudi Arabia and India); 4. Charles Melville 
> (Cambridge) has volunteered to study inter-institutional relations and 
> grant writing on behalf of TIMA; 5. The Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation 
> has agreed be responsible for the cataloguing and conservation of the 
> 60,000 mss of the National Library and Archives of Egypt, and this 
> project - called TIF-DAK Conservation Project - will be an affiliated 
> project of TIMA; 6. TIMA is considering the purchase of a Kasemaker CXD 
> box maker as part of its effort at cleaning and boxing manuscripts. Any 
> member institution of TIMA will be able to purchase the finest quality 
> acid-free archival boxes from TIMA at cost; 7. A detailed model for the 
> constitution of TIMA will be presented at next year’s conference 
> and a draft has already been circulated to be submitted to the approval 
> of the last year’s conference attendees; 8. The Thesaurus Islamicus 
> Foundation is currently working on designing a TIMA website where TIMA 
> members will have access to a forum, a newsletter, a database of Islamic 
> manuscripts libraries, and other resources.
>
> 
>
>Exeter
>
>Has acquired 1300 volumes from the Departmental Library of Bristol
>University, which are mainly primary texts in Shii studies.
>
> 
>
>Leeds
>
> Has taken out an online subscription to “Index islamicus”. 
> Roderic Vassie’s company “Microform Academic 
> Publishers” is microfilming Leeds’s manuscripts.
>
>
> 
>
>London
>
>Roehampton
>
>The University Library had suffered some flooding.
>
> Delia Cortese of Middlesex University and Simonetta Calderini of 
> Roehampton University reported that their book “Women and the 
> Fatimids n the World of Islam” which has been published by 
> Edinburgh University Press.
>
> 
>
>British Library
>
> “On the Arabic books side there is nothing major to report; things 
> are going along as normal (and I will still be doing some selection work 
> while I'm off, so there won't be a noticeable break on that side.) We 
> recently bought 8 or 9 long runs of periodical titles offered by Prof. 
> Adel Freijat in Syria (which may have been offered to other libraries 
> also). Also, if anyone is interested, the paper I presented at last 
> year's MELA Conference on Arabic Collection Development in the British 
> Library is now on-line in MELA Notes no. 78 at 
> http://www.lib.umich.edu/area/Near.East/MELANotes78/toc78.html . Since 
> then we have been buying more material from Iraq and also selecting a 
> limited number of books through the Library of Congress MECAP scheme to 
> give us access to some material from countries where we did not 
> previously have a reliable supplier. We have yet to evaluate how 
> successful this has been. We have also been buying acquisitions records 
> with books from Sulaiman's (Beirut) as a means of streamlining our 
> processing of these books, but we only had a limited amount of funding to 
> do this and this will be on hold for a while until we sort out further 
> funding. If anyone wants to know more about this they are welcome to 
> contact me ([log in to unmask]).
>
> 
>
>Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations.
>
>Stefan Seeger reported that the Institute is moving to new and larger
>premises in Bedford Square adjacent to their current premises. 
>
> 
>
>Institute of Ismaili Studies.
>
>An intensive project has been started to tidy up the catalogue in
>preparation for mounting the catalogue on the internet.
>
> 
>
>Joppa/Adab Books.
>
> “Daphne Roper of Adab Books and Nadeem Elissa of Joppa Books Ltd. 
> Have decided to merge their businesses and share their bookselling 
> expertise and customer base developed over a total period of nearly fifty 
> years.”
>
>The joint venture will be based in Byfleet in Surrey in the premises owned
>by Joppa Books Ltd. 
>
> 
>
>SOAS Library.
>
>SOAS Library’s problems with library staffing and funding have been
>temporarily solved by the restoration of two members of library staff who
>had been made redundant, and the setting up of a Library Strategic Review
>Group, made up of two external librarians and external and internal
>academics, to consider all aspects of the Library’s future.
>
> 
>
>Manchester
>
> The late Professor Derek Latham’s collection is up for sale. This 
> includes some rare books, and some 1,500 books, many on Islamic Spain. 
> 200 of his offprints have been donated to Manchester University Library. 
> A new extension to the Library is being built. Philip Sadgrove is no 
> longer the Head of the Department, which has been taken over by a 
> Persianist.
>
> 
>
>Oxford: Bodleian
>
>The restructuring in Oxford is continuing. The Bodleian will be moving to a
>new site now occupied by the Radcliffe Hospital. The Institute of Oriental
>Studies will close in 2009. Lesley Forbes will retire in two and a half
>years time, and the post of Keeper of Oriental Manuscripts will be
>abolished.
>
> 
>
>11.        Any other business. 
>
> The Conference on the Digitization of Arabic-language Book in Alexandra 
> was discussed. It appeared that many of the librarians present had been 
> invited, but that none was going to be able to attend for various 
> reasons. It was thought that Colin Baker and another librarian from 
> Oxford would be attending and that Colin should be asked to express the 
> support of MELCOM UK for the project and ask him to report back on the 
> results of the Conference.
>
> 
>
>12.        Date and place of next meeting
>
>The next meeting will be on Wednesday 26th July 2006 at Birmingham
>University.
>
> 
>
> 
>
>

-- 

Yasmin Faghihi
Near Eastern Collections
Cambridge University Library
West Road / Cambridge 
CB3 9DR  UK
Tel.: +44 1223 766368
email: [log in to unmask]