Funded by the U.S Department of Education under Title VI, Section 606,
October 1999 through September 2002

"(3) to develop new means of shared electronic access to international data;"

"(4) to 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;"

"(5) to develop methods for the wide dissemination of resources written in non-Roman language alphabets;"

"(6) to assist teachers of less commonly taught languages in acquiring, via electronic and other means, materials suitable for classroom use; and"

"(7) to promote collaborative technology based projects in foreign languages, area studies, and international studies among grant recipients under this title."

2) Need for Project

South Asian studies encompasses the subcontinent which lies south of the Himalayan range and comprises India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and the Maldive Islands. This area has been the site of major civilizations since at least 2,500 B.C. Both in geographical area and chronological expanse, the intellectual domain is enormous. The size of the subject is matched by the American contribution to the study of this region. Since 1960 scholars from North America have done more to enhance knowledge of South Asia than their colleagues from any region, save the subcontinent itself. This assessment is based on the number and quality of books and articles written, Ph.D.s awarded, courses taught, and language instruction offered. The growth of knowledge about the region has been supported by forty-one years of funding from the U.S. Department of Education for foreign language and area training. This sustained support has produced an intelligent and demanding body of scholars and policy makers with demonstrable capacity to use the languages of South Asia and comprehend the nuances of South Asian civilizations. They expect and deserve more extensive and flexible access to electronic resources in order to train succeeding generations of researchers and leaders as well as to further their own inquiries. This project will address that need.

South Asian studies in the United States has historical roots in nineteenth-century philological and religious studies, both focused on classical India. In the aftermath of World War II, however, there was a marked change. The war highlighted America’s profound ignorance about the civilizations of South Asia (as well as other world areas) and systematic efforts were made to develop programs of study, first at a few universities, but at many more by the 1960s. These new South Asia programs had distinctive intellectual characteristics and disciplinary orientations that were shaped by founding faculty. Yet, in general, there was a strong emphasis on the social sciences and regional rather than the classical languages.

The social sciences have remained vital and continue to attract the interest of new students and of scholars without backgrounds in South Asian studies. Some researchers have been engaged by the writings of South Asian scholars addressing traditional issues such as colonialism from varied perspectives. Others have been interested in more novel approaches to knowledge such as those surrounding popular culture (or public culture), cinema, and gender studies. During this period of economic liberalization and increased foreign investment, economics and political science continue to attract the attention of many. The humanities are also vital areas of research related to South Asia. As an example, scholars of regional literatures are writing new histories of the enormous and varied literary traditions in the subcontinent that challenge presuppositions of literary and language boundaries, chronological divisions, nationalism, and canon that undergirded earlier publications.

While most researchers come from a discipline – both as a departmental home and also as a methodological disposition – there is increasing interest in interdisciplinary studies and trans-regional research on South Asia. One can point to investigations about the environment, nationalism, human rights, and migration as examples of topics commanding contemporary and future attention. In addition to their wide geographical scope, these inquiries often have a global impact.

The need for this project on South Asia is acutely felt in research libraries. This is the first year in which Library of Congress "PL-480 acquisitions program" support of acquisitions from India is no longer available. With static or decreasing acquisitions budgets at many academic libraries, it has been necessary to reduce the number and variety of publications acquired from the subcontinent. More specifically, books and periodicals in South Asia's regional languages are often targeted for sharp reductions. In response to decreased acquisition budgets, consortia of U.S. research libraries are beginning to share collecting responsibilities in order to ensure that the aggregate national collection remains strong. This cooperation entails a greater reliance on inter-library loan. For less commonly consulted publications inter-library loan remains an acceptable alternative to widespread duplication in acquisition. However, for many core resources widespread demand requires alternative solutions that can provide a number of readers with important works in a timely fashion. The direct delivery of selected documents to readers via the Internet as proposed in this project is such an alternative.

Beyond the primary audiences of scholars and policy makers, other important bodies of readers will be well served by the electronic resources prepared and disseminated under the Digital South Asia Library. These include:

• businesses;
• outreach coordinators at National Resource Centers, Centers for International Business Education, and Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language programs;
• school teachers;
• governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs);
• cultural institutions, especially museums and libraries; and
• media.

Through this project, the needs of a wide array of U.S. citizens for ready access to new and unique resources will be met. (Please see Section 3 for examples of how the resources might be used.) They will be able to turn to the project's site on the World Wide Web for free and dependable access to information of the highest accuracy and integrity.

3) Significance

This project achieves significance through effectively addressing needs registered by national foundations and associations of scholars and librarians. Funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) published a review of current problems in scholarly access as well as suggested remedies entitled Scholarship, Research Libraries, and Global Publishing. Building on that report, ARL and the Association of American Universities (AAU) inaugurated the Global Resources Program (GRP). Its principal goals are to improve access to international research resources and help libraries contain costs through the creation of cooperative structures, the use of new technologies, and the expansion of international document delivery. Funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the GRP promotes a distributed, interdependent approach to collecting scholarly materials from abroad. This approach ensures more focused collection development at individual institutions resulting in access to a broader array of these often difficult-to-acquire resources. The GRP coordinates its efforts with those of other libraries and organizations that share common interests with AAU and ARL. Current GRP regional projects include: the Cooperative African Newspapers Project; the German Resources Project; the Japan Journal Access Project; the Latin Americanist Research Resources Project; and the Digital South Asia Library. Please see Appendix 6 for brochures describing the Global Resources Program and the Digital South Asia Library and the DSAL Web site at <http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/southasia/dsal.html>. As noted earlier, the Digital South Asia Library pilot project is the only one funded by the Association of Research Libraries for South Asia. During the pilot project DSAL has developed an Internet-based infrastructure for intercontinental electronic document delivery to and from selected South Asian libraries.

DSAL's large target audience will be well served by the digital resources provided. The Association for Asian Studies lists more than 760 of its members as having South Asian countries as a major focus of academic interest. In addition, many members of other scholarly associations have a primary interest in South Asia -- the American Academy of Religion, the American Political Science Association, the American Anthropological Association, and the American Oriental Society, to name a few. Looking to the larger body of citizens, the 1990 U.S. census shows that slightly more than one million Americans trace their heritage to the cultures of South Asia. DSAL resources will serve "heritage learners" among this population. Finally, those outside the U.S. will be well served by the resources freely available over the Internet. It is important to recall that the South Asian subcontinent encompasses more than 22% of the world’s population and that access to the Internet is expanding rapidly in that region.

Examples of use by Digital South Asia Library patrons, as identified in Section 2, substantiate the significance of this project. Scholars in virtually all disciplines of the social sciences and humanities will be able to consult the DSAL Web site for an array of documents, statistics, images, and bibliographic data supporting their research, teaching, and planning efforts. Drawing on the detailed descriptions of specific sub-projects in Section 4, one can predict the following scenarios of use. Economists and political scientists will use the periodical indexes to locate current articles, both in English and in the regional languages, in the on-line Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS). Thanks to this project a much richer variety of periodicals will be indexed in that pivotal reference resource. Literary scholars will also use the BAS for earlier articles, again thanks to this project’s retrospective periodical indexing. Once located in the BAS, articles in those periodicals not available in the U.S may be requested as scanned images from microfilm or paper copies in South Asia with the images delivered directly to the reader via the Internet.

Beyond the art historical and museological uses of photographs scanned from the British Library’s collection, anthropologist and historians will consult the finding aids for photographs made accessible under this project to locate images from the Anthropological Survey of India or street scenes of urban India. Professors of art will be able to project pictures of South Asian buildings in class from the DSAL Web site when discussing the architectural heritage of the subcontinent.

Businesses and government policy makers will rely on current data from the statistical abstracts of South Asian countries presented with accompanying programs for statistical analysis of the data. Criminologists with interests in jail populations, rates of crime, and size of police forces will be able to query the same abstracts to derive data from as early as 1840. They will then be able to plot the data on digital maps by interconnecting the statistics with GIS or "geographical information system" files created under this second phase of DSAL.

Language teachers will be able to direct their students to the pedagogical resources for instruction in less commonly taught languages, knowing that the best available materials created under Department of Education grants will have been converted for easy access. The same teaching resources will enable distance language learning by students not able to meet face-to-face with one of the few U.S. instructors for certain least commonly taught languages. Carefully selected on-line dictionaries will complement the grammars and readers if our complementary proposal to support their conversion is awarded. These language resources will be valued by "heritage learners" as well as others.

News reporters and others in the media will find it easy to consult background articles from full-text documents such as the Economic and Political Weekly and India Briefing.

Systems staff of ARTFL will implement the project's computational and Web delivery components in the U.S. ARTFL, an acronym for American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language, is a University of Chicago program for humanities computing and one of the first large-scale digital libraries developed on the Internet. (Please see Appendix 1 for a detailed statement on the organization and its activities.) ARTFL's involvement will ensure high quality results. Further, it is highly significant that work done under this program will draw upon the body of software previously created by ARTFL thus reducing project expenses. At the same time project funds will support development of new computer algorithms and modes of dissemination over the World Wide Web that will further augment the software library ARTFL maintains. The electronic resources created by ARTFL are shared widely throughout academic computing and will therefore serve the needs of a larger audience than this specific project.

Overseas implementation of the project is significant for its method as well as its objectives. The DSAL project builds upon and expands existing cooperative relationships, particularly in the United Kingdom and South Asia. More than a decade of close collaboration between the Center for Research Libraries' South Asia Microform Project, the University of Chicago, and the British Library's Oriental and India Office Collections have led to the preservation on microfilm of nearly 10,000 publications at the British Library. This project will extend that relationship into the realms of digitization and delivery of electronic files – files containing textual, pictorial, cartographic, and bibliographic data – to readers. While much of this work will be undertaken overseas, multi-directional flow of information is central to the DSAL model. In other words, benefits accrue in South Asia, the U.S., and elsewhere in the world. In addition to the electronic resources on the Web, one is already beginning to see the results in India of DSAL workshops held to train librarians and archivists in preservation and bibliographic access, topics inadequately addressed in university training programs for professionals.

Another element in DSAL's overseas implementation is taking concrete form as this proposal is submitted. As noted above and in Appendix 4, a new American center for South Asian libraries is under creation by the principals in this proposal. At its March meeting, the Board of the Center for Research Libraries approved incorporation of the new center in conjunction with the Digital South Asia Library. This is an extension of CRL's role in developing global resources for scholarship. At the same time, approval by the Board is a clear endorsement of DSAL's national significance.

Effective dissemination of the resulting digital resources and information about the project will enhance the project’s significance. The free DSAL Web site will allow readers around the world easy access to the texts, images, and bibliographic data created under this project. The Co-Directors will notify scholarly organizations, libraries, and the general public of progress during the course of this project by means of news notes and articles in relevant scholarly publications, academic news publications such as the Chronicle of Higher Education, postings to the listservers for South Asian scholars, and press releases to national news media. We will send information about this project to the all members of the Association for Asian Studies' Committee on South Asian Libraries and Documentation, a group including representatives of all significant North American research libraries with collections on South Asia. Updates on the project will also be sent on a periodic basis to major foreign libraries. James Nye, one of the DSAL Co-Directors and also the Director of the University of Chicago South Asia Language and Area Center, will keep other Department of Education National Resource Centers for South Asia informed of progress on this project.

4) Project Design

The project design represented in this proposal for phase two of the Digital South Asia Library builds on the earlier achievements of DSAL. Begun as a pilot project with two participating U.S. universities (Chicago and Columbia) and two sister institutions in India (the Roja Muthiah Research Library and the Sundarayya Vignana Kendram), the program is prepared to expand in a coherent fashion to include a larger body of participants, encompass a broader array of resources, define prices for membership, and work with the Center for Research Libraries as a long-term home for DSAL. The project has successfully employed a model of sustainable growth over the past two years. It will continue to use that model in the future.

As noted in the previous section, DSAL began with ARTFL's involvement in implementing computing components of the pilot project. The pilot project relied on existing computer programs as well as the extensive knowledge of Mark Olsen, the ARTFL Assistant Director, and his staff of students. During the pilot project the experimentation by ARTFL staff with deployment of database information over the Web expanded expertise at ARTFL. Those techniques and expertise are now available for future projects.

The two original sister institutions in India will continue to grow under this project, expanding to provide a larger array of digital resources while also helping to train those at new DSAL sites in the subcontinent. One of DSAL's fundamental objective is building a "new library movement" in South Asia, a new library movement more responsive to local needs and also more capable of joining in international collaborations.

The statutory standard for equitable access under Section 427 of the Department of Education's General Education Provisions Act is met through free dissemination of the project’s resources via the Internet and through wide publicity of the availability of the project’s Web site. Further, the Center for Research Libraries is an equal opportunity employer and provides equitable access to, and participation in, its programs for students, teachers, and others with special needs. As described in greater detail in Appendix 1, the Center will not discriminate on any basis prohibited by applicable federal, state or local law.

The constituent elements within this proposal include a wide variety of formats and types of documents. However, those elements can be classified into three broad categories. These categories are: full-text documents [a through d], graphics [e through f], and bibliographic information [g]. All of these categories grow out of the DSAL pilot project which was intended to develop an Internet-based infrastructure for intercontinental electronic document delivery to and from selected South Asia libraries.

(a1) ARTFL will implement these full-text presentations on the Web, drawing on their extensive experience with comparable electronic texts. The India Briefing is already available as an electronic file, so data entry will not be required.

(a2) Page images of the Economic and Political Weekly will be created and the images converted to text in India using the same approaches successfully deployed by JSTOR and other similar programs providing the full text of periodicals over the Internet. (Please see Appendix 9 for information on JSTOR.)

(a3) DSAL will develop a searchable site similar to "Thomas" <http://thomas.loc.gov/> at the Library of Congress with Unicode deployed for display of text in non-roman scripts. Some parliamentary debates from South Asian countries are currently available on official Web sites. However, text in regional languages does not display felicitously and the search engines are not robust.

(b1) Professor C.M. Naim at the University of Chicago has already given permission for DSAL to present an updated version of his highly successful 1965 publication Readings in Urdu: Prose and Poetry on the project Web site. Also, Professor Frances Pritchett at Columbia University has given permission for her forthcoming English translation of Muhammad Husain Azad’s Ab-e hayat to be presented on the Web site with the original Urdu text as one example of a program to provide parallel readers. Other grammars and readers produced at the University of Chicago and Columbia University will be converted first, followed by books produced at other South Asia centers, with preference given to the least commonly taught languages. Notably, many of these titles are out of print. At least eight titles will be converted by keying in South Asia.

(b2) At least three paleographic guides will be converted from paper to electronic resources. The scripts addressed include Grantha, Telugu, and Oriya. Conversion will take place at the Center for Research Libraries.

(b3) The DSAL Co-Directors will submit a proposal at the end of March 1999 for conversion of dictionaries in the twenty-eight modern literary languages of South Asia to Web resources. Mounting these dictionaries with links to the grammars and readers mentioned above will create a productive arena for modern and classical language instruction over the Internet.

(c1) A searchable bibliographic database of 23,050 official publications for colonial India is available at <http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/southasia/off-pubs.html>. (The site was created by ARTFL in 1998.) The period of coverage for that database will be expanded under this project to encompass publications with imprints from 1947 through the contemporary period. Statements of international holdings will be augmented through a project of the University of Oxford titled "Collaborative Collection Management and Associated Retroconversion Project for South Asian Official Publications." Please see the letter of commitment in Appendix 3 from the Indian Institute Library at the University of Oxford.

(c2) Please see the letter of commitment in Appendix 3 from the British Library covering this and other sub-project.

(c3) Cambridge University Library will donate nearly 9,000 volumes of duplicate official publications of South Asia to the University of Chicago this summer. Selected titles will be digitized in South Asia. Since titles selected may include runs of annual administrative reports, only three titles will be converted.

(c4) The South Asia Microform Project (SAMP), based at the Center for Research Libraries, will create preservation microfilm of at least 300 volumes, with the microfilming work done at the Roja Muthiah Research Library in Madras. This will build on an earlier and highly successful SAMP program to microfilm the Indian land settlement reports held by the British Library. SAMP will be engaged for preservation while DSAL is the vehicle for digital dissemination of selected titles.

(d1) At a minimum, population and area data will be converted for the period 1840 through the present. Determination of which other sections of the statistical abstracts will be converted will be made by the Selection Panel. Conventional double-keying will be used for data entry in India with an error rate not to exceed one in 5,000 characters, as specified by contract.

(d2) DSAL Co-Directors will request that statistical data be made available from each country in South Asia. Where countries are not willing to share electronic information, highly select data will be keyed from printed sources, based on the recommendations of the DSAL Selection Panel.

(e1) The Selection Panel will identify an array of contemporary and historical maps with different scales of representation.

(e2) The British Library has successfully converted some of their older catalogs of manuscript holdings. Project staff will follow similar procedures to convert the printed catalogs of India Office maps into Encoded Archival Description format, creating approximately 17,000 entries. The British Library’s collection of maps on South Asia is one of the finest in the world.

(e3) Raster images of maps will be of research quality, specifically, 300 dpi and 24-bit color. This is the standard adopted by the Library of Congress for its map digitization project. In creating the raster images, staff will take into account the results of the highly successful Oversized Color Image Project at Columbia University under a contract from the Commission on Preservation and Access. The British Library will create these digital images in London using equipment already owned. Additionally, project staff in India will experiment with conversion of selected maps to vector or GIS format. The GIS or "geographical information system" maps will comply with Open GIS Consortium standards as described in Appendix 5.

(e4) ARTFL staff have extensive experience in preparing statistical information for display on the Web and in connecting statistical and non-statistical data to create new means of understanding complex phenomena.

(f1) ARTFL staff will convert the indexes at the British Library into a searchable Web resource, comparable to the one of their creation mentioned in (c1) above. Previous grants to the British Library from the J. Paul Getty Jr. Charitable Trust and the Leverhulme Trust supported original compilation of the index file.

(f2) British Library staff will scan images in London from existing copy prints. Staff at a project site in India will add descriptive metadata to each image file and link the images to the index entries mentioned above, creating an integrated resource for readers.

(f3) As images are requested British Library staff will scan photographic copy prints, with the digital images being added to the Web sites in London and the U.S. It will be possible to scan at least 1,000 additional photographs based on requests during the three years of this project.

(g) Periodical Indexing and Electronic Delivery of Articles. Collaboration with several libraries in South Asia will include: 1) expansion of the periodical indexing program begun under DSAL's pilot phase with coverage of serials in additional languages; 2) expanded delivery of articles from South Asia via scanning from paper copies and microfilm to create page images; and 3) collaboration with the Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS) to produce better services for readers. Matching support is coming from the Global Resources Program and Columbia University's contribution of staff salaries.

(g1) In addition to further indexing of English, Tamil, and Urdu periodicals, already begun under the DSAL pilot phase, the project will expand to index key periodicals in Hindi, Nepali, and Telugu in India and Nepal. Further, the new center for South Asian libraries at the Center for Research Libraries will use some of its resources for collaborative indexing of Bengali periodicals in India. A minimum of 80,000 index entries will be created. Experience under the DSAL pilot project provides confidence that this is a realistic goal for the time and funds requested.

(g2) Project staff in India will use the Mekel Microfilm Scanner system and flatbed scanners to digitize page images for delivery to readers. Source documents will include microfilm and paper copies of periodicals in the collections of South Asian sister libraries. Ariel for Windows will be used for Internet document transmission. The system was devised by the Research Libraries Group for use with commercially available hardware and is increasingly becoming a standard for use by libraries. It permits scanning of articles, photos, and similar documents, and transmission of the resulting electronic images as e-mail attachments.

(g3) A joint initiative with the Association for Asian Studies, the producer of the Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS), will result in incorporation of text in Asian languages into the BAS database. Further, DSAL staff will assist BAS staff in implementing Unicode for delivery of index information in the future (within 2-3 years) and collaborate in developing statistical measures of Web usage. The BAS has received major support from the National Endowment for the Humanities for retrospective conversion of the early printed volumes to create the current on-line Bibliography. Its collaboration with DSAL will extend the temporal range and depth of indexing.

5) Project Personnel

The Principal Investigator and Co-Directors have extensive experience managing complex projects with federal and private funding. This is reflected in the brief curricula vitae included in Appendix 1 for Donald Simpson at the Center for Research Libraries, the Principal Investigator, and James Nye at the University of Chicago and David Magier at Columbia University, the two Co-Directors. Their aggregate experience includes direct engagement with many of the most significant digital library initiatives over the past five years, both at the level of program formulation for national bodies and management of specific projects. They hold positions of leadership on major domestic and international bodies related to area studies scholarship and librarianship. Nye has been at the University of Chicago since 1984. Magier has been at Columbia University since 1987. Both are active in South Asian studies through participation in organizations such as the Association for Asian Studies, the American Oriental Society, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the American Institute of Pakistan Studies as well as the library profession through the Committee on South Asian Libraries and Documentation and the American Library Association. Each will commit 10% of his time to the project. The Digital South Asia Library will be well entrusted to their leadership.

As noted in the preceding Section, both an Advisory Board and a Selection Panel will be constituted to ensure that decisions made during the course of the project are well matched with expectations of users. The Principal Investigator and Co-Directors will prepare a preliminary list of possible appointees to the two bodies. Those lists will contain names of respected South Asia scholars from the social sciences and humanities who make active use of project resources in their research along with representatives of other audiences targeted as users of DSAL resources. Final selection of the panel will be made by the South Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies. The British Library will appoint an additional member to each body in recognition of the central role played by that institution in this collaborative project.

A full-time Project Manager will be appointed by the Principal Investigator in consultation with the Co-Directors after a national search. Chief characteristics of the successful candidate will include academic knowledge of South Asian studies, proven skills as an administrator, and broad exposure to library needs. The Manager's responsibilities are enumerated in the Management Plan in Section 8, below.

Among the colleagues in England and South Asia collaborating on this project are: Graham Shaw, the Deputy Director of the Oriental and India Office Collections at the British Library; Dr. Gillian Evison, Director of the Indian Institution Library at Oxford University; Dr. Craig Jamieson, of the Oriental Department at Cambridge University Library; S. Theodore Baskaran, Director of the Roja Muthiah Research Library in Madras; and Dr. Atlury Murali, Senior Reader in History at the University of Hyderabad and at the Sundarayya Vignana Kendram in Hyderabad.

Computer programming and implementation of Web delivery of the project's resources will be the responsibility of ARTFL. As noted in Sections 3 and 4 above and in Appendix 1, ARTFL at the University of Chicago is a leader in developing large-scale digital technologies for library initiatives on the World Wide Web. This collaboration extends several years of fruitful engagement between South Asian scholars at Chicago and ARTFL. An average of .5 FTE will be committed over the duration of the project.

One full-time equivalent of project assistants in the U.S will be recruited from among graduate students in the University of Chicago's South Asia Language and Area Center. Students with advanced training in the regional languages of South Asia will assist with resources in the languages and scripts of the region, collaborate with computer programmers from ARTFL, and perform other work as assigned by the Project Manager.

6) Project Services

Project services will be presented to readers in a effective manner because, as noted elsewhere in this proposal, there are few other groups of computer programmers as capable as ARTFL in delivering Digital South Asia Library resources to readers over the Internet. They are leaders in the development of new technologies for dissemination of scholarly knowledge in the social sciences and humanities. Services developed by ARTFL are consistently well suited to the needs of users because ARTFL staff members are themselves both scholars with research interests and highly skilled programmers.

The DSAL Web site will be both a service and a means of accessing services. Programmers will deploy the latest technologies for the project’s electronic databases and Web pages. This will include experimentation with voice synthesizers connected to Web browsers, permitting the blind to "read" the contents of DSAL resources on the Internet. We also expect the Web site to be implemented with programming capable of detecting the type of browser used by a remote client and automatically delivering data in a fashion suited to that client.

The Web site will be a free service on which resources created under this project are accumulated. It will be possible to view documents while connected as well as retrieve documents via conventional file transfer protocols.

7) Project Resources

Conducting digitization work in collaboration with institutions in South Asia is prudent and productive. Evidence for this assertion is based on extensive previous experience at the University of Chicago in comparable projects. First, administrative staff in India at the local institutions selected as collaborating partners have proven highly efficient and professional. Second, work by staff engaged and trained for technical activities is of high quality. Third, there are many individuals with the requisite language expertise in the pool of potential employees. Fourth, the expense of salaries for staff in South Asia is considerably lower than that in the U.S. And, fifth, this collaboration with colleagues in the subcontinent provides benefits to both parties, enhancing cooperation between the U.S. and South Asia and serving as a model for other projects.

The potential for continued support is great, from future grants and from membership fees and subscriptions. During three-year grant from the Department of Education, the Co-Directors will, at minimum, approach the National Endowment for the Humanities Preservation and Access Division, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Ford Foundation for grants. As noted earlier, the specific topics addressed in these proposals are: creation of a Guide to Pakistani Periodical Publications as an on-line index to current English serial literature in the social sciences and humanities (National Endowment for the Humanities); creation of digital resources for South Asian art historical research and museology (Institute of Museum and Library Services); and creation of a union catalog of nineteenth-century South Asian publications (Ford Foundation). The Co-Directors have had excellent records of success in applications to these funding agencies.

DSAL will establish modest membership fees and subscriptions before the end of this grant. Fees assessed to U.S. member institutions will be on a sliding scale to encourage participation by smaller institutions as well as larger ones. Additionally, the Advisory Board will evaluate the impact of cost-recovery charges for access to certain DSAL services by individuals at non-member institutions.

There are several objectives of the next phase. First is establishment of new priorities for creation and delivery of a broader range of documents. Expanded participation by colleagues in South Asia when setting priorities for the next phase may lead to inclusion of scholarly resources beyond those needed for area studies research in the subcontinent. For example, electronic publications in the sciences may be delivered from the U.S. to select partners in India. The second objective will be re-evaluation of the technology used during DSAL’s second phase. Third, the project will expand our strategic alliances to include locations in other South Asian countries and more North American participants in the Digital South Asia Library program. In expanding the alliances, we will explore models for making the Digital South Asia Library program economically self-sustaining. Statistical data from the project will be analyzed to determine if the fees assessed for services are adequate to ensure the long-term survival of the program. By the time the third phase is inaugurated we expect that the Center for South Asian Libraries mentioned in Appendix 4 will be a fully constituted body and a major contributor in the creation of digital resources for DSAL.

Examples of projects already under consideration for the third phase of DSAL include the following categories:

Full-text

• Creation of an archive for electronic full-texts of newspapers from South Asia, drawing on publishers photocompositor tapes rather than the highly truncated texts now provided on the Web;
• Collaboration with Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO) to expand the range of working papers on South Asia at <http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ciao/>, with a special emphasis on NGO reports from South Asia on a highly selective basis;
• Collaboration with the Centre for Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi directed by Ashis Nandy for distribution of a database on elections in India;

Images

• Collaboration with museums to provide both data and software of value for art history and museology, such as resources for assessment of stylistic features of art works, databases to assist in determining provenance of specific art objects, software for viewing stereoscopic images over the Web, and so forth;
• Collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society in Bangalore directed by Ashish Rajadhyaksha for preparation of a digital archive on cinema and media in South Asia;

Bibliographic

• Creation of a Guide to Pakistani Periodical Literature following the approach of the widely acclaimed Guide to Indian Periodical Literature;
• Collaboration with the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names project <http://www.ahip.getty.edu/vocabulary/about_tgn.html> to add names for South Asia places to the Getty database;
• Establish a comprehensive service on dissertations from South Asia, addressing needs of authors, readers, and libraries with major features including: a pre-thesis site for posting intended thesis topics, finding aids for completed theses (including a union list of holding), an acquisition program for the best theses in paper form for CRL, preservation microfilming, and a delivery system (both via inter-library loan and via the Internet.); and
• Creation of a Web site for information on copyright in each of the South Asian countries to assist digital library projects in making informed decisions about the legal status of resources and describing best practices in working with South Asian publisher and copyright holders.

Considerable previous experience at the Center for Research Libraries, the University of Chicago, and Columbia University with comparable grants provides a high degree of confidence that the budget for the project is adequate to support the project activities. Supporting documentation for each relevant budget category is provided in Part II, Budget Documentation.

8) Management Plan

The Principal Investigator will have overall administrative responsibility for the project. Along with his staff at the Center for Research Libraries, he will provide fiscal control, arrange for sub-contracts, and make certain that the program proceeds as described in this proposal.

The Co-Directors will coordinate activities in England and South Asia with those at the Center for Research Libraries and organize and chair meetings of the project's Advisory Board and Selection Panel.

The full-time Project Manager will have overall responsibility for the project's smooth operation on a day-to-day basis. This will include work with the Principle Investigator and Co-Directors in coordinating project activities in the U.S. with those in England and South Asia, monitoring fiscal records, overseeing subcontracted work with ARTFL, and supervision of students employed as project assistants.

The Advisory Board and Selection Panel will meet annually in conjunction with the South Asia Conference held each October at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Comments from these two bodies will be central to project management and evaluation of the project both as it progresses and at its conclusion. The Board's appraisal of costs and benefits will also be crucial for planning DSAL's phase three.

ARTFL will manage the development and implementation of Web resources. Appendix 1 provides a statement of ARTFL's history of success in creation of similar on-line files and maintaining them for use by scholars and the general public.

The following table depicts management of time during the three-year project:

In assessing usage of information made available under this project we will use the widely endorsed "Guidelines for Statistical Measures of Usage of Web-Based Indexed, Abstracted, and Full Text Resources" prepared by the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC), a group that currently comprises over 90 library consortia. Expanding upon an earlier report by the JSTOR Web Statistics Task Force, the ICOLC statement was prepared to provide an international perspective on preferred practices in the licensing and purchasing of electronic information. Through the implementation of these Guidelines in this project we will be able to analyze use and frequency of use without violating an individual's privacy. It will also be possible to provide much more subtle interpretations of usage than could be achieved through reliance on crude counts of "hits" on Web sites. The guidelines cover queries (searches), menu selections, sessions or logins, instances of users turned away due to simultaneous user limits, and items examined. Other topics addressed include user, institutional, and consortium confidentiality; comparative statistics; and secure access to statistical reports via the World Wide Web. Along with assisting the evaluation of this project, statistics gathered under the ICOLC Guidelines will also provide member institutions in DSAL with data to assess the benefits of membership in the consortium.

Communication and collaboration between digital international studies projects is a major desideratum that will be considered in evaluating those projects. The Digital South Asia Library project will initiate formal communication between projects funded under Title VI, Section 606 and those supported under the Association of Research Libraries' Global Resources Program. This communication will serve the purposes of shared evaluation, exploration of synergies between the projects, and shared planning for sustained activities after project funding. DSAL expects to host a conference early in the second year of this project to assess progress made by each funded project. Initial discussions are underway with Dr. Deborah Jakubs, the Director of the Global Resources Program, and two projects funded under that program toward organizing such a conference. Two representatives from each of the Department of Education projects will be invited along with two representatives from each of the Global Resources Program projects with support from that body. A formal proposal will be presented to Dr. Jakubs for partial support of the conference if DSAL is funded by the Department of Education. Furthermore, DSAL will maintain a public Web site with information on developments of all these projects and links to the relevant project Internet resources.

The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) 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.

The Center derives approximately 90 percent of its general operating budget from annual membership fees. These fees are assessed, in part, on the basis of each member's collection size, acquisition budget, and binding expenditures. Currently, more than 170 institutions in North America are members of CRL. (A list of member institutions is appended.) The Center also administers six special microfilm projects that have participants throughout the world, which are supported primarily by subscription fees and other funding agencies.

The Center's collections of 3.7 million volumes and 1.2 million microforms originally developed from member library deposits of infrequently-used research materials. These collections are now actively managed and developed through an energetic acquisition program to develop resources in support of advanced scholarly research. The collection is comprised of five component programs:

• Global Newspapers, consisting of 6,100 foreign titles and 2,100 U.S. titles, including historically important ethnic press materials;
• International Doctoral Dissertations – More than 700,000 titles from universities outside North America, among the largest collections in the world;
• Area Studies, supporting microfilming of rare and endangered materials held in Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe, with copies of the resulting film available for loan at CRL;
• Scholarly Journals – 13,000 current titles and more than 30,000 retrospective titles from outside the U.S. especially those dealing with scientific and technical subjects;
• Subject Collections – Specialized publications dealing with a variety of areas including major microfilm sets, governmental and personal archives, publications from state governments, and historical collections including textbooks and college catalogs.

The current staff size is 56 full time equivalent (FTE) permanent positions including 24.5 FTE professional staff and 11.5 FTE student assistants. Because the Center is an independent, freestanding organization, it employs its own physical plant, personnel, and accounting staff. As a cooperative membership-based organization, the Center also maintains an administrative staff to support governance and membership activities.

The library operational units are technical services (cataloging and serials), user services (interlibrary loan, circulation, and public information services), and collection resources (stack management, acquisitions, and collection management), but do not include a reference staff or selectors. The Center's collection development policy is designed and written by the membership through a structure of committees and advisory panels, and implemented by the collection resources staff.

Information regarding the Center's holdings is made available to scholars through various on-line databases and printed guides. CRLCATALOG, the on-line public access catalog of the Center, is accessible through the Center’s Web site (http://wwwcrl.uchicago.edu) on the Internet. CRLCATALOG includes authority and bibliographic records for virtually all titles in the Center's cataloged collections: monographs, newspapers, serials, archival materials in microform, microform sets and title analytics.

The Web site also contains searchable databases for specific collections at CRL. Currently these databases cover foreign newspaper holdings, ethnic press titles, newsletters from the CCC camps, and current serials received from the states of the former Soviet Union. Other databases will be added to this group during the coming year. Information about cataloged serials, newspapers, monographs, and microform sets are also entered into the OCLC database (the Center's OCLC symbol is CRL) and the RLIN database (the Center's RLIN library identifier is ILRC). Some libraries also incorporate the Center's records in their own on-line catalogs.

The Center's Handbook is a descriptive guide to all of the Center's collection, including collections that are not cataloged by policy. It is arranged by subject, defines the scope of each collection component, and indicates which materials are cataloged. A list of Center publications, bibliographies, and guides is appended. An electronic version of the handbook is also available at the CRL Web site.

Physical access to the Center's materials is achieved primarily through interlibrary loan, and, to a lesser extent, use of the materials at the Center. Through their local library, researchers at member institutions can borrow an unlimited amount of materials for an indefinite length of time. These liberal terms of loan are intended to serve patrons working on projects requiring extensive research.

Interlibrary loan requests can be transmitted to the Center via the OCLC and RLIN ILL subsystems, CLASS OnTyme, Internet, Envoy (for Canadian libraries), telephone, telefacsimile, and mail. The Center will provide a photocopy of an article or other portion of a work when copyright compliance is indicated on the request. Also the Center will transmit photocopies via fax to improve delivery time. Fax delivery is a routine service for which there is no extra charge to members.

Under its demand purchase program, the Center will consider acquiring materials in the following categories in response to a member library's interlibrary loan request:

• archival materials in microform that record the activities of national governments;
• doctoral dissertations written at institutions outside the United States and Canada;
• newspapers in microform that add to the file of a title to which the Center currently subscribes.

The Center delivered 75,000 items from its collections in response to 44,000 interlibrary loan requests during the fiscal year 1997/98. Most interlibrary loan uses of the Center's collections are by its member institutions. Libraries that are not Center members can also borrow materials, although cost recovery fees and use limitations are imposed. Researchers from both member and non-member libraries have free and unrestricted access to materials used in the Center's reading room; in 1997/98, 565 reading room requests were processed. The Center's reading room is open Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

The Center for Research Libraries is an equal opportunity employer: hiring, promotions and transfers, and other aspects of the employment relationships are conducted on the basis of skill, qualifications, and performance without regard for race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, unfavorable discharge from military service unrelated to ability to perform the job, sexual preference, mental or physical handicap. The Center will not discriminate on any other basis prohibited by applicable federal, state or local law.

The Center also takes affirmative action to ensure equal employment opportunities. A copy of the Center's Affirmative Action Program for its current fiscal year is kept on file in the office of the Director of Administration and is available for inspection upon request.

Applicant

The Center for Research Libraries
6050 South Kenwood Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60637

Title of Project

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

Project Director

Donald Simpson
President
The Center For Research Libraries
6050 South Kenwood Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60637
773-955-4545

Funding Requested

$223,841 for the first year
$223,113 for the second year
$217,220 for the third year

Project Dates

Oct. 1, 1999 - Sept. 30, 2000 (first year)
Oct. 1, 2000 - Sept. 30, 2001 (second year)
Oct. 1, 2001 - Sept. 30, 2002 (third year)

Abstract of Proposed Project

In order to maintain and improve access to vital resources for the study of South Asia, the Center for Research Libraries proposes a three-year collaborative project to deliver digital research materials to users both in the United States and throughout the world via the Internet. It has become increasingly evident that in an era of static or decreasing budgets research libraries will 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. 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 CRL proposes that the DSAL will expand to provide over 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 the DSAL 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.

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’s collection of 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.

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 consortia of U.S. research libraries are 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.

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.

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.

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.

Part I: Application for Federal Assistance(Standard Form 424)

Part II: Budget Information – Non-Construction Programs (ED Form 524)

Itemized Budget Breakdown

Budget Documentation

Part III: Application Narrative

Abstract

Introduction

1) Meeting the Purpose of the Authorizing Statute *

2) Need for Project *

3) Significance *

4) Project Design *

5) Project Personnel *

6) Project Services *

7) Project Resources *

8) Management Plan *

9) Project Evaluation *

Appendixes

1. Institutional Context *

The Center for Research Libraries *

The ARTFL Project at the University of Chicago *

2. Curricula Vitae for Key Staff *

Donald B. Simpson *

James H. Nye *

David S. Magier *

3. Letters of Intention to Collaborate *

4. Description of Proposed Overseas Research Center *

5. Statements on Digital Standards *

Unicode *

Encoded Archival Description *

Open GIS Consortium *

The Dublin Core *

6. Global Resources Project Brochures *

7. ICOLC "Guidelines for Statistical Measures of Usage" *

8. Impact of Technology on South Asian Studies *

9. JSTOR *

Assurances

Non-Construction Programs (Standard Form 424B)

Certifications Regarding Lobbying; Debarment, Suspension and Other
Responsibility Matters; and Drug-Free Workplace Requirements (ED80-0013)

Certification Regarding Debarment, Suspension, Ineligibility and
Voluntary Exclusion – Lower Tier Covered Transactions (ED80-0014)

Disclosure of Lobbying Activities (Standard Form LLL)