[Yulcat-l] FW: Introduction to the Overseas Offices

[Arakawa, Steven]

This is from the LC Cataloging Newsline.

Catalog Librarian for Training & Documentation
Catalog Dept. Sterling Memorial Library. Yale University.
P.O. Box 208240 New Haven, CT 06520-8240
(203)432-8286 steven.arakawa at yale.edu

From: Library of Congress Cataloging Newsline [mailto:LCCN at LISTSERV.LOC.GOV] On Behalf Of LCCNEditor
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2013 3:39 PM
To: LCCN at LISTSERV.LOC.GOV
Subject: Introduction to the Overseas Offices

LCCN, February 26, 2013
ISSN 2324-6464

Introduction to the Overseas Offices
By Melanie Polutta

In the introduction to ABA (http://listserv.loc.gov/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1205&L=lccn&T=0&P=137), I mentioned that the directorate administers six Overseas Offices. These offices are located in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Nairobi (Kenya), Cairo (Egypt), New Delhi (India), Islamabad (Pakistan), and Jakarta (Indonesia). (http://www.loc.gov/acq/ovop/)  The New Delhi Office also manages sub-offices in Colombo (Sri Lanka), Dhaka (Bangladesh), and Kathmandu (Nepal); and the Jakarta Office manages sub-offices in Bangkok (Thailand), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Manila (Philippines), and Rangoon (Myanmar).  The Overseas Offices are a fundamental part of ABA, starting back in 1962 when the first one was established in New Delhi. Not everyone knows of their significance due to their distance, but some of us know their importance very well! Certain ABA sections have contact with specific offices, based on geographic location. For example, my own unit, as I have described before, is the Iberia/Rio Section. As you might guess from that title, we work closely with the Rio de Janeiro Office and we are the Capitol Hill section through which its acquisitions flow. Even at a distance, after a while you get to know some of the staff by name.

The Overseas Offices do a wide variety of work. First and foremost, they tackle the difficult task of acquisitions in areas where conventional methods of buying library materials simply do not work well - or at all. They also catalog those materials and perform authority work, though each office performs  a different mix of cataloging activities.  The long-term goal is that eventually most of their acquisitions will come to the Library cataloged and shelf-ready. Another aspect of the acquisitions work is that it is done not just for the Library of Congress, but also for other institutions that wish to obtain materials from these regions of the world; this service is provided on a cost-recovery basis. The Library's Cooperative Acquisitions Program serves 80 institutions in the U.S. and 26 abroad.  Some of the offices (New Delhi and Jakarta) also do preservation work.

During November 2012, two of the field directors visited LC on Capitol Hill. I had the opportunity to interview William Kopycki, director of the Cairo Office, accompanied by Ahmed Moustafa, the Cairo Head of Serials, Binding, and Shipping; and Pamela Howard-Reguindin, director of the Nairobi Office. As time goes on, LCCN hopes to interview all six of the field directors, though that will depend on opportunity and preparation. But we are certainly not going to wait to talk about them. Just those two interviews alone gave us material for quite a few articles for the LCCN, and we plan to share them with you in the months to come. And I do hope to persuade them to do some writing for us themselves.

Just to pique your interest, one of the more fascinating topics will be about the challenges of collecting...
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