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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