College and Research Libraries JOHN M. KINNEY The Texas Consortiulll to Microfilin Mexican Archival Resources Sixteen Texas libraries~ in June 1969~ founded the Texas Consortium, to Microfilm Mexican Archival Resources in a cooperative effort to preserve Mexican records for research. During its first year~ several microfilming projects were inaugurated in Mexico and approximately $50~000 was committed. A minimum of $160~000 will be budgeted for microfilming projects over a five-year period. Members of the Texas Consortium choose an area of Mexico in which they wish to work~ and the Consortium coordinat.es activities. ONE OF THE MOST potentially signifi- cant international cooperative programs of library acquisitions of archival rec- ords is the Texas Consortium to Micro- film Mexican Archival Resources. This organization~ composed of the Texas State Library and fifteen Texas academ- ic institutions, ca1ne into existence a lit- tle over one year ago. The ambitious, and probably impossible, goal is to mi- crofilm, in cooperation with Mexican authorities and institutions, .all of Mex- ico's archival resources: national, state, municipal, and ecclesiastical. There are many reasons for the Tex- as Consortium: many irreplaceable rec- ords in Mexico are in im1ninent danger of destruction unless they can be record- ed on microfilm; many of Mexico's ar- chives are relatively difficult to reach by American scholars; and no one institu- tion, Mexican or Texan, has the re- sources to undertake such an extensive and expensive project. BACKGROUND The idea for a Texas Consortium to n1icrofilm Mexican archival resources Mr. Kinney is Texas state archivist, Aus- tin. 376/ was conceived at a conference held at the State University of New York at Oyster Bay in October 1967.1 This meet- ing, the International Conference on Mexico on Microfilm was convened by the Office of International Librarian- ship, Learning Resources and Informa- tion Services, International Studies and World Affairs, State University of New York at Oyster Bay.2 It was represented by forty-three librarians and Latin American scholars. Texas was represent- ed by five delegates from four institu- tions. At this Oyster Bay conference, the need for cooperation in microfilming was obvious to all those in attendance. One result of this conference was plans for the formation of a national con- sortium of about ten institutions, to be called "Mexico on Microfilm," who would agree to cooperate in the micro- filming of Mexican archives, beginning in Guadalajara where especially valu- able documents are concentrated and where Mexican authorities have offered to cooperate in a microfilming program. One Texas institution, Texas Tech, elected to become a member of this na- tional consortium. The five Texas representatives 3t the Oyster Bay conference, while favoring a national consortium, felt that in a state where interest in Mexico runs deep, a Texas Consortium should be or- ganized for a long-range project to pre- serve on film the total archival records of Mexico. The Texas Consortium was not to be competitive with the national consortium or with the work of other groups or individuals. The Texas Con- sortium supplements and complements other microfilming projects throughout the twenty-nine states, two territories, and the federal district of Mexico. A special committee of SCOLAS (South- western Conference on Latin American Studies) in the spring of 1968, in San Antonio, drafted a proposal for a Tex- as Consortium to acquire Latin Ameri- can archival records on microfilm.3 In- terested librarians and Latin American scholars throughout Texas examined this document and the following spring the Articles of Agreement were adopt- ed.4 Thirteen of the seventeen Texas in- stitutions represented at the San Anto- nio meeting indicated a definite interest, made applications for membership, and chose an area of Mexico in which they wished to work. Three months later, at the organizational meeting of the founding members held in Austin on June 6, 1969, officers were elected and the Articles of Agreement were revised and accepted by the founding mem- bers.5 ARTICLES OF AGREEMENT The Texas Consortium is predicated on cooperation with other members of the Consortium and cooperation with Mexican authorities. Each member of the Consortium assumes full responsi- bility for working out the details for the microfilming project which it under- takes. No member institution has the right to bind any other institution in any transaction or to bind the Consorti- um in any manner. Microfilm acquired by each institution remains the property Mexican Archival Resources I 377 of that institution and not of the Con- sortium. Microfilm acquired by member institutions will be exchanged with oth- er institutions under the usual interli- brary loan arrangements. The members agree to make available to all participat- ing institutions in the Consortium copies of all finding aids produced, to- gether with definitive indexes of their microfilm holdings as such indexes may appear. Eventually each institution in the Consortium will have a union cata- log of all holdings of microfilm of Mexican Archival resources acquired under the program of the Texas Con- sortium. While each institutional member takes special responsibility for a geo- graphical or functional area of Mexico, the Articles of Agreement allows any in- stitution to initiate a microfilm project in any area provided that the project has b een cleared with all other member institutions working in the same place. The Consortium's objective is to record and make available in Texas, at a mini- mal cost, a maximum quantity of film of Mexican archival resources, but not to establish monopolies of special aca- demic interests. Any member institution wishing to withdraw from the Consortium may do so by giving notice to the Consortium three months b efore the beginning of the calendar year in which they will cease to participate. The present Articles of Agreement will be renegotiated at the Consortium's annual meeting in 1974. The Articles of Agreement pro- vide for an annual meeting and for special called meetings at any time. All Consortium members are urged, but not required, to budget a minimum of $2,000 annually for five years for the acquisition of microfilm recording Mexican archival resources. If the pres- ent sixteen members allocate this mini- mum $32,000 each year for the five-year period, $160,000 will go into the coop- erative acquisitions program. However, 378 I College & Research Libraries • September 1971 most members will be allocating much more than this minimum each year to the program. For example, Trinity Uni- versity has provided $36,000 for the first three years. Membership in the Consortium is open to all Texas institutions who are willing to become signatory to the Arti- cles of Agreement. At a meeting of the Texas Consortium, held in Houston on April 24, 1970, initial approval was giv- en of a membership application from an Arizona institution, pending the amendment of the Articles of Agree- ment to provide for the membership of non-Texas institutions. Unfortunately, a majority of -the Consortium member- ship has since failed to give approval for expansion of the Consortium be- yond the geographical boundaries of Texas. PROGRAMS During the first year of the Consorti- um several programs were inaugurated and approximately $50,000 was com- mitted for microfilming. The University of Texas at Austin, with one of the na- tion's most outstanding Latin American collections, assumed responsibility for the federal district and for the Nation- al Archives of Mexico. Trinity University at San Antonio ne- gotiated a contract with the Instituto Tecnol6gico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey for 3,600 rolls of 35mm posi- tive microfilm of archival records in the state of Nuevo Leon. This plan is ac- tually a subsidiation of Instituto Tec- nol6gico' s microfilm program which be- gan in 1962. These records include state .archives of Nuevo Leon and municipal, judicial, and ecclesiastical records of Monterrey and three other municipali- ties in the state of Nuevo Leon. Trinity University is investing $36,000 during the first three years of the program. Trinity University also has a summer program in which students work in Monterrey indexing rolls of the proc- essed film; the students continue the in- dexing during the winter upon their re- turn to San Antonio. Plans are being made for Instituto Tecnol6gico students to come to Texas for similar experience. Instituto Tecnol6gico is responsible for arranging the records and for filming. The librarian at Instituto Tecnol6gico is in charge of the project, assisted by two cameramen and two men responsi- ble for arranging the papers for film- ing. The Texas State Library plans to work in partnership with Trinity and Instituto Tecnol6gico in filming archives in the states of Nuevo Leon and Co- ahuila. St. Mary's University has completed a contract with the U niversidad Aut6no- ma de San Luis Potosi to film all ar- chival records-state, municipal, judi- cial, and church-in the state of San Luis Potosi. San Luis Potosi was once the largest city between Mexico City and New Orleans, and many of these records date from the early sixteenth century. The San Luis Potosi archivist will supervise the arranging and filming of the documents. Under the agreement St. Mary's will receive the negative film and San Luis Potosi will receive a posi- tive copy. St. Mary's has committed $5,000 for the first year of the project. Pan American College, Texas A. & I., Abilene Christian College, and South- west Texas State University are negotiat- ing a contract with Microfilmaciones Martineau, S.A., to microfilm archives in the state of Tamaulipas. Baylor, the University of Texas at Arlington, North Texas State University, and Tex- as Christian University are making ar- rangements to film records in Michoa- can. Texas Technological University, a member of the national consortium, is making contractual arrangements through that consortium for microfilm- ing the Guadalajara archives. 6 The University of Texas at El Paso has completed the filming of the Janos Archives in Chihuahua, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century records of the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Juarez have been filmed, and a new project in Chihuahua City is being planned. The university is currently as- sisting in a filming project in Durango. Four students spent approximately four months arranging papers in the library division of the Mus eo N acional de An- thropologia y Historia in Morelia, but this project has been discontinued, at least for the present time, because of contractual difficulties. The University of Houston and Sam Houston State University will work as partners and be responsible for records in Puebla. The University of Houston will also film records in Mexico City. At the December 1969 meeting of the Consortium a standard inventory for- mat was adopted. This inventory will include place (state, municipality, church, etc.), type of archives ( causas, criminales, bandos, decretos, etc.), dates, roll number, and source of other find- ing aids, if any. At the same time it was also agreed that each member institu- tion would produce a roll by roll list of documents-each document will be very briefly described and the number of pages given. Each member of the Con- sortium will be provided with both a general holdings inventory and the roll by roll list of documents. At the pres- ent time the only finding aids which have been produced .are those prepared by Trinity University for the munici- pal records of Cadereyta, Nuevo Leon. A complete list of the holdings of the University of Texas at Austin will be ready soon. The Instituto Tecnol6gico is continuing detailed indexing and has published some of their indexes to the municipal records of Monterrey. 7 Institutions in the Consortium are finding their membership valuable in many ways. For example, state institu- tions often find it difficult to n1ake con- tractual agreements with institutions in Mexican Archival Resources I 379 a foreign country, especially when ad- vance payment is required, but private institutions in the Consortium will be able to act as intermediaries in these contractual arrangements. Members un- able to make contacts in Mexico for microfilm projects, or unable to obtain .access to certain archives, may call upon other members for assistance. A diction- ary of Spanish abbreviations is being compiled at Trinity University to assist scholars in using microfilmed docu- ments. Thus far, most of the institutional representatives to the Consortium have been librarians and Latin American scholars rather than archivists. The re- sult has been that the terminology and principles in the Articles of Agreement have been library- rather than archive- oriented. The Consortium would be strengthened considerably by the in- volvement of more archivists. For ex- ample, in the development of finding aids for the microfilm rolls, it was not until considerable energy, time, and money had been expended that it was realized that detailed library-type index- ing was impractical. The arranging of archival records prior to filming prob- ably will leave something to be desired; recommendations and supervision by ex- perienced archivists would be invaluable here. Though it is obviously too much to expect the standards for arrangement to meet those set by the University of Texas for the Bexar Archives and those contemplated for the Nacogdoches Ar- chives in the Texas State Archives, even limited assistance by experienced archi- vists would be better than the cursory arrangement that will often be given these archival records. CoNCLUSION The goals of the Texas Consortium to Microfilm Mexican Archival Re- sources are ambitious and probably im- possible of being completely reached. But the surveying has been done, the 380 I College & Research Libraries • September 1971 foundation laid, and the structure is go- ing up. The Texas Consortium is not like the man who inherited his father's harem and who knew what was expected of him but didn't know where to begin. The Texas Consortium not only knows what is expected of it but has already begun! REFERENCES 1. Robert A. Houze, "The Texas Consortium for Microfilming the Mexican Archives," Texas Library Journal 45:121 (Fall 1969). 2. Office of International Librarianship, Learn- ing Resources and Information Services, In- ternational Studies and World Affairs, State University of New York, Oyster Bay. Inter- national Conference on "Mexico on Micro- film," Final Report. Oct. 5-6, 1967. (mimeo.) 3. Microfilm Project Committee of SCOLAS. Proposal for a Consortium of Texas Academ- ic Institutions to Acquire and Use Jointly Latin American Archival Resources on Mi- crofilm. March 1968. ( mimeo.) 4. Articles of Agreement for a Texas Consorti- um to Microfilm Mexican Archival Re- sources, Adopted March 6, 1969. ( mimeo.) 5. Articles of Agreement for a Texas Consorti- um to Microfilm Mexican Archival Re- sources, Adopted March 6, 1969, revised June 6, 1969. ( mimeo.) 6. As of January 1971 Texas Tech is the lone member of the national consortium, though five institutions are considering budgeting the required $14,000 annually so that they may become members. When the national consortium has at least five members, the microfilming project will be initiated in Guadalajara. 7. Eugenio del Hoyo, Indice del Ramo de Causas Criminales del Archivo Municipal de Monterrey, Serie Historia, 2. Monterrey: In- stitute Tecnologico, 1963, and Isreal Cavaz- oz Garza, Catalogo y Sintesis de los Protoco- los del Archivo Municipal de Monterrey 1599-1700, Serie Historia, 4. Monterrey: In- stitute Tecnologico, 1966. An index to the Salinas Victoria municipal archives is in progress.