10K FY2012 scanning fund

October 29, 2012

THIS PAGE IS A DRAFT under review by the BHL Collections Committee

If you would like to include your wiki signature with your questions/comments, please use 4 tildas "- lipscombb Oct 29, 2012"

$10,000 BHL Scanning Allocation Recommendation

It is the recommendation of the BHL Collections Committee that the $10,000 scanning allotment for FY2012 be used to cover the cost of scanning for all content related to issues marked as "Priority: Major" in Gemini. These Gemini issues are either:

Titles where we have obtained permission from the copyright holder for scanning
Titles identified as priority serial titles as part of the Collections Committee’s review of high impact Botany & Zoology titles

There are a total of 97 issues marked as "Priority: Major" in the Gemini system. 45 issues are permissions, 52 are related to bot & zoo priority serials. Estimated scanning costs for these issues = $65,262

Based on the following formula:

45 Permissions titles
+ ~104 bot/zoo serial titles (many of these issues may include preceding and succeeding titles)
X 2 (average number of volumes/title)
X 365 (average number of pages/volume)
X $0.30/page estimated scanning cost
= $65,262

BHL collection as of 10/29/12: 57,113 titles | 108,774 volumes | 39,707,513 pages

Average number of volumes/title = 2
Average number of pages/volume = 365

Cost estimates may be over estimated as digitization of the Botany and Zoology serial priority titles has been underway since October 2010. At present, there may only be a handful of volumes left to be scanned for each title. The status of these 52 Gemini issues requires further review.
As new permissions titles are acquired, these titles will add to the major priority issues in Gemini.

It is understood that only Steering Committee members will be able to charge to the $10K scanning pool and that the pool will be centrally managed. Smithsonian Libraries (are there other BHL member institutions?) will not draw from the $10K scanning pool as they have separate digitization funding.

Questions/Comments

From Don Wheeler:
RE: $10K scanning recommendations:

The methodology for identifying the priority titles NOT in BHL sounds solid and seem to be in place (right?).
I'm in favor of following through with Martin and Bianca's recommendation to use the $10K to scan priority titles NOT in BHL currently, with the following additional thoughts:
1.Permissions titles should be highest priority : these titles probably don't exist scanned elsewhere or won't be soon. BHL would be the only venue for access. This could also encourage other societies and publishers to grant permissions to BHL.
2.Other priority titles might exist elsewhere or will soon (IA ingest from other scanning projects); these titles, if in BHL member libraries, might be included in other, local, scanning projects that will then be added to BHL (via Macaw for example). This idea from knowing that NYBG is scanning titles from other granted projects (for example).

--Gilbert, Matt, Judy, Joe, Becky agreed