2009 Institutional Council Meeting Minutes
Biodiversity Heritage Library Institutional Council AGENDA (DRAFT)
3/20/2009
Agassiz Room, Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology
1. Refreshments
2. Welcome – logistics Connie Rinaldo, Graham Higley 9 – 9:10
3. Review of and Reflections on Accomplishments March 2008 – March 2009 – Tom Garnett 9:10 – 9:30
Learned mass scanning and the routines very well, working with the Internet Archive. Maintaining a high throughput is difficult, metadata issues exposed, material control--massive workload. Staff across the board at multiple levels have to use their talents and intelligence and interest. We have accomplished a lot collectively!
Implemented Taxon Name finding as a search mechanism and a service to link BHL pages to other biodiversity pages. 1.8 million scientifically identified species. 1.4 mill EOL species pages (most have species name and nothing else). A few hundred thousand have significant data. About 377,000 have links to BHL--close to 1/4 of EOL species pages. Thus we are supporting the EOL, even at the current primitive level.
PDF generator is a major advance. Chris F. and his technical staff developed this quickly because it was clear not everyone wanted to download whole volumes. PDF is retained and will ultimately be stored in the BHL Article repository. 2079 have been created, 714 with article information. JSTOR has people do the articleization--we need an automated solution. We have been asked to present at multiple conferences and workshops in Science, Libraries, Technology
Nancy wondered if we have learned anything about the cost of the scanning? IA is still charging us .10/page (except foldouts) but this is probably not their full cost. Finding, pulling, deduping, quality control are staff costs not incorporated. Tom will need to document the in-kind cost description. Cathy keeps a spreadsheet of time cards to keep track of BHL staff costs. Nancy will share some information about google costs from the University of Michigan. Google is not free.
Bianca Lipscomb has been hired as Collections Coordinator--needed order and direction to collection profiles of physical collections and emerging profile of BHL. Which taxa are represented? (not necessarily species--how many hymenoptera)? Bianca will begin to create scanning collection profiles for each institution.
Staff Conference calls were a big team builder and very useful. The wiki is very active.
4. Outcomes of the March 2009 BHL Architecture Meeting – Chris Freeland 9:45 – 10 BHL Technical Architecture meeting review --Chris.
Chris offered a graphic representation of growth and use from google analytics. 38% of the visitors come from EOL--we must keep this optimal. Wikipedia is another referer--we should use this more to advertise BHL. The items added per month is a view of what IA is doing for us. We have surpassed the initial rollout numbers (links from nNYT) and do regularly. Another new feature is the new jpg server--has really improved viewing. Admin function allows staff to edit records--very important. Zipcode Zoo is now linked to BHL. Virtual LIbrary of Biology has also linked in. Must deal with redundancy problem and the article repository--policies, integration AR uses Biblio--a drupal module (used by life-desk, scratch pads) so a lot of synergy and overlap. What role does BHL play in being the repository and assigning DOIs. What does it mean--we have it. Will work with life desk to refine the requirements now that we know the technology. Active and ongoing discussions. Need to think about hardware as an international solution. China is offering storage as is Nat Hist Museum. Got a very good idea of what BHL-Europe is and will do. BHL-Europe is a best-practice network--not a scanning project but a synthesis project. There is development money to enhance infrastructure and tools. Must improve de-dupe and bid tools. 28 European libraries will be thrown into the mix and must do this better. Many of these libraries have already scanned significant amounts of literature that will be integrated into BHL. Some other state groups will provide money. Architecture is large enough that we have to start layering. Fedora, METS.
Areas that need further work: automated markup; handling variations of objects and variance.; overall interface redesign , repository;
Partnerships for ongoing developments have to balanced with the work we need to do; need to be flexible. Timeline of development on wiki with tasks already prioritized. Lots of work to do! Nancy wants to be sure that user needs get a high priority so that users come back. BHL-Europe has money to do major redesign as part of their grants. User review is part of BHL-Europe. 12 languages will be included in this initially but eventually 23 European languages. Keep in mind that a significant part of our traffic comes from outside of the BHL interface. Chris noted that there will be a test project to take content from BHL and feed it through liblime to make the librarian side better.
Graham added that he has been talking to technical people across the world--BHL is admired because we have a good, clear technical plan with priorities. Go Chris!
Graham talked about sustainable platform in Europe-- money set aside for developing "green platform supporting biodiversity" world wide--a completely green data center. 12, mill dollars (* mill pounds). Dark storage for about 100 mill pages. This will be a full mirror site for BHL and EOL. Dell and IBM providing free consultancy for specs. Airplane hanger near Swindon. China will ultimately do a full mirror for BHL and EOL, too.
5. Report of developments of the EOL - Jim Edwards 10 minutes 9:30- 9:45BHL Europe Update - Graham Higley 10 – 10:15
Consultant (Bernuth) that was asked to look at sustainability provided a thin report that did not meet expectations. Very American focus with non-governmental, foundation approach. We need to generate government-attractive bidding documents: establish EOL as backbone for teaching biology. Institutional and individual (public) membership schemes were the best other approach generated. "Adopt-a- page or book" "Preserve-a-book" "donate here" but is it sustainable? The educational use of EOL using APIs as the means of connecting people and then localizing is a pursuable model. Reuse and packaging. Need materials for promotion and stimulus in governments outside the US. More work to do and highly relevant to us. What about k-12 literature? Most fundable part of EOL is the APIs and model uses.
Stimulus package: "Put some money on the table and EOL will generate curriculum related materials"
Current model is not good for internationalization. Should be a series of constituencies (like our proposal) and then have institutional council that is a management board and then a project delivery group (smaller). Meeting in late Autumn with interested groups and review several models.
EOL Steering Committee at NBIO in Costa Rica: EOL should be able to fund EOL with funds for education.
6. Sloane and MacArthur funding -Tom Garnett
Supposed to spend down the budget by the end of the year. Building up for next round of funding, Sloane and MacArthur pulled together a review team before formal funding. Their report was due March 5 but was delayed and will require a response so it will not be in time for MacArthur discussions. MacArthur is postponing funding decision until June 28 thus they have offered us a no-cost extension but there won't be additional funding until end of July. Existing funding must be used to cover salaries for July. No guarantee that there will be no other delays. We will need to hold on the additional disbursements for scanning so that we can be sure to fund the salaries. As we get more documentation, we may be able to release scanning money. By March 30 we need a spend down plan. Eventually, we should get approximately what we got last time (3.5 mill for 2 year cycle). The new MacArthur and Sloane heads are up-to-date on EOL/BHL.
7. Strategic Plan - Nancy Gwinn See attached draft 10:50 – 12
BHL Strategic Plan draft 5 03-12-09 .doc
There is lots of room for review. Please send edits, comments. Are any pieces missing that you need? Graham noted that the management plan is missing: institutional council and staff and plan, maybe even an org chart that includes BHL funded staff and the "in-kind" labor. Nancy suggested that this be an appendix but there should be a statement in the Strategic Plan. Commitment is necessary and we need to be sure this is transparent to new members. Also need to acknowledge "in-kind" digital collection contribution. The strategic plan may need to be updated regularly and should reflect higher level goals. It should be open so that we have some flexibility. The strategic plan should provide guidance for the budget and how it is allocated. A three year rolling plan with annual updates might be helpful. This document could be shared as it is or by cutting and pasting relevant items. Graham suggested that the strategic plan is the core of our annual discussions--test our assumptions: "live document".
GOAL 5: 5.1 BHL members prepare collectively..... GOAL 5 5.2 Sustainability for the long term.
GOAL 6: Ensure that the BHL is widely known, understood and leveraged....
BHL-Europe has funding to work on sustainability; Tom has to prepare a BHL sustainability plan for EOL soon. Tom has a draft budget through 2011 but many assumptions; should be ready in April.
ACTION: Nancy, Tom and Susan will revise Strategic Plan based on discussion and send new draft.
ACTION: Tom will map the detailed task list prepared by Chris but the detail will not be in the strategic plan.
ACTION: Attain and present hard numbers for in-kind contributions.
Detail and measures should be in the appendices rather in the plan text. Unpublished, archival information should be addressed.
Member institutions should be listed in an appendix.
We should use EOL communications office as support. Message should be similar from each institution. Should have a marketing piece--glossy brochure to hand out but should be small. Need twitter and Facebook and viral marketing. Multiple dissemination models. We have multiple masters and we need to adapt the one document for all.
8. TL-2 Project Recommendation-Judy Warnement
TL-2 Recommendation Final.do
There is an electronic version that is klunky. The proposal is to connect this to BHL. Chris has ideas how it can be accomplished technically. TL-2 is a rich index to taxonomic literature--standard abbreviations, full titles, authors, where it is. Could be used as part of BH title resolver. This is content that we need. If we can scrape the information from TL-2, it would be very useful. Not sure how much of this is electronic or in spreadsheets. Mostly pdf but some parsed out data available. IAPT owns copyright to printed work. How can this be re-envisioned in electronic form. Index Animalium, Zoo Record also have important source data for abbreviations. Enables older article literature to work with DOIs etc. This should be a wider development effort for a suite of services. Nomenclator Zoologicus is available but others needed too. Tom noted that we have been actively soliciting/collecting known bibliographies....citations in these bibliographies are all over the map. If we could digitize the nomenclators, then these bibliographies could be mapped to articles. TL-2 may require re-keying--15 volumes, 12,000 pages. Total cost would be under $10,000 for re-keying. NYBG is rekeying via Digital Conversion Labs American Botanical literature and it is being done in table form ($20,000 or so). Funding and copyright permitting, we should plan for this. This is a good use of money
This needs doing and we just need the technical specs. Copyright issues need to be explored. IAPT welcomes a proposal but would need to resolve copyright with Brill.
ACTION: Judy will follow up on the copyright issues to see if there might be a relatively easy resolution.
ACTION: Cathy will send Chris Nomenclator Zoologica
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9. BHL-Europe Update-Graham Higley
Graham will send copies of the work plan (70 pages). The money will be available May 1 in Berlin. Meeting May 10-13. Almost 3.4 mill. Euros ($5 mill ). A. Management and integration of project in Europe (Berlin) B. Data (including data center) coordinated in London C. IPR-- common IPR documentation so that data elements can be moved between BHL, BHL-Europe and Europeana (led by Nancy Chillingworth, NHM) D. Communication/promotion of BHL led by (Jira Kcavek from Prague). Website that will communicate all that is going on. There will be high level integration: BHL/BHL-Europe/Europeana (cultural portal). All collections shared with Europeana.
ACTION: Next year's annual meeting should be planned for Berlin so that BHL and BHL-Europe can integrate better.
10. Internationalization of the BHL- Tom Garnett
Internationalizing the Biodiversity Heritage Library.doc China March 2009-2.doc
Chinese Academy of Sciences visit: see attached documents. China is seriously interested in creating a regional EOL; interested in mirroring EOL and BHL at Chinese Academy of Sciences; want to develop a Chinese language interface for BHL. Have digitized more than 2 mill. pages. Administratively (meaning funding) and legally separate with agreements to share content and other shared services. Thus need to include this in our governance structure somehow so that we can deal with large policy issues. See document. We should include as observers, the Program Directors for BHL-Europe and BHL-China. Can then form a task force to develop interregional BHL coordination. EOL does not dictate how we form these partnerships but we do need to coordinate. BHL-Europe is forming a legal partnership more or less a consortium. We need to move quickly because BHL-Europe is ready May 1 and China is planning on end of March for EOL. There is heterogeneity of governance among. "BHL International Collaborative" "BHL International Assembly" "BHL International Congress"
Will need a document of understanding to identify the resource sharing. What are the expectations and rules? A. Visible layers (american, multilanguage Europe, China); ability to share data B. IPR rules
Will differential access to resources become a problem?
Need to talk to Brazil and Costa Rica but will need to be tackled separately. Spain/Spanish language is well organized. Portugal not well organized and not part of BHL-Europe. In principle, the model allows nodes that can support sub-sections of BHL. Uruguay interested in contributing content. Southeast Asia needs to be pulled in at some point. Japan has done quite a bit of digitization. Taiwan has 260 mill. for digitization.
ACTION: Tom and Graham will meet with Henning and Chinese delegate to review how we will work together and the implications of the name.
ACTION: Invite observers from other BHL components and be sure we are represented in the other groups.
Move forward with internationalization by end of year.
11. New applications from Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia and the California Academy of Sciences – Tom Garnett (see attached applications) 1:30 – 1:50
Biodiversity Heritage Library 2-25.ANSP calacad
Unlikely to be any money available to these new members. We are all interested in additional funding opportunities that subsets of members may pursue. Membership at institutional level with MOU. We expect that petitioners demonstrate that they have collections that are appropriate for BHL and are deep. What do they have that BHL doesn't? Being a member of BHL has some cache and may aid in funding. Jim Hanken noted that these 2 institutions have access to money that the rest of us may not. He also suggested that we might want to regularize the process of adding members and make a formal announcement with a list of desiderata. Is there a maximum size for BHL membership? For sustainability, 19 is better than 8. May not know how big is too big but sustainability may be more possible. There are mechanisms to manage this: e.g. rotate council members to keep the number down but keeping members engaged. The reasons to include new members have to include resources that they contribute. Who are the standards applied to? Founding members as well as new members? Do members have to be part of governance? Participating in a working session is empowering. What do you get as a contributing member. What kind of capacity for digital activity is available at the institution. Acquisitions budgets can supply some money for digitization.
ACTION: Cathy will form a short-term group with Connie, Elizabeth and Doug to develop a brief membership criteria document/application/packet including opportunities for contributing membership as well as Institutional Council membership. Due April 20.
12. Dissemination Committee – Tom Garnett 2:50 – 3:10
No money in BHL budget for marketing but there is money in BHL Europe for a communications plan. Should be called Communications Group. Goals: A. Announcing technology to community of users (blog, twitter, code4lib, taxacom, Science and Nature alerts) B. Marketing of BHL
Illuminating current users, encouraging new users and cross communication with BHL-Europe. BHL Europe will have a Dissemination Committee with a communication plan by November. Align messages. Branding
Levels 1. message policy and planning (executive) and then 2. operational work--marketing/publicity, conference tracking, best practices
Have access to Bree (EOL) but no plan to get her to supply publicity. Need a discussion with Jim E. to see when she can be used. Can we use publicity firms who do pro-bono work. Must have the plan.
From Architecture meeting: gather user feedback, adding BHL into wikipedia pages, outreach for pdf articles
Perhaps convene a group of staff with an interest.
ACTION: Elizabeth will lead a publicity group. Juri should be part of this group. Tom B. will help. By May 5 will have recommendations. Conference call in early April.
ACTION: Chris and Martin will scope out the more technical dissemination group and the user research needs.
13. Sustainability Issues
Need a sustainability plan as part of Strategic Planning process. The 5 year budget is a planning exercise so that we can identify the institutional process necessary for sustainability. What does it cost to run 3 parallel data centers and who will pay? Can check industry figures but may not reflect our model.
We are worried about how we will sustain this.
ACTION: By the end of March, Tom G. will distribute a 5 year budget by the end of March, beginning of April.
Discussion during May IC conference call.
14. Remaining Problems- Graham
An opportunity: next year is the international year of Biodiversity. There are many dates next year when we will want to do some kind of announcement/media release. Should be on IC call agendas. In UK, NHM will provide leadership for international biodiversity similar to Darwin 200th. By June, NHM will have key dates for next year and we can put it on our agenda. COP 10 is in Japan.
Institutional Council calls are 2nd Thursdays at 11.
Staff calls the last Thursday of the month at 10.
15. Summary, review of action items, assignments and next steps
ACTION: Attain and present hard numbers for in-kind contributions.
