24 November

Executive Committee
Friday 24 November 2015 11:00 EST; 16:00 GMT

Agenda
1. General Updates, including grants
2. Technical Update (WU/MK)
3. Global Updates
4. Membership (JS)
5. Planning 12-14 April 2016 Global Meeting, Annual BHL Meeting, "open session", invitation list-building.
6. AOB

On the Call: Nancy Gwinn, Martin Kafatovic, Constance Rinaldo, Jane Smith, William Ulate

Meeting Notes:
1. General Updates:

• MK reported Smithsonian awarded $491,000 grant from?? to support digitisation of field notebooks
• Update from CR on the IMLS Extending Access Grant, consortia led by Susan Fraser at New York Botanical Gardens
• MK,CR reported on IMLS Focus Conference attended by them, and Susan Fraser, Susan Lynch and Trish Rose-Sadler. The Purposeful Gaming project was demonstrated, generated considerable interest and quoted by one participant at the closing session as a particularly useful highlight of the conference.

2. Technical Updates:

• WU reported on the Purposeful Gaming project. There will be an event on 7th and 8th December 2015 to emphasise words and pages completed that augment the number of pages that can be used for the final stage of the project. A prize will be awarded to the top three "players" who achieve the most words.
• The problems and errors with Discus have been resolved and it will be in production soon.
• The recent website problems were caused by the underpinning database. PDFs were still being generated but not sent to end users. A restart was required to resolve the problems.
• Global names is also now functional again, although the speed of response still needs to be checked.

3. Global Update:

• CR reported the University of Ontario, NZ to be a new contributor and been put in contact with Eli Wallace who through BHL-Australia will provide support and training for ingest of content. Potentially also interested in affiliate membership.
• JS reported a recent discussion visit from the Director Dr Ondrej Dostal the Mendel Museum, Czech Republic ( who has been introduced to BHL through Tomoko Steen). The Museum wishes to digitise the Mendel manuscripts and make them available through BHL. Expect to seek funding to cover costs of digitisation, through their own scanning centre, and ingest into BHL. Also, potentially interested in longer term engagement as affiliates. Ingest likely to be via Mccaw.

Action: JS to follow up with links to technical support information on the wiki,

• BHL-E update: Chris Sleep (NHML) shared test files of items from the existing BHL-E content held at NHML with Joseph de Veer. Aiming to make make progress in the ingest to BHL central repository of the existing BHL content.

4. Membership.
Action: MK is revising the appendix 3 for the BHL bylaws on affiliate benefits ready to go live on the wiki by the end of November.
Action: JS to work with membership committee and secretariat to develop a members pages on the wiki including the documentation/pack for joining as a member or affiliate, including application letter format.
Action: JS to finalise the covering "sell out" letter for interested members/affiliates and confirm the application process with the Membership Committee
Currently in progress/ expressed interest:

• Mendel Museum, Czech Republic (contact: Dr Ondrej Dostal). Wish to digitise and ingest Mendel manuscript collection. Will seek own funding for all associated costs. Needs to know costs and technical requirements. Possible interest in becoming member/affiliate.
• LA County Arboretum & Botanic Garden, US (Contact: Patty Johnson). Interest in affiliate status.
• Naturalis, Netherlands (Contact: Michiel Erasmus). Wish to ingest existing content, will require technical support to meet IA/BHL standards. Interest in joining BHL as member/affiliate but senior managers still deciding.
• British Library, UK (Contact Roly Keating)
• University of Florida, US ?

5. Planning 12-14 April 2016 Global Meeting, Annual BHL Meeting, "open session", invitation list-building.

• Draft outlines for the global, BHL member, and open sessions on the home page of the BHL staff wiki.
• MK drafting the business meetings
• CR set up global member call for 30 November to draft global business meeting.

Action: JS to send an email confirming dates and link to draft meeting outlines to members-list.
Action: JS to speak to Ian Owens about the suggestion from Scott Miller and NG to invite Richard Lane to speak at the open session.
Action: JS to set up programme group first call to plan the open session and invitation list
Action: MK to design format for participants to register on the staff wiki for the different meeting sessions.

6. AOB: Planned EC meeting dates 3rd and 10th December cancelled.
Action: MK to set up an ad hoc date for the December EC meeting.