7th Global BHL Meeting

Back to 2016 Joint Meeting Overview

London | April 2016

Objective:
TBD

Logistics:

• Time: 0900 to 12:00
• Location: Natural History Museum, the Board Room

Resources:

• Global BHL Wiki page
• Current gBHL Bylaws
• BHL governance documents

Agenda link
Some BHL Europe topics:
content harmonisation and migration to BHL Central - physical and electronical
representation of BHL Europe on CETAF
representation of BHL Europe on BHL members and Global BHL meeting in London
strategy and activity plan of BHL Europe as European node
representation of BHL Europe content on BHL central
promotion and support of the BHL Central platform in European scale

Members may represent multiple institutions; one vote, one member.
How do we make the portal as a global portal?

DRAFT AGENDA TOPICS

• Introductions / Welcome
  • How do you see your role as BHL Global partner toward:
    - your users?
    - your content providers?
    - BHL Global?
    - BHL platform?
    How would like to be recognised as BHL Global partner at the BHL platform?
    Would you like to interconnect the governance of BHL Global and BHL platform?
    Would you like to organise in future joint meetings of BHL Global and BHL platform?
• How will Global Group fit into BHL Member Meetings/How do we define a global partner/maintaining identity (Connie)
• Review/Revision of Bylaws (Nancy?) Do we need to continue meeting as only a global group? Then add BHL US/BHL UK and European affiliates.
• Global BHL Coordinating SubCommittee?
• Discussion of a "Working Language" for BHL meetings [integrate into bylaws?]
• Election of officers if needed? In consultation with EC, elect Chair of new global subcommittee
• Facilitating Global Partners to become Members or Affiliates
• Where should we expand globally and how can partners help?
• Location / Date of 2017 gBHL Meeting: should we continue to have joint meetings with members?

From BHL Europe

Dear Jane,
thanks a lot for opening this topic and also clarification of the conditions and situation. As Connie mentioned, when the content will be on BHL platform, we can shout down the BHLE services mainly the pre ingest and ingest and fw the BHL-Europe DNS in to the area of BHLE content on BHL platform. Hosting of the DNS do not need infrastructure behind at the moment. We will keep the project website running and even we can update it from the node perspective.

According to the content back up storage, it is different story. I would like to develop a strategy of BHL content backup in Europe. As I mentioned couple months ago, there can be option of using some space of Czech Data centre CESNET. So we can discus to have in London and Prague (two locations are quite OK), or centralise it one place. Other question is how we will update those backup storage in sense of content (scans) and metadata.



Attending
Ely Wallis, Jirka Frank, Nancy Gwinn, Connie Rinaldo, Jinzhong Cui, Zheping Xu, Lawrence Monda, Anne-Lise Fourie, Wai Yin Pryke, Kamal Michael, Henrique Rodrigues, Alison Harding, Martin Kalfatovic, Carolyn Sheffield
Regrets: Patricia Koleff

Action Items
• Ely will report out to Members’ Council on recommendations to go forward as the BHL Global Committee with proposal that Anne-Lise Fourie serve as Chair and Ely as Secretary, and that there is consensus that it makes sense to continue joint meetings.
• NEG will revise BHL Global Committee charge, by pulling the 2 middle sections on the separate Charge document and format similar to other Committee descriptions/charges as shown in Appendix three and do away with that separate document.
• CAS to update private wiki page to reflect BHL Global Committee
• Pursue potential partnerships in Costa Rica during TDWG
• CAS Facilitate convo with Hernique and Jirka and Bianca – re MARCXML and Macaw

Notes
The structure of BHL revolves around Partners, and so the consortium includes all Partners. Some have an additional status as Members or Affiliates.

With that in mind, it seems to make more sense for the Global group to operate as a Subcommittee. Partners don’t have to be part of the Members’ Council to participate. Chair would report back to Members’ Council on the Committees discussions and recommendations.
Would also include at least one representative from US/UK.

Revised Bylaws
Vice Chair of the Executive Committee of Members’ Council, would also be the Chair for the Global Subcommittee. No other offices proposed for the Global Subcommittee.

Committee Charge (open to revision)

Discussion – respond to this proposal of forming BHL Global Committee

SANBI is an Affiliate. Does this then mean SANBI represents all of BHL Africa?

Appendix III, third section, second paragraph, second sentence:
'Lead institution votes on behalf of those institutions they represent'

In other words, each global group has one vote on Global Committee discussions. If one of institutions in that partnership is ALSO a Member, at the Member meeting they would also have a vote on Members Council.

In Appendix III, just refers to Global Committee. Any topics which BHL Global Committee vote on would serve as a recommendation to Members’ Council. Members’ Council would then vote on whether to implement or not.

Therefore, the BHL Global Committee would have a standing agenda item at annual Members’ Meeting, similar to other committees like Collections Committee.

BHL China likes proposal about Committees.

Brazil would like to become a Member when finances and political climate permit.

Egypt likes that this offers an opportunity for more powerful votes, more decision making power.

Everything has to go to Members Council because that is the governing body.

There would be several Global representatives also serving on the Members Council so there would be a strong voice represented there as well.

NEG: We will find a way to work something out

BHL Singapore, still absorbing.

BHL Africa – a much better way to represent everybody whether paying or not

This supports a structure with more joint meetings / less travel expenses. Calls for one face-to-face meeting per year.

Members – as part of Member benefits, technical assistance is provided for things like Macaw support and contributing content.
Affiliates, less available; we offer options for fee-based training in addition to Affiliate annual dues.

Better to be a Member and influence direction; costs would be much higher than $10,000 if you would attempt to implement new systems/tools/workflows yourself so it is better to invest in being able to have stronger influence on direction of those things.

Some of the documentation reads like it’s US people who are Members, for example grant opportunities. Many of those seem to be available only to US institutions? Some are but others are targeted towards other countries so could be for any.

That may be how it currently reads, though, so worth reviewing and clarifying if possible.

Nancy will revise the charge and send around for more formal agreement on the wording.

Next points of discussion and next steps:

1. Settle on official name of the group
2. This group proposes becoming a Committee
3. Members’ Council Approve the creation of the Committee

If we as a group roughly approve this, NEG will revise the charge, then the Chair of BHL Global will be approved by EC.

Nancy proposes ‘BHL Global Committee’

Yes, all are in agreement.

Chair to report to Members Council on Global discussions. Secretary would also be useful.
Terms: 2 years, renewable for another 2 years

Committee is suggesting English as the working language

CS to revise Global Page on wiki and re-set up as Global Committee Page

Charge will be in Appendix III. Jirka proposes Annex for Committee Charge. Nancy clarifies that the purpose is already in the Appendix. Consensus that the 2 middle sections on the separate Charge document need to be brought over to Appendix III; Can then format similar to other Committee descriptions/charges as shown in Appendix three and do away with that separate document.

Updates
What would make it possible to become Member & Affiliate?

Egypt cannot pass cash
Brazil interested in Membership in future
China, an opportunity
How to make possible for this group, and how to look for others?

Tomoko talking with institutions in Japan to recruit new Partners, possibly as Members or Affiliates

Targeted regions
Japan, Russia, India, Canada, rest of South America, Central America, rest of SE Asia, New Zealand, also West Africa (Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Nigeria)

Some contacts approached in Canada, Japan, New Zealand

BHL is an associate of GBIF

SANBI has funding to support contributing to GBIF

Museums are really struggling when it comes to their libraries

Could BHL Egypt coordinate Arabic language countries in a another way?

For GBIF, must go through government. Membership costs pro-rated for countries based on GDP.

Cape Town - Opportunity to identify which countries

How are we helping GBIF?

Jirka – big provider for occurrence data; Creating case studies, health care and other industries. Tracking of occurrence of diseases, for example, would be a great use case. And BHL has a lot of relevant content.

To create data flow, opportunity for potential European partners. There is a project that Jirka is applying for with a grant of 10 years funding and 2-3 years to prepare it, then national government can apply for funding, to mobilize. Naturalis, CETAF, and a few others on that group are potential project partners. Jirka would like to arrange meeting with Dmitries Koureas sometime over next couple of days to discuss.

Could SciELO potentially help recruit new partners? Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela are good targets for BHL. We’ve also had some inquiries from Argentina.

At the GBIF meeting, Connie worked w Australia and Canadian rep from GBIF and those conversations were really very useful for solidifying those relationships.

TDWG presents similar opportunities. We initiated some contacts with potential partners in India but haven’t found the right match yet.

Eric Mata in Costa Rica could be a good point of contact or point us to a Costa Rican or Central American group.

Singapore, we have some content digitized form Botanical Garden. Still finding some lack of understanding on how to add in BHL. First, focusing on getting our own house in order and then we have platform to reach out further. Also a conference coming up in Philippines which will be a good opportunity.
National Libraries, digitization initiatives, how to cooperate to identify content that would be relevant, how to connect to BHL. Governance is changing, now cutting consortia.

Some potential contacts in Norway.

Do we feel that there is enough supporting material? Do we have enough swag to discuss advantages of participating?

Benefits of Membership and Affiliates status, how can we emphasize the benefits of full participation?
We’d like to have a promotional brochure of why you should join

Most important is the Management Summary for decision makers. Having a prospectus that outlines the benefits of participation. Perhaps a list of case studies of discussing impact

We could produce that by creating a taskforce of Global and Members’ Council to speak to as broad an audience as needed, or more than one piece if needed.

SciELO is also working with other institutions looking to join us; 4 institutions, 600 documents digitized, looking forward to 2,000. Also, looking for new partners and to provide more documents.

Different regions have different levels of access to information. Some also lack MARC XML. Is this something Macaw can produce for them?

There is MARCEDIT which can make it easier for these kinds of institutions to produce that MARCXML. Still may be problematic. Things to make easier for Brazil institutions and other worldwide institutions.

Support for these challenges is one of the benefits of full Membership. Carolyn will connect Henrique and Jirka with Bianca to clarify the options. Further training or support may be available via Joe at MCZ or through those fee-based workshops for Affiliates.

Electing new Global BHL Chair and Secretary

• Anne-Lise Fourie, Chair
• Ely Wallis, Secretary

Recommendations on how get decided for where Meetings are held?

Ely will report out to Members’ Council meeting on recommendations to continue as a Committee with those offices and that there is consensus that it makes sense to continue joint meetings.