April 24, 2008 BHL Executive Committee Notes

BHL Executive Committee Conference Call on April 24 at 11 a.m. EST.

1. Open Access Issues - broad directions.

Need to prepare a position paper in advance of EOL Steering Committee.

EOL has reservations about the proposed Wiley-Blackwell deal. We need
to define what we mean and what direction we will take. Graham notes
that we can be pure but it will limit what we can provide. Graham really
wants to demonstrate that we can work with commercial publishers now,
not later. There is a spectrum from commercial--to less commercial
to open access. There are many shades of protections. Chris notes
that the different models add a layer of complexity to the BHL. Tom and others are
torn between two models--maximizing access through BHL OR creating
new paradigm that will shift how scholarly communication occurs and a
pure position gives us some leverage. Tom will summarize the
discussion so far (pro and con) and will send to us for review and
editing. We need a clear response from the EOL Steering Committee so
that we can proceed or not with commercial publishers. We will need
to show a ballpark figure for resources involved for increasing
complexity. Once we become a window or door to content we don't
have, BHL becomes amorphous and do we want this? We are having a
hard enough time managing IA content never mind other content
providers. BHL is a basic good--Cathy. Graham agrees that the
complexity cannot be part of this year--wouldn't really start until
next year.

2. Update on Internet Archive scanning issues

Chris notes that without notification, IA changed the query interface around which we
define our process. MOBOT is manually inputting now because the
process no longer works. The change happened because IA wants to
move away from metamanager. No time scale for fixing this. They said
it is in flux and don't build anything around this. Is there a way
of using old interface so we can continue to work with it until the
new is stable? This is a serious service issue. Nothing in our
agreements indicate that we have a persistent place for ingestion.
This demonstrates lack of communication as well. EOL Steering
Committee needs to know about this. Tom discussed IA with Jim
Edwards yesterday. Scanning is efficient and good. We need to be in
the loop on the changes that are made. Cathy and Tom will be talking
to Robert Miller soon (had a call yesterday).

3. Update of automated markup planning

Chris had a call with Linda Frueh and Brewster Kahle about structural
markup. Xiaonon Lu released new version of software and IA has it.
Brewster has interviewed her for a position at IA to work on structural
markup.
Jim Edwards has said that the lack of article level ability in BHL is
a big problem. Chris noted that we have no funding for this. Since
we are looking at funding for May, we should find money for this on
our own. This issue is not unique to BHL so in principle, it makes
sense for this to be led by IA. Plus all of the BHL content is at IA
and Xiaonon needs to be at IA. We need to find out how much she will
cost so we can put in budget. Smithsonian is supposed to test what
Xionon has done. Suzanne Pilsk is overcommitted. Possibly MBL? Can
anyone at Harvard contribute? Tom will put together a paragraph that
defines the work and expectations.

Back and forth with Moore Foundation regarding automated markup.
Chris and Tom summarize--fast complex issue. Very important to this
project and many others but BHL should not be a lead on this. Would
be very hard for BHL to do a good job on this. We need to be able to
display and search at the article level but we have too much to do now. This
would be 2-3 years down the road for us. We want someone else to
submit this proposal and we would be a use case. Maybe we can put
Moore and Penn State together and BHL can be test case.

4. TG rough draft of response to EOL Steering Committee call attached.

Call from Jim Edwards for an evaluation of progress and plan for
upcoming year.
--possibly can eke out funds to hire Xionon Lu
--Fulltime BHL Collections Manager: need coordinated approach to
collection selection and prioritization and this will be a full-time
job.
--programmer devoted to mapping and loading already digitized content
from non-BHL sources

We have a standard but there are still issues in loading. Chris
suggests this 3rd position should be a data manager and report to
Chris. Chris will provide a paragraph and broad price range.

Concerns about BHL from the EOL Distinguished Advisory Board:
commercial publishers, poor quality of some of the pages could do harm
to BHL. Also a concern that article level searching/display is not there yet. We need to be clearer in interface
-- what to expect. We serve lower quality jpg images but the great images are there!! Overall, very
positive.

Add section called "Risks" to report about issues and possible results.

5. Other:

Graham notes that Wellcome Trust is interested in finding some funds
and want to attend EOL dinner on June 2. Graham will let Jim Edwards
know.

Chris--moving forward with evaluation of Name Finding and will get
Chin Wei from UIUC as a short-term contractor. There should be some
involvement from MBL informatics--Neil Sarkar. This is a report for
what needs to be fixed in Taxon Finder and OCR. Flora of North
America is interested in BHL. They want Botanicus/BHL to scan and
host first volume of Flora of North America--there are permissions
issues. Tom can send draft permissions document. Flora is online
electronically but the introductory material should be in BHL. No
more news from Moore regarding jp2. Chris will be talking to PLOSOne
this afternoon.
Action items from Architecture meeting are almost finished except for
the user community/usability and case study. Chris needs a community
that he can ask for feedback. We also need a more formal usability
study. The informal feedback needs to be coordinated from Chris's
end. Don't want this to be a big time sink. Each of us should
identify 4-5 people who would like to do this. They will be a panel
that can provide feedback as asked. We should have a common, written
invitation. Chris will draft a common invitation and then we need to
find the 50 people. Send invitation to BHL directors for suggestions
of people and have them suggest people to Chris. We should end up
with around 20 people. Can Education and Outreach fund this? Tom
will talk to Marie. The use case for the Discovered Bibliography
should be helped by the informal group.

Mirroring discussion--Smithsonian might be another repository for EOL
and maybe BHL.


Next call: April 29 11 AM EST, 10 AM CST, 4 PM GMT