August 23rd ECSC Conference Call
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BHL Steering Committee Meeting
23 August 2012
Dial in number: 1-877-860-3058 | Passcode: 961479
Agenda:
- Financial/Budget Update (Martin)
- Meeting Updates (All)
- Membership Update (Martin)
- Global Updates (William)
- Technical Update (Willam)
- Collections Update: A) Way back during the March meeting we talked about ways to identify cohesive digitization projects that might attract funding and make these reasonably well-formed ideas quickly available to anyone talking to a potential funder for BHL. We also talked about how best to select partner projects when the opportunity arises to spend BHL funds on digitization projects. The Collection Committee reviewed how our institutions identify potential development pitches internally and through this discussion we developed a "Project Nomination form": Project+Nomination+Form Our expectation is that by attaching completed forms to a "Wish LIst" wiki page, there is a place to go for ideas when BHL donor conversations arise. Summaries of these projects will also be made publicly available as a teaser for our users and webpage donors ("this is the kind of opportunity your donation MAY support"). The brief information on the forms could also be expanded to become grant projects if the opportunity arises. Comments are welcome either on the wiki page or send them to crinaldo@oeb.harvard.edu B) We have made some progress on a collection analysis project for BHL. Connie will report.
Notes:
Minutes: On the call: Martin, Connie, Susan, Diane, Becky, Jane, William, Judy, Doug
Martin opened the meeting by welcoming William as the new technical director. The announcement will be follow-up with a blog post. The Steering Commitee was invited to submit nominations for individuals the recommend for the tech advisory group. This group will be small working group. Current members - John Mignault, Joel Richard and Joe DeVeer. Jane will submit a nominee
Meeting updates: Connie and Cathy will be presenting at the IAMSLC meeting in Alaska next week. Connie also manned the BHL/EOL booth at the Ecological Society of American conference.
Diane reported that Matt Persoon would be presenting at a Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting in Cambridge, UK, on getting people involved via crowd sourcing, gaming etc.
Jane and Connie submitted an abstract to a cultural heritage group --(meeting in Glasgow) --details to follow
The Internet leaders forum will take place in San Francisco October 23 and 24. The books and browsers meeting organized by Peter Benchley follows. Martin will be attending.
The BHL tech/staff meeting will be held in Cambridge, MA in Sept. All staff attending should confirm via the wiki and provide travel details, etc.
Membership update: ANSP has not signed and MOU but they are revisiting this process and are reviewing the MOU. will likely sign at institutional level.
Global and Tech Updates: (William) Much of the work formerly done by Chris Freeland is being distributed among other MOBOT staff. The BHL US/Australia portal merger has started and Simon and Simone are going to St. Louis in October. The NEH Art of Life project is now being spearheaded by Trish Sandler...working with the Univ. of Colorado and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. MBL is working on a project to improve the algorithms for name finding in BHL --the initial results are good and show increased results. Working on functionality and requesting input on requirement vis-a-vis the usability study in trying to incorporate Citebank into BHL searching. Looking at use cases to see if the model responds to the requirements and situations that we are trying to accommodate.
Collections update: (See above). Connie described the Project nominations Forms which will allow us to submit cohesive projects which can then inform are scanning priorities. The form is available on the wiki and the collections group is soliciting feedback.
Collections analysis continues. Bianca is working with Mike to figure out what we have and what we need with discussion on how Mike can extract this data --most likely in big spreadsheets.
Financial/Budget updates: Martin reviewed the 3 documents including above --with the Steering committee. The group agreed that the budgets were clear. Martin suggested a vote. Connie proposed we vote to approve the budget. Doug second.
Members update: Becky (CAS) is working on scanning and the Connecting Content grant -- The have a new intern starting soon. Most partners Field Notes are in the BHL.
Doug (MOBOT) nothing new to report. Diane (MBL/WHOI) said she and Lisa Raymond were now co-directors of the Library and are working out the details. Susan (NYBG) reported that their connecting content project is moving along on time, still doing scanning for GPI Mellon projects. Our summer intern from the U. of Trinidad, Herbarium Library created a lot of links in Wikipedia to BHL. There has been discussion about scanning N&S catalogs with other institutions.
Connie (MCZ) has an archivist working on Agazzi expedition slides and they are still scanning. Martin (Smithsonian) reported they are setting up the Macaw server and J.J. Ford would be returning to the MCZ to prepare to upload content not scanned by IA. John Mignault is working on creating a virtual machine and once the code is moved this may help others to ingest more easily. Cornell also has some tools (not macaw) that can ingest other content into BHL.
Judy (Harvard Botany) Their field notes are in BHL. They applied for a supplemental grant from Mellon to continue the GPI scanning. She brought to the attention of the group an important database of early Index Seminim compiled by Cees Lut in the Netherlands...which she indicated wold be of interest to BHL. Jane (NHM) still scanning and getting into a routine but on a smaller scale.
