August312006

Biodiversity Heritage Library Consortium Meeting
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Notes
Updated 09/11/06
Attendance:
Christy Stephenson cstephenson@amnh.org
Michael Godow mgodow@fieldmuseum.org
Doug Holland doug.holland@mobot.org
Graham Higley g.higley@nhm.ac.uk
Susan Fraser sfraser@nybg.org
John Mignault jmignault@nybg.org
Judy Warnement warnemen@oeb.harvard.edu
Chris Mills c.mills@rbgkew.org.uk
Tom Garnett GarnettT@si.edu
Marcia Adams adamsm@si.edu
Kim Tripp (Director NY Botanical Gardens)
Could not attend:
Connie Rinaldo crinaldo@oeb.harvard.edu
Cathy Norton cnorton@mbl.edu
Introduction
Tom gave some background about how BHL has developed.
2003 Telluride, Colorado. Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) Meeting
Brewster Kahle attended. Internet Archive (IA) provides:
- Long-term storage. Mirrored databases in Holland and Alexandria, Egypt
- Access to image and OCR files
- Sloan Foundation connection. Sloan has underwritten much of the IA
2005 Library and laboratory: the marriage of research, data and taxonomic literature Conference. Linked to the Barcode of Life Conference and the CBOL Project
- Sloan Foundation helped underwrite CBOL
- Jessie Ausibel, a Sloan Foundation Program Officer. Jessie wants to accelerate the process of species identification, (“We don’t even know what we don’t know”), and make the literature more widely available.
- Jessie instrumental in getting $50,000 grant for BHL from Richard Lounsbury Foundation. Additional $25,000 from the Smithsonian and $50,000 from the NHM London. .
Tom distributed two draft documents: (1) BHL Governance and (2) BHL Membership Issues
FUNDRAISING
2006 EOL Meeting July 10, 11 at Woods Hole.
- Writing Workshop for MacArthur Grant.
- Many in attendance had writing assignments. Proposal due October 1
-. TG wrote a response to Brewster’s draft and distributed to BHL group.
- ACTION ITEM: TG has not seen a final draft but will share with this group when he does.
- The proposal asks for more than just money for scanning. Includes request for several positions, including a project manager.
- Proposal assumes IA has an integral role in BHL. Will do scanning and OCR.
IA Model
- 10 Scribe machines running for at least 2 years
- $.10 per page if 10 Scribes running two shifts
- Robert Miller at IA does negotiating
At Woods Hole meeting was discussed $25M over 5 years for Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) project with a substantial (~$6,000,000) amount going to BHL.
- IA is part of the deal for the MacArthur grant
- Need to ‘keep feeding the beast’ to get the $.10 per page costs
BHL members will still need to propose other funding. TG encouraged others to get other institutions in their areas involved in scanning so that we could realize the $.10/pg
Developments:
Serial Literature
- IA currently not equipped to handle serial literature
- Brewster is committed to doing ‘something’ for volume, issue hierarchy
- Some discussion with Raj and Todd at IA. Martin Kalfatovic, Suzanne Pilsk (Smithsonian), Chris Freeland (MOBOT), Ed Chamberlin (NHM) and now Christie Stephenson (NMNH) pursuing.
Metadata Repository
- Hosting possibilities include IA, BHL Institution, EOL, OCLC
Google
- Google and U of California signed agreement
- Why isn’t BHL going to Google (BHL members may be asked)
§ IP issues/lawsuits
§ Must use Google search engine
§ Only free to read and print a ‘certain’ amount
§ Cannot repurpose
BioOne
- TG in discussions with BioOne about current forward digitizing
- BHL needs to talk to BioOne and Allen Press. JSTOR is their partner for back files.
OCA Meeting October 20 in San Francisco
- Any BHL member can attend per email from Ric Prelinger
TDWG in St. Louis. October 15-20, 2006
http://tdwg2006.tdwg.org/social/excursions/
- Chris and Neil are doing presentations
OCLC
- Wants BHL linked to WorldCat someway
- Brian Lavoie and Bill Carney. Data analysis of BHL member holdings underway.
Blackwell
- Graham met with Steve Hall of Blackwell Publishing. Blackwell publishes on behalf of societies and small institutions. Blackwell is moving toward e-only publishing. (More than 50% of serials will be e-only subscriptions within 3 years). Blackwell is scanning back copies of almost all their titles from their current electronic access files back to volume 1. BHL could have access to the OCR and metadata and could integrate this into BHL project. Blackwell will maintain the scanned articles.
- http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/Digitized_Backfiles.xls
- The list will grow. Linnaean Society is next in the queue
- Approx. 100 titles are relevant to BHL. Graham will distribute the list of titles.
- Licenses will be cheap and perpetual. This is not about making money
- Digital sustainability. Blackwell agrees this is an issue/problem
- Dutch National Archives model may be useful as a model of digital sustainability.
- BHL needs to have uniform metadata structure at the file level
- An agreement between BHL and Blackwell would establish a level of trust with publishers that Google does not have.
- ACTION ITEM: BHL members agreed Graham should continue to pursue this with Blackwell
- Graham is also planning to talk with ZooBank/ZooRecord (Thomson Publishing), and will attempt to contact Elsevier and the Dutch National Archive.
Scanning:
- Graham suggested we scan monographs first while we investigate/negotiate getting agreements to scan full runs of serials, as this would give better efficiency in the scanning process.
Fundraising possibilities
Microsoft
- Boston Consortium is working with Microsoft money. IA will host files
- MS Model: files locked up for 6 years, then open to all. No rehosting for 6 years, then can be repurposed
IMLS grants
- Smithsonian cannot apply but other BHL members might consider
Digital Library funding available in Europe
NYPL using MS and Kirtas
- If a funding source (e.g. MS/Kirtas) wanted to use another besides IA for scanning hosting, but data could be ingested by IA, would this be acceptable to BHL members? Graham was agreeable if it would ‘get the job done’
Gates Foundation
- Connection between medical literature and BHL literature
- ACTION ITEM: Graham will pursue with Richard Lane, Director of Science, NHM London, who knows Gates through previous Wellcome activities.
GOVERNANCE
The group discussed Tom’s draft document on Governance. Made a distinction between responsibilities for the Executive Board vs. the Project Director.
- ACTION ITEM: Tom will revise his document:
- 7 set relationships with other bodies
- 8 revise. Exec Board would have final approval of grant proposals
- 9, 10, 11 Drop. Project Manager would have oversight of project and activities, establish working groups and convene meetings
This lead to a discussion of the need for a clearer organizational structure of the BHL. Christie Stephenson made the distinction between the BHL project and the BHL library.
A BHL Trust needs to be established
- The group discussed the need to set up a trust or trust-like body: an entity that would be the BHL ‘caretaker’ that would issue paychecks and would insure the long-term management of the BHL library so that it continues to benefit the widest community possible. We need an agreement with any grantor of funding and the BHL Trust. Need a separate bank account for the deposit of the grant $$$. What is the equivalent of a Trust in USA? “Sponsored research account”?
Do we need to set up two trusts, one on each side of the Atlantic?
- ACTION ITEM: Graham will send BHL members a copy of a Trust set up in UK. It has a governance piece. Statement of IPR might go in this
- ACTION ITEM: Susan, Tom and Graham will prepare a draft proposal for the BHL Directors group for the structure.
MEMBERSHIP
- Important to not have too many members. No more than 10 institutions now.
- BHL is a project that makes available the English language biodiversity heritage literature in the 10 institutions. (Literature in other languages will be included as they are part of the collections of the 10 institutions).
- Project must be manageable and achievable (so not GBIF)
- Core partners must have common value sets and backgrounds. These core partners will be the major source of the contributed literature
- Project Members are in the working stage of building the Project
- Other institutions will be able to contribute data/content
- BHL will have its standards and other institutions that become affiliated will need to follow these
- BHL will need a registry of intent
- Conceivably there could be additional BHL-like projects run from China or Europe.
- ACTION ITEM: Christie will draft a brief statement of membership and distribute to the group
PUBLICITY
- We need to have the Trust set up before we do any more major publicity
- But members should ‘stand up’ at every opportunity, e.g. at conferences, meetings, etc. (TG will do a presentation at OCA)
- When we make an announcement we should emphasize that the $6-8M (or whatever we get) will not pay for scanning the entire BHL corpus
- Graham suggested we could put out an announcement about the $125,000 in grants (later after corporate and some other issues are sorted). GH has already spoken with the NHM Communications Team, who have validated this strategy, and will be happy to act with the other partner’s marketing teams to ensure a seamless press promotion.
- Will need to rework the BHL website to include the Trust agreement, set up an area for sites to deposit lists of what is being scanned or what will be scanned, a form for new members to fill out.
- ACTION ITEM: Tom will see that Chris Freeland’s interface PowerPoint from the May workshop is put on the BHL website
- ACTION ITEM: Subcommittee of Graham, Tom and Susan will look into Trust/corporation structures and issues
- ACTION ITEM: Tom will meet with Microsoft (not the foundation) concerning BHL interest.
Judy recommended when sending emails to include a statement such as ‘action required’ or ‘response requested by x date,’ when applicable, in the subject.