BHL 2012 IC Meeting Notes

Return to March 15-16, 2011 BHL IC Page

Thursday, March 15th Notes on Next Steps:

How do we want to expand IC Council?

- overall theme - we want to pursue partnerships with Canadian partners, particularly those we've already ingested content from through IA ingest. Partners should be considered strategically for what they might bring to BHL, content, certainly, but other things as well.

Do we want to make societies signing permissions forms members of BHL?

This would be a different category of membership. We originally had idea that there would be contributing members and just members. Maybe we could form a publishers/content providers group where they're recognized, where their concerns can be heard and dealt with. There are advantages to this. However, we meed to be cautious about how big we grow, because the bigger we are, the more organizational work it will be. One point - just having meetings will be harder with more people. Not sure societies are looking to be members with us. Maybe a subgroup could look into this question, come up with criteria or list of qualities we want to consider in expanding the partners group.

There is definitely a servicable size for a working group. EOL identified people/organizations that they wanted to have within group through a rotating membership, with a changeover every few years. There were too many to have at one time.

What is our position with DPLA?
Yesterday Martin and Chris met with DPLA tech development team. DPLA will launch a tech development beta test site soon, and BHL data is part of that data set. One of the pitches Chris and Martin made - if there's a DPLA, shouldn't BHL to part of the "science reading room."

Are there foundations that can assist us in growth pattern (increasing size of IC)? We haven't yet asked for assistance from Moore for building business council of BHL. We should give thought to scope of what that would entail. We might be able to get a consultant to assist us in the process of deciding how to grow our membership and the implications of that. This is probably a great topic for TED. We could go to TED as BHL, tell them all we've done, tell them we're stuck on things like how to grow membership without overwhelming ourselves, and they'll provide help and guidance.

Does Mellon fund this stuff? We haven't done enough with the scholarly communications part of Mellon. There's a real opportunity for BHL. We should pursue scholarly communications support. The BHLSC and IC listservs are also new; after this meeting there will be more to say.

How can we communicate with each other?
Use whatever tools are out there to communicate. Bianca uses Skype regularly. Is there a way we can video conference more/get institutions on direct line, to help us chat more? We've talked about trying to use more video, but it's difficult.

Is communication a problem? The question is: are people at the executive level having enough conversations/communication/updates? Grace's work will help with communications. The BHL SC and IC listservs are also new; after this meeting there will be more to say.

Next Steps:

• Martin/Grace get in-kind contributions out to everyone for final review and give deadline for checking it. We'll also work on visualizations of that.
• Everyone will post their powerpoints or notes from meeting presentations on this wiki page next to your time slot.
• We'll organize task group to identify membership issues and questions.

Friday, March 16 Steering Committee Meeting Notes

Action Items:

• Spreadsheet budget plan in place for review by end of April
• Connie/Judy will marshall for recommendations from Collections Committee by at least middle of April
• Principles for Building Collections Document: Document that articulates the specific, planned future for scanning so that our partners, users, and funders have an understanding of the framework in which we will do more work. This should be put on top of larger collections development policy (Bianca & Collections Committee working on). Thus summary document (Principles for building the collections) will be done by the SC group. This could be ready by end of April.
• Single Sheet that combines all funding sources and in-kind contributions for future discussions (Tom, Martin, and Grace)
• Send Global BHL By-Laws draft to global members for discussion at June meeting (William)
• Membership subcommittee (Connie, Doug, Judy) formed to create report listing potential IC candidates, criteria for IC membership, and statement about possibility of IC fee. Document will be for discussion by SC
• Formed Strategic Plan Group to revise strategic plan and present to group
  • Members of Group:
    • Martin
    • Chris
    • Connie
    • Susan
    • Jane

Begin Meeting Notes:

Approve Notes from IC 2011 Meeting:

Unanimous agreement to make IC 2011 Notes official:
Minutes+March+8
Minutes+March+9

Election of Officers:

Unanimous agreement on:
Nancy Gwinn: chair
Connie Rinaldo: vice chair
Susan Fraser: Secretary

Financial Report, Budget, and Spending Plan Discussion

Two documents - BHL Funding and Undesignated Funds BHL undesignated fund discussion.doc Overall BHL BUDGET.xls
Documents sum up all actual cash we've received specifically allocated for BHL as well as 100% dedicated to BHL.

Funding from all sources Document:

This is a document listing funding we have for BHL. Document lists source of money, Tom's best understanding of dates for money, and best understanding of where money is going. Notice errors, contact Tom & Grace to correct.

This spreadsheet does not include in-kind contributions. We could create a different sheet to include this information, but the purpose of this doc is to focus on undesignated funds and where we want to spend them.

Monies included in document:

• Steering Committee Dues:
  • Allocation is responsibility of Steering Committee Group

• Remaining MacArthur:
  • Expected approval to carry over unspent money into next fiscal year (past July 2012). We will have fair amount of flexibility on how we spend that money out.
  • There may be a little more than 50,000 to spend out, but this is the safe number.
  • MOBOT subaward includes overage that is committed to MOBOT but it could be taken from that subaward and used in other areas.

• Lounsbery:
  • Not all money from grant spent, but we have not received final invoices from Field, so we're not positive how much we have left. Should be at least $10,000 left over once all invoices paid. We will request that this money be allocated to carrying out recommendations from Life & Lit.

Total undesignated funds approximately $140,000.00

Time Frames for Allocating Money:

• Steering Committee Dues: We don't have specific time frames for spending steering committee dues, but we should allocate within a year so institutions can tell institutions/donors how they money is being spent.
• MacArthur Money: Should be committed by Nov/Dec 2012. We should be able to spend that money past July 31, 2012.
• Lounsbery: Allocate by Dec 2012 (approximately)

Suggestions on Priorities for Spending Unallocated Money:

• Spend on more scanning
  • Nancy: What is impact on IA of our scanning going down?
    • Tom: They've closed down some scanning centers to consolidate & save costs. Others (like Boston/LC/San Francisco) are still healthy.
    • Martin: There is a new IA pricing structure: $.10 per page and $1.50 set-up fee per book.
• Technical Director's Salary
  • Money for salary runs out as of July, 31, 2012 (money now coming from MOBOT MacArthur money).
    • Chris can cover his salary through the end of the year with the MOBOT overage in the MacArthur subaward.
      
      
• Other suggestions for spending money:
  • MBL WHOI Cluster
    • Cluster will in future include about a $15,000 expense per year to maintain. This may be covered by an in-kind contribution by EOL, but we are not sure.
  • Mike Lichtenberg
    • Chris: Mike is carried on NSF Grant through July 2013.
  • Pursuing Life and Literature goals
  • Metadata Cleanup
    • Connie: This could be part of in-kind contributions if we can forecast our expected in-kind contributions
  • Scanning:
    • Allocate Money Based on Gap Filling and Specific Collections to Scan
      • Judy: Each institution could put together proposals for scanning specific collections with scanning money
      • Doug: I don't like the idea of competing for money. Can't we just equally divide it?
      • Judy: Specifically thinking about scanning requests - we need money for gap fills. Institutions that need to fill a lot of gaps need to get a good amount of scanning money
      • Martin: At SIL for History, Art and Culture Scanning, it has worked better to have a central account to spend from, and those library branches who have things to scan just send them, and the money gets spent based on who has things to send out rather than trying to give set amounts to each institution.
      • Martin: A number of institutions are sending books to SIL for scanning and SIL pays for that out of our scanning funds. Instead of allocating money to institutions in future for scanning, we could instead put all money on a central IA account (SIL's account) and then various institutions can just charge their scanning costs to the central account.
        • There would be an IA Scanning stream and private scanning stream outside of IA Scanning (say for MOBOT)
        • Institutions could still also get allocations for transportation costs for sending books for scanning and charge actual scanning to SIL central IA Account. Alternative, SIL could contract with shipping agencies at various institutions and just also pay shipping costs from central account
      • Chris: Having a clear idea of what we're scanning is important for stake holders. So having the money spent based on specific collections institutions have to scan is a good idea for stake holders and collection development plans. Scanning should be guided by gap filling and specific collection scanning.
        • Nancy: Since we're going into a fund raising mode, we must tell a more compelling story than just that they should fund us because we're scanning large masses of books. We need to have specific cases for why they should fund BHL (such as to fund marine biology scanning)
    • Collections Committee Provide Recommendations for Scanning Priorities
      • Connie: Collections Committee has put together some priorities for what should be scanned. We could refine that to inform our scanning.
        • BHL+Priority+Titles
        • BHL+Scanning+Priorities+2010
        • https://biodivlib.wikispaces.com/Collection+Development+Policy
      • Jane: We could also talk to scientists to figure out important collections to scan and combine that with Collections Committee priorities to inform scanning decisions
      • Judy: We should be much more aggressive about getting permissions to scan in-copyright materials and fund that scanning.
      • We could go through TL2 and Index Animalium and other bibliographies to decide what to scan. This will cover a great amount of need and could be compelling to funders
    • Money covering only SC scanning or IC & SC Scanning?
      • Judy: If we're following a collections development plan, we should fund the institutions that have the books to scan whether they're SC members or not.
      • Martin: This money could fund all scanning, but just have IC institutions pay for other, non-scanning costs (like transportation) themselves.
      • Nancy: We must make sure there is an incentive to join the SC group. Perhaps we should make sure that the SC money is spent on SC institutional scanning
      • Tom: It could be seen as incentive for joining SC if they know that they will get scanning money as a result
• Decisions: (Agreements on How to Spend Money):
  • We want to pay for Chris
  • We want to pay for scanning
    • Want to base scanning on gap filling and scanning specific collections and groups of materials that are necessary (TL2/Index Animalium bibliographies/scanning regional materials). We could use this collections-scanning focus to encourage funders to give more money for scanning specific collections of materials
    • Ask Collections Committee to come up with suggestions for collections/content to spend scanning money on
    • We could pay for this scanning through a central scanning fund rather than allocating scanning money to specific institutions, perhaps through SIL
  • We want to pay for technical infrastructure (including MBL Cluster)
  • Look at low-hanging fruit from Life and Literature conference recommendations to fund
  • Contingency Money:
    • Meeting money, Gemini, DOI Assignment, etc - all payments from contingency money - could go away without MacArthur money. We need to plan for contingency money.
• Action Items:
• Spreadsheet budget plan in place for review by end of April
• Connie/Judy will marshall for recommendations from Collections Committee by at least middle of April
• Principles for Building Collections Document: Document that articulates the specific, planned future for scanning so that our partners, users, and funders have an understanding of the framework in which we will do more work. This should be put on top of larger collections development policy (Bianca & Collections Committee working on). Thus summary document (Principles for building the collections) will be done by the SC group. This could be ready by end of April.
• Single Sheet that combines all funding sources and in-kind contributions for future discussions (Tom, Martin, and Grace)

Global BHL By-laws

Based on document at last IC Meeting and BHL's by-laws Global BHL Bylaws-draft 03-08-12.doc

Discussion:

• Should we have revolving positions?
  • Cathy: Slots could be assigned to four or five global members and they become permanent on the board. Then as we grow with more partners they may or may not have a seat.
• Does the structure make sense?
  • Graham: Global BHL structure designed to be very loose/consortium of the engaged. As such, not designed to enable passing of money around or impose policy. we can debate policy and agree on principles but not have consistent policies. This is probably too slack for BHL purposes.
  • Chris: Perhaps this document should be under consideration at global meeting in June. We decide if we like the document from the BHL US/UK perspective and then pass it on to our global partners for approval.
    • Graham: Institutions that are part of BHL-Europe required to find local funding. They say that digitization is a local issue and should be funded by local governments. The BHL-Europe project only supports BHL infrastructure, which will be in place when project ends in July. There are more grant proposals submitted by even if funded, these will not fund scanning.
  • Tom: We need a structure that allows more partners to become part of the project while still getting their own local funding, and only participate in BHL in a loose way. They can say to their funders that they're participating in a global project but still make decisions for themselves. A loose structure/document and membership is important.
    • We need just enough structure to get people together, not necessarily anything more
  • Mission of Global BHL: Global BHL is a social infrastructure of interoperating nodes (as stated in Moore grant proposal)
  • Tom: This is not about dispersing or allocating money. Therefore, it takes away pressure of assigning positions of power. It simply a loose way to connect and collaborate.
  • This document comes from the Coordinating Committee - Tom - believes this is the right name for the group
  • Martin: Are level of membership too formal?
    • Chris: These levels were a way to allow smaller institutions to participate in BHL.
    • Judy: We could just add a comment on whether this is the right language/structure for membership. Make it clear that we're open for discussion on this membership structure.
  • Nancy: How do the global meetings get convened? Document says chair will manage business, but should they manage and convene meetings? How do we decide where meetings are?
    • Cathy: Vice Chair usually convenes the meetings.
    • Tom: Decision where meeting is this year based on opportunistic meeting - what city funding allowed for.
    • Nancy: Who will be thinking about when/where next meeting will be?
    • Decision: Chair will convene annual meeting.
      • Logistics will be decided at local level once meeting location decided upon.
  • Nancy: Should we always have our program director involved in executive group/do we always want presence from this group?
    • Not making the explicit statement that there has to be a representative from BHL US/UK on executive group

Decisions:

• Edited draft will be presented at Global Meeting in June.
• Chair will convene annual meeting.
  • Logistics will be decided at local level once meeting location decided upon.
• We are not making statement that we have to have a BHL US/UK Representative on the Executive Group

Action Item:

• Send draft to global members for discussion at June meeting (William)

BHL IC Membership & Growth of Membership

Do we need to grow the IC Group and how should we grow it?

• Judicious solicitation of new members.
• Bring members with new skills or content.
• Encourage more to join on the Steering Committee.
• If we get too big there are plenty of models, like creating subcommittees, to make this manageable.
• There's a difference between members and collaborators. We might want to collaborate with people that we don't ask to join the IC
• Perhaps we should try to get as many governmental agencies in membership, as funding may be more secure and having governmental agencies looks good to governmental funders.
• We need to get paying members involved - people who will help us grow and sustain ourselves.
• Responsibilities & benefits of membership: Existing document stating this needs to be revised
  • Responsibility: Sharing of digitized biodiversity content. Make sure that the time investment from us actually yields something for BHL (either content or labor/volunteer time).
    • Application process should be explicit about what is expected of them through joining
• We need a membership group that develops criteria that we look at for asking members to join IC, as well as looks at potential members to decide who should be asked, and develop an "exit strategy," i.e. gently ease them out of the IC Group if they can't participate.
• We could perhaps require a nominal fee for joining even IC to make sure groups that join are truly committed.
  • Martin: This could be part of by-laws revision
• Who solicits global partners?
  • Tom: This will be based on a variety of factors. This should not be put in a specific document, but immediate future it will fall heavily on Chris F., Martin, and William to hear of and pursue global membership.
  • Global members should be directed to work with more local nodes (New Zealand would work with Australia)
  • This is a Berlin global meeting question

Decision:

• Develop Membership Subcommittee (Connie, Doug, Judy) to come up with:
  • List of possible candidates
  • List of Criteria for being IC member
  • Discuss possibilities of including a nominal IC Group fee
• Size: We can continue to grow and we'll know when the IC has become too large and address it then.

Action Item:

• Membership subcommittee puts together report list of IC candidates, criteria for IC membership, and statement about possibility of IC fee for discussion by SC

Strategic Plan Discussion

Nancy: We need to have a small group look at strategic plan and come back with revised document. Martin and Chris should be a part of this group.
Latest Strategic Plan for BHL US/UK: BHL Strategic Plan draft external3 .doc
BHL-Europe strategic plan: BHLE_D1-9


Decision:

• Formed Strategic Plan Group to revise strategic plan and present to group
• Members of Group:
  Martin
  Chris
  Connie
  Susan
  Jane

Action Item:

• Strategic Plan subcommittee formed to revise strategic plan

Concluding remarks, wrap up, next steps

Graham Higley named Founding Chair Emeritus.
Cathy Norton named BHL Member Emeritus
Tom Garnett named Founding Program Director BHL