BHL IC Meeting 2013 Notes

BHL Institutional Council Meeting, May 6-7, 2013

Action Items

BHL Secretariat to come up with list of possible implications this new structure will have to submit to EC to use for solidifying membership documents. DONE
EC to review all discussions and come up with draft membership document to submit to SC by end of July, 2013. (DUE END OF JULY, EC RESPONSIBLE)
Form membership committee that actively targets new members or affiliates after membership document approved (part of EC discussion for plan for membership). (DUE TBD, SC RESPONSIBLE)
Discuss global partner membership to BHL-US/UK at Global Meeting in May, 2013. (DUE MAY 27-29, MARTIN KALFATOVIC RESPONSIBLE)
Google doc link will be sent to everyone for review. Use comments within google documents to give your feedback. Give feedback by end of next week, May 17, 2013. DONE
- what now?
Secretariat will work with Technical team to put new vision and mission will be added to new website. Once goals finalized, will be added to website on its own page as well. DONE
Bianca will create a fact sheet spelling out the implications of asserting different licenses on the use of the content. The fact sheet will be submitted to EC for review before being distributed to institutions to use. (DUE TBD, BIANCA CROWLEY RESPONSIBLE)
Bianca will then distribute institutional publication agreements to each institutions with instructions on how and what to sign. We need an agreement for each publication. (DUE TBD, BIANCA CROWLEY RESPONSIBLE)
BHL Program Manager will send a monthly highlights email to the IC listserv, outlining the activities that happened in BHL for that month (ONGOING, GRACE COSTANTINO RESPONSIBLE)
Fundraising Committee Formed: Tom Baione (lead), Jane Smith, Connie Rinaldo, Tomoko Steen ==> Fundraising Committee to flesh out ideas from meeting and see if they can make something of them (maybe Doug would be interested); pick 1-2 fundraising ideas and flesh out w/ low overhead; timeline: for at least one of these ideas...descriptive piece w/ details - to report on progress during SC July call 4th Thursday (DUE JULY SC call, TOM BAIONE, JANE SMITH, CONNIE RINALDO, TOMOKO STEEN RESPONSIBLE)

May 7 Notes

CY13 Dues Budget

Vote:
Unanimous passing of dues for FY2013.

Summary:
2012 Dues: Had exactly $90,000 from 2012 year. Group approved spending plan. We were expecting to pay William's salary and a contingency fund. We were low on those costs, so we had $80,000 carryover to fy2013.

FY2013:
$80,000 carryover. Three new paying members, resulted in $208,066.00 in Dues going forward. Spending on dues based on calendar year (Jan 1 - Dec. 31).

Proposed spending plan: Dues 2013.pdf

Tech salaries covers William Ulate August-Dec. 31, 2013.
Digital storage costs cover cluster support at MBL WHOI.
$25,000 in pan-BHL scanning account. Up from $10,000 last year.
Meetings cover, for instance, IC meetings. Non-SIL travel covers costs to send someone to a meeting or conference.
Non-travel conference costs are for booths.
Contingency fund: Mike Lichtenberg needs salary funds for March-Dec, 2014 (Mike costs approximately $130,000 a year). Trish funding ends April, 2014. William funding ends Dec. 31, 2013. Contingency fund can help cover some of those salary costs.
IDC line is IDC for Internet Archive scanning, administration fee.

Discussion:
Nancy: We're developing our sustainability mode. MBG may not be able to pick up future technical staff costs after grants run out. They have always been funded through MacArthur, NEH, Moore, and GNA grants to date. Technical staff are essential. We are trying to consolidate things at the Smithsonian to bring in extra money, but there is no technical position available to offer, particularly to Mike. While we will fundraise, we need to have other plans to continue technical staff employment. Dues are an appropriate place to do that.

Martin: Mike is actually a contractor, on a contract with a third-party vendor. Mike and I had conversations about ways other could pick up him up as an employee, but he is with a very good firm and would prefer to stay as a contractor.

Nancy: We are actively seeking other funds. SIL cannot go to a lot of resources that you all can, so something to think about is whether, when you include budgets for other grants for technical support.

Martin: We need to be very careful about doing grants that don't support core activities. When you put in proposals, make sure that a portion of your work is actually supporting core activities. That's why Grace and I have been trying to coordinate what grants are going out so there are no surprises about demands on technical staff time.

Jane: We definitely need to keep Mike if we can, but is there a plan to groom other people to take over if Mike leaves.

Martin: That was the purpose of the Technical Advisory Group (TAG). Joel and John Mignault have also talked with Mike to make sure they understand how BHL works so they can have institutional memory in case we lose Mike. TAG can also do some of those add-on things. Francis is working on full-text searching options. Joel works on Macaw. So these people can also pull in other activities.

Nancy: Sustainability is about ensuring that the core is stable. Short term is about making sure we keep Mike. Long term is talking about how we can bring other people in to take on other tasks.

Martin: This is all still FY13 money. If we know we're getting approximately the same amount again in FY14, then we could roll some of this money into other activities like scanning. Scanning is probably our second most-important need after technical staff.

Tom: Is part of Mike's work hosted version of Macaw?

Martin: No, that's Joel at SIL and part of our SIL in-kind contributions.

Tom: Macaw will allow AMNH to get into a more contributory position, so it's important for us. Is there any way to push that along?

Martin: We had looked into third-party hosting options we could use to put Macaw up that we can look if it will take past Summer to get SIL's hosted version up.

Marty: Where are the costs?

Martin: No server costs. Only development costs. Development is all complete. Right now we're in the technical review board process that we're trying to get through. It's just a matter of time at this point. We've had Macaw approved to local use. It's just about getting virtual use applied. Thus, July looks likely.

Susan: The budget looks sensible based on what we've talked about. It's not sustainable over many years, but for this year it's good.

Martin: On a monthly basis we send out what we've spent from these funds to SC members. If you see anything weird, let us know. If we need to change budget allocations, the EC will discuss that ahead of time and in October we could adjust the spending.

Martin: Last year scanning funding was just for Gemini priorities, but we could come up with another plan if we wanted to.

Membership

bhlmembership.pdf
BHLmembershipStructurebenefits.doc
revised2013BHL+Membership+Process+July+2+draft-2.docx

Action Items:

BHL Secretariat to come up with list of possible implications this new structure will have to submit to EC to use for solidifying membership documents.
EC to review all discussions and come up with draft membership document to submit to SC by end of July, 2013.
Form membership committee that actively targets new members or affiliates after membership document approved (part of EC discussion for plan for membership).
Discuss global partner membership to BHL-US/UK at Global Meeting in May, 2013.

Summary of New Membership Decisions:

Levels of Participation:
Members (paying members)
Affiliates (non-paying members)
One-Off contributors (just give us content one time, pay service fee, and do not become affiliates)

Term for non-paying group:
Affiliates (preferred term)
Other options:
Associates
Collaborators

Term for paying group:
Member: An institution or organization that sits on the Steering Committee

What are Steering Committee Members responsible for?
Pay annual dues
Contribute biodiversity content that meets guidelines
and/or
Contribute technical support or enhancement of BHL content (other in-kind assistance).
Meets guidelines and standards spelled out by BHL.
Appoint someone to serve as representative to BHL.
Help growth and development of BHL.

What are affiliates responsible for?
Commit to open access
Contribute biodiversity content that meets guidelines
and/or
Contribute technical support or enhancement of BHL content (other in-kind assistance).
Meets guidelines and standards spelled out by BHL.
At invitation participate in task forces, committees, working groups, or meetings.
Appoint someone to serve as representative to BHL.
Help growth and development of BHL.
Continuing support for BHL project, not one-off participants.
Become affiliates for 3 years and then review continued affiliate status for another term.

Possible Publisher Affiliates:
We may also invite publishers to be affiliates. We may consider a publisher affiliate category and different levels of service fees for publishers. Executive Committee will discuss.

Units that can be affiliate participants:
institutions that contribute biodiversity content or expertise
publishers that want BHL to host files
not for profit organization in biodiversity communities

Service Fees:
If you want to contribute content and are not a Member, there may be a service fee associated with it. If you are an affiliate (and thus promise additional staff time), you get a reduced service fee.

Permissions Consideration:
Executive committee will talk more about how the service fee affects permission work. Maybe for those we approach, that do not require much handling, we will scan the books for free, but publishers or those that approach us, there is a service fee. EC group will discuss.

Global Participants:

If global entities want to be part of BHL-US/UK as members or affiliates, they can, but they should consult with global bodies as well. This will be further discussed at 2013 Global Meeting. It could also be incubator for future global nodes.

Background on Membership:

Nancy: Connie, Judy and Doug put this together. We didn't dealt with this document because we wanted to see how our existing membership would flesh out. This document is aligned with what EOL was doing, but EOL now decided that it had too many groups operating and they are combining partner and institutional council membership. So think about what we really want to have out of membership, in addition to money. What does membership really mean? What does is take to service members in different categories. We want to keep things as simple as possible.

Connie Presentation:
History of Membership Practices: Cathy Norton, Connie and Doug developed process and document with membership requirements. Extremely ellaborate but no payments involved. Summer 2012, Doug, Connie, Judy worked on making simpler membership document and articulates benefits of joining BHL, especially at paying level.
Addressed benefits and making process simpler. Added financial support through two levels of membership, paying at SC level. Thought about small fee for IC members, but we should really just try to get everyone to pay big amount.

SC Responsibilities: Sign MOU, pay dues, give in-kind support. Also assigns priorities, policies, budget approval, promotion of BHL.

Benefits for SC: Participate in guidance and development of BHL. Access to specialized software. Funds for digitization. Our technical staff can participate in BHL development and get expertise. Some travel support. Social media drives traffic to all of us, so it's an institutional benefit.

Problem: Why pay $10,000 and not just be IC member.

IC Responsibilities: Sign MOU and contribute content but aren't responsible for guiding project.

Benefits for IC: Participation in a well-known, respected project.

Partner Level? Membership now is institutional, so right now is organizations want to join, this is how they could. Also small libraries that don't have content but want to promote BHL. Do we want partner level or throw all non-paying members into IC bucket.

Discussion at Meeting:

Connie: So now we're stalled with the document. How do we define benefits to encourage everyone to be paying member. How sustainable is this? What is everyone needs Macaw?

Nancy: SC members pay dues and get al help and aide we can give them. If another institution, not member, has content they want to contribute, there's a cost to that - lots of overhead. Maybe we can implement a fee for service. If you want to be an IC member and you want to contribute digital files to BHL, there's a fee set to get files into BHL (fee to cover cost of participation).

Jane: I like that idea. A separation out of the different aspects is the way forward. Being part of SC is about making decisions about leading and guiding BHL. IC might just be about contributing content.

Nancy: Maybe we put partners and IC all together in same bucket, and maybe they're all partners and we do away with IC level. They can contribute but are not part of a body that has some authority.

Judy: Maybe call them contributors instead of partners, but have clear guidelines on what can be contributed, including metadata, file, and content types.

Martin: We are very focused on increasing content, but many potential people in other categories could be improvers of content (enhance metadata, process through Macaw, etc.). Maybe these contributors could do that, and it would be an equal contribution to giving content.

Nancy: If we're striving for closer relationships with other organizations like GBIF, invite them to be contributors. They can provide knowledge, expertise, strategic promotion, etc. Those are contributions. We could invite a few of the most strategic for us organizations to be part of BHL Contributors.

Marty: Where in this picture will non-BHL members whose content we've ingested from IA fit into this contributor piece?

Connie: We might want to tap some of them to be BHL Contributors.

Nancy: I'm not sure that they fit anywhere. Maybe we rethink term contributors.

Nancy: So let's develop a role list for the two different levels of participation. Other ideas are associates or affiliates.

Martin: Key distinction is between paying group and non-paying group. Random harvest people we don't count within these groups, but we might approach some of them for participation.

Judy: Perhaps term collaborator.

Tomoko: What about bringing individuals into the membership model?

Martin: Collaborating with individuals is something we do, but are not part of membership structure.

Bianca: What about if people just want to contribute content but don't want to become part of "membership" structure.

Jane: It's a different commitment. We need to separate that out. It will also be difficult with too big of a group to make decisions.

Becky: The real issue is not about content to contribute but support.

Martin: We can have a fee service for people that want to do just a one-time upload of content. Maybe if you're an affiliate you get a "discount" on the fees for uploading content.

Tom: We could even have certain publishers that could be affiliates and pay smaller fees.

Martin: Fees would be related to the amount of work required to bring in content.

Jane: There's a difference between one-off participants and continuing participants.

Martin: We shouldn't promote that there's a fee for permissions, because that will kill some of our permissions work.

Judy: Does anyone ever get dropped from membership?

Martin: If you don't pay at member level, you get dropped. Affiliates could be for a term (like 3 years) and then they must apply to continue to be affiliates.

Bianca: How does this affect our FedEx workflow?

Martin: Rather than discussing that, we need to come up with list of affects this will have acorss our organization to present to EC that they can consider as they draft policy.

Judy: What about global institutions that want to become members?

Martin: Some global nodes might be more of an administrative body, but you could become part of BHL-Classic to get your content into BHL. We will discuss this at the global meeting.

Initiative Presentation

BHL Teams:
BHL Projects & Initiatives - BHL Teams.pdf

Becky, Judy, Connie, Marty: Serve on leadership committees and workflow staff.

If there are updates, contact Bianca Crowley (crowleyb@si.edu)

Project and Initiatives

Raw list of all the ideas, big and small, of what we are doing right now and what we could do in the future. At the time of the BHL 2012 Staff Meeting, there were lots of different task lists, which Bianca pulled together into single red-duplicated list with ~90 items. Now about 106 items.

Document can be found on wiki here

These are all the things we've said during all different meetings that people have said we are doing, should be doing, could be doing. Captures all the things we've wished or promised or presented on.

List is classified according to many criteria: active, becoming active, inactive, need to clarify, funding opportunities, table for later, complete

We do need to determine the impact of the activities we haven't done to determine what we should prioritize next.

Things also classified as projects (something with beginning and end) or ongoing activity.

Half and half for ongoing or project. 57 items on to-do list. 20 inactive items. 5 need to be clarified. 7 things complete. 13 funding opportunities, one of which was a grant recently submitted for purposeful gaming.

Going Forward:

Prioritization remains a key question. 106 things need to be prioritized.
Clear goals can make list more manageable.
Secretariat came up with draft goals and objectives that fell into different categories. Draft goal categories were mapped to the goal and initiatives. Categories: collection, technical funding, outreach, membership. People responsible for those tasks were also added to the projects and initiatives.

Martin: We have all of these ideas. what we'd like to have is a way to put these into goal buckets, then the executive group can review goal buckets on regular basis and provide prioritization, in consultation with Steering Committee when appropriate, to figure out what we move forward with. If decided a priority, we will talk about how to make it actually happen (money, staffing, etc.)

Nancy: This process is good, but the Steering Committee should be involved in setting these priorities as a whole. That should fit into what we decide is the annual activity plan so we know what the focus for this year is.

Martin: EC will talk about whether it's an operational initiative or for part of a year-long activity list for the Steering Committee to decide on.

Nancy: Ongoing things can be filtered out and we can look at only the things that we have to make a priority decision about.

Martin: It will be the Secretariat's responsibility to let the EC know what needs decisions on. We also need to take money into consideration.

Nancy: This also allows us to know exactly what we need to raise money for, perhaps through grants.

Martin: Some initiatives involve staff time, but maybe not concrete funds. So the way to act on those initiatives may be increasing in kind contribution costs that need to be considered.

Bianca: Tools and services involves a lot of technical activities. So we'll have to have the technical team involved in this process.

Decisions:
EC will filter list, decide about what items need decisions about, and will present those to the SC committee for discussion.
Secretariat is responsible for owning list and will come up with mechanisms for adding projects to the list. Will present to the EC those things that need decisions on.
Technical team will provide input and make additions and corrections for technical team.

Vision/Mission/Goals

DRAFT BHL Vision Mission Goals.pdf

Martin: Working with previous strategic plan, work at staff meeting in September and subgroups after meeting, Secretariat put together Draft goals for BHL, specifically for own work plans as part of performance plans. They informed out day-to-day work.

Goal One: BHL Content Goal
Goal Two: Technical Work for BHL
Goal Three: Financial Sustainability (fundraising and related activities; ensuring no subscription model)
Goal Four: Outreach commitment (increase global awareness about BHL with existing and new users)
Goal Five: Membership and Partnership (may need revision based on discussions earlier today; an internal discussion of membership)

Have also drafted mission and vision statements.

Decision:

Goals accepted as revised.

Vision and Mission approved as is.

Secretariat and Technical team will work with EC to solidify the strategies for the coming year, can be reviewed with SC if necessary, and they become the strategies for BHL. Projects and initiatives will be added from list for strategies for future years.

Objectives changed to strategies.

Action Items

Google doc link will be sent to everyone for review. Use comments within google documents to give your feedback. Give feedback by end of next week, May 17, 2013.
Secretariat will work with Technical team to put new vision and mission will be added to new website. Once goals finalized, will be added to website on its own page as well.

Discussion

Nancy: What about users? I'm looking for involvement of users in some way.
Martin: Goal Four

We were considering the performance plan year for this (October 1 - Sept. 30)

Jane: Arts, humanities, and social scientists to change language in Outreach goal four

Nancy: I think this is terrific. Nice buckets to put major chunks of activities in. In goal 3, add "while the content and services remains openly and freely available."

Connie: Outreach to users incorporates some of our user loops, but how do we make sure that we're responding to users and meeting their needs as we can. Trying to figure out what those needs are and how we can meet them.

Nancy: User integration is what makes our project so distinctive. We need to incorporate language that it's not just about sending things out but integrating user feedback into the system.

Marty: Goal four should be user engagement to incorporate not just outreach but getting feedback back from users and incorporating it.

Judy: Financial sustainability should be moved to the last goal.

Nancy: We're not just maintaining, but building and maintaining for goal one.

Jane: The idea of it being a trusted site, we're not doing quality control of the content.

Martin: This is why we put it here, to make sure that we make sure that what we are incorporating is quality material, and having this goal allows collections group to make decisions on content.

Connie: There is a problem with using the word "trusted" because there's a whole level of certification that we can't do to meet requirements of trusted digital repository.

Jane: We need a word that reflects that our content is trusted.

Judy: Reliable is a better word.

Tom: What does reliable mean?

Diane: Reliable is used in educational community to indicate that websites are good sources. Thus, it means it's curated.

Becky: Is it possible to use a word like reliable and authoritative? I feel like authoritative is one of our best features.

Martin: I like reliable, authoritative, and responsive.

Bianca: Authoritative is loaded.

Becky: No one who has been in taxonomic community is going to mistake term authoritative as adjective as opposed to taxonomic authority.

Bianca: It's potentially touchy.

Diane: Some publications may have now outdated information that is no longer authoritative.

Bianca: Our objective five specifically states Trusted repository with a capital T. People are approaching us as being the archive of record.

Martin: It's actually about creating a process to become a trusted repository so we don't rule that out ever.

Becky: Perhaps we indicate that we're not official, but the unofficial trusted repository or something.

Goal one: changed to reliable, reputable and responsive.

Martin: We don't want these carved in stone, but we at least need an approval enough to move forward.

Marty: Too many objectives.

Nancy: Change the objectives to strategies and then pair them down.

GBIF

Dave Remsen presentation on GBIF.

Decision:
We will pursue the discussion on partnering with GBIF for identifying species descriptions in BHL, assigning DOIs, and linking to larger databases. We will also follow up on membership discussions with GBIF.

The ball is in GBIF's court. Martin will get together with GBIF to discuss further.

Discussion:

Dave Ramsen: I work for the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). I requested to talk about some components of future GBIF work program that intersects with BHL. The scope of my presentation is only a portion of GBIF interest in BHL.

GBIF is an organization representing countries with an obligation to develop biodiversity data infrastructure and data resources that benefit the countries contributing.

I focus on taxonomic data and the development of countries to have an inventory of all the species that exist within its boarders and to have that data in a manner that is integrated with taxonomic expertise data (and that this is dynamic so that it's taxonomically up to date and you can access the overlaps with neighboring regions).

The intersection with BHL starts at the top of the taxonomic authority system, which describes the idea of what is defined by a species in a series of assertions linked to publications. Names of taxa are fundamental components of taxonomy and new names must be tied to publications. Names are tied to specimens and publications, but the specimens might be lost over time. This the publications are the founding point of taxonomy.

We're designing system to provide DOIs to taxa names, and, for any name, the means to link through to the original publication and the full text BHL publications.

Useful for BHL: Like some other actors involved in linkage and data mobilization, we can have marketing message that links BHL to national priority. One of the components of the Convention of Biological Diversity is global taxonomy initiative. It's been recognized that national species inventories are one of the fundamental requirements for biodiversity management. In order to provide a system that countries can take advantage of, it requires embedding resolvable DOIs into species checklist and having mechanisms to link those DOIs back to core literature.

Goal going forward is to present GBIF strategy in this direction and develop engagement and development package that we can present to countries. It will show countries the solutions and the actors required, then try to get funding for this. So it provides a coordinated solution that makes for a good sell. Strategy is to get countries interested in these activities.

Martin: How can we link this into the whole Global Names Architecture Program and where does this fit in our priorities, projects, and initiatives to talk about how we fit this into our BHL work.

Nancy: How do we link, what will it cost, and where do we get the resources?

Technical requirements: We have publications that describe new species. We want to take the publications and split out the scientific descriptions. One requirement would be to have mechanism to add to existing store of citations.

Martin: We have a limited budget for DOIs, so depending on how we assign DOIs, this becomes a question.

Dave: This is something we can forge a funding strategy around.

Nancy: Where will the money for this come from?

Dave: I will have to talk to some others about this to have handle on specific funding opportunities. It might be within next EU framework. Timeline for having access to documents will be over the summer.

Institutional Publications and Rights Assignment

Summary:
Need a list of your institution's publications scanned for BHL. Complete this list.
Images in Flickr: what's the license?
Can NEH use your images? Need to remove the non-commercial clause for NEH to use.
Need to have license agreements, with licenses asserted, for each institutional publication scanned for BHL.

Action Items:

Bianca will create a fact sheet spelling out the implications of asserting different licenses on the use of the content. The fact sheet will be submitted to EC for review before being distributed to institutions to use.
Bianca will then distribute agreement to each institutions with instructions on how and what to sign. We need an agreement for each publication.

Discussion:

Many institutional publications already in BHL. In spring 2011, Bianca started to try to gather a more itemized list of what these publications were. List on wiki has publications that some people have provided, but some are missing.

Martin: Concept was that in order to fully promote biodiversity literature, one of the BHL goals was that member institutions should make their institutional publications openly available through BHL as widely as possible. Members agreed that their publications would be made openly available, as far as possible, in BHL. We didn't actually keep track of everything very well, so we can't verify who followed through with that. Goal was to get all of those key taxonomic publications from institutions. We're trying to track down all of these publications.

Bianca: I tried to get this itemized list in 2011. That list is still in progress. I want to remind you all that we have different copyright messages for different kinds of things we scan for BHL. I considered institutional publications permissions items - in copyright digitized with permission of copyright holder and given create common attribution, non commercial, share alike.

Now we're stuck: No agreements for these on file. MOU not completely clear on what to do with these institutional publications. Mou seems to indicate that institutional publications should be CC-BY or whether they should still be CCBY-NC-SA. We need something on record so we know what to do going foward. Some questions: commercial use of institutional publications - right now you cannot reuse institutional publications for commercial use. NEH also presents questions. NEH may want to use these images for the project, but some of the sites we want to put these images on require that we drop non commercial restriction. Maybe some institutions are okay with this and other aren't.

Right now all institutional publications, with exception of government pubs, would be excluded from NEH work.

Also a Flickr question. All of this is in Flickr right now. Flickr doesn't give us the option to put a public domain option on images. We have to use a CC license. Most restrictive license placed on Flickr images (non-commercial, share alike, attribution).

EC recently approved change from restrictive license to open license (create commons attribution). Any public domain content in Flickr can be given open license except where we're getting permission from publishers. Bianca needs to know what to do with institutional publications regarding Flickr.

Stock license agreement form on agenda for meeting [insert link]

Martin: Things have changed since our original discussion. Publications offices in our institutional offices are more conservative now, so we will have to have one-by-one negotiations on titles, with understanding that things will be more extensive.

Marty: At Cornell there will be multiple people that need to sign these agreements.

Jane: Agreed. We have tried to scan what we have the rights to.

Bianca: This is not about future scanning, but what's already been scanned. To date no one's complained about this. It's just when it comes to new projects that we start having questions about this. Since our media is no longer just in our website, we must have records talking about our policies.

Nancy: Question is: How do we tackle this and who does Bianca talk to? Each institution must get Bianca the list of people responsible for signing these licensing agreements so Bianca can contact them.

Martin: The agreement you have access to is lawyer approved. We also don't want a million versions of the agreement. Try to keep as closely to the original agreement as we can. Our license doesn't say anything about Internet Archive because we can control whether the books are in this storage facility or not.

Nancy: Do we want some review of the agreement then have people sign, or have that an individual institutional thing.

Connie: No matter what we have, at least Harvard people will want to look at it.

Martin: This is the document that must be the starting point. Institution's can remove certain clauses if necessary.

Bianca: You can put different licenses on different titles. The form can have a drop down box with different license choices.

Becky: Do we have a fact sheet explaining the implications of the different licenses on the uses of our content?

Fundraising

Communication between EC/Secretariat/SC

Decisions:
It was decided that, on a monthly basis, the BHL Program Manager will send a monthly highlights email to the IC listserv, outlining the activities that happened in BHL for that month.

If staff have an issue that they need to bring up with management, the topic will be added to the next EC Conference Call agenda and the BHL Program Director will be notified that the item has been added. The EC will then discuss the issue. If the EC can make a decision without review from the SC, it will be made and communicated back by the BHL Program Director to the BHL Program Manager and Collections Coordinator. If the EC needs to review the issue with the SC, it will be added to the next SC agenda for discussion and the BHL Program Director wil communicate the outcome to the BHL Program Manager and Collections Coordinator.

Next Meeting

Suggested Date: March 11-15, 2014. Suggested location: New York.

Back-Up Choices: Front Royal, VA, or Cornell.

Tom: Propose joint meeting in New York. One day in AMNH, one day at NYBG.

Martin: Should have first choice and back-up choice.

Nancy: Annual meeting is usually in March. Earlier in March might be better. Perhaps second week of March in 2014? March 11-15, 2014. Meeting would be one day affiliates, one day Steering Committee. SI's Front Royal, VA, facility can be a back-up choice, but the problem is getting people to the location since it's an hour from Dulles airport.

Marty: Cornell willing to host at some point.

Tom: There is a new bus system that goes from Grand Central station to Cornell.

Financial Sustainability & How to Achieve This
Emphasis on coordinated fundraising activities
Does not pertain to private institutions
Other than money raised through grants

LC & USGS are inter institution transfers so overhead thus dues money isn't perfect round number
13 countries around the world successfully donated over 10,000: Brazil, South Africa, Japan, &etc attempt to donate from Iraq but couldn't

Implemented since Oct 2010 so donations show all monies since then
BHL account exclusively for dues from BHL members at SIL - dues & donations all in same pot at SIL and all tax deductible b/c SI 501c3

Donation campaigns over the holidays directed through the donate button, collaborated on 2012 campaign with SIL development staff and raised almost 6 times 2011!
Sent out to Gemini users, newsletter subscribers
Picked some good subject heading line experiments for email donation calls
FB add was shown to people with interests in libraries, natural history or biodiversity - $500 cost went towards this effort
GC & MK to meet with SIL development staff to work on new ideas for next year
email appeals were given feedback email address to reply ==> testimonials!

So what ideas do we have for fundraising campaigns for the future?
Themed digitization campaigns based on Digitization Project Nomination Form
Adopt a book w/ virtual book plates
Sending BHL products as thank yous - notecards, greeting cards with images - but can't advertise that certain donation amts will receive certain rewards
Product store of BHL materials, such as http://www.CafePress.com - ALA Midwinter raffle prizes were these kinds of products and folks were asking how they could buy them
Print-on-demand feature as a fundraising opportunity through a third=party vendor with cut of proceeds to BHL
Outreach activities to leverage for fundraising ==> iBooks, e.g. Gilbert Borrego working on a Shark Week iBook - maybe send these as thank yous to our users

Brainstorming possibilities...
GC provides stock list of the 8 items described above: 1) themed online fundraising campaigns 2) Adopt a book 3) products as thank yous 4) print on demand 5) create BHL product store 6) ibooks for incentives & attribution 7) funding opportunities from Projects and Initiatives List
Maybe TL2 digitization
Maybe helping to fund some Gemini requests

we had a click through rate of .03 for our FB add, right in the middle of what literature says it should be
diff b/w no. of people who join our mailing list vs. unique visitors to our site? should we make people sign into our site to get more fodder for our mailing lists? this would be annoying to our users of course but this has serious legal privacy concerns
Lots of the email addresses come from Gemini user feedback issues but we don't have consent from these folks to send solicitation emails so didn't want to send them too many emails
Do we have a way for people to check that they'd like to opt out/in to getting more information?
Concerns about measuring effectiveness of the FB add, can we tell where the Donate button traffic originated from? Yes, MK thinks we can
Should we let big social media corporation folks know that we're benefitting from using their services
Target a philanthropic cohort that could donate to us
SG: What about kickstarter? themed online fundraising campaign - you really want to get buy in from lots of users - instead of having a donate button all the time maybe consider pushing donations around a certain event for people to feel involved; crowd-sourcing donations; LC has an online catalog of high res photos, 3rd parties come along and make tons of money selling printed versions of these images - why can't the library make money off of this stuff instead of 3rd party vendors? Wide appeal to many audiences; thanks and looking forward to working with you all!
MK: SI has worked with CafePress & Zazzle, this group can help direct how BHL could get into this; engagement at low-level donations is also something we need to pursue
NEG: Not sure that kickstarter would work for SI but MK says that if branded as BHL then we could get around this; actually we should look at Indigogo

Decision: Crowd-funding a good fundraising possibility

So what about images? We don't want to have the overhead of creating the materials and sending them out &etc.
TB: Are they high res enough images? Yes
MS: What about non-BHL member content? Do we have permission to commercialize this content? MK: easy answer is for SC members to decide - would be good to decide to focus on BHL member materials
MS: have data from Cornell about selling products 110K titles w/ Amzn POD for a number of years, in 2012 $55,700 for 8,000 units sold - Library gets back 30% of this; 2011 was higher at $77K, explanation for drop is b/c there are so many POD offerers
JW: If we could push people to a site where BHL could get a cut this would be ideal b/c POD vendors are already using BHL stuff and we're not benefitting
DR: great that users have the option to download themselves, having right on the page a way to linke to POD efforts or image product efforts
MK: wants to keep POD thought of as a service, had talked to Cornell in the past and noticed downward trend; images more challenging & interesting
BM: CAS has image licensing concerns -- noted drops in use of those images, one of the reasons is b/c the search interface is terrible and you cannot find the images that you want; discoverability of images an issue; TB cites AMNH example of providing a finite collection of materials to try and get around this image
MK: Product line more the way to go
JS: Picture library adverts that users get better quality through their website; what about making limited edition items available, NHM made about $30K off a limited edition Audubon sell
high end vendors can provide these services
TS: LC getting national libraries to pay for digitization through IA; national libraries want to invest in the digitization for access - what about gala dinners? another way of getting big money; what about sustainable membership/sponsors? If the amts are set TS can approach these people
MK: complications b/c BHL is not an entity, money would have to pass through a particular institution
JS: We have the BLE functionality but this could lead to selling products
GC: Outreach takes a lot of effort so good to align outreach and fundraising efforts

NG: hearing most enthusiasm for creating a BHL product line through CafePress or some other vendor; possibility of POD if we could do it in a way that was worthwhile with low overhead on our part; not much talk about iBook or adopt-a-book idea; themed online fundraising shouldn't be difficult; but need help to focus on these ideas - should we have a subcommittee?

TB: adopt-a-book a no brainer MK: might want to look for an ex-post-facto digitization adopt-a-book, something to keep in mind is that it comes with lots of effort on our part JS: would need to be a std price to simplify things NG: keep in mind all the communication work that goes on surrounding that adopt-a-book
CR: similar for iBook - it's a lot of work
JS: need to think about ROI
JW: need to tie iBook to other existing hooks
GC: want to do iBooks anyway but need to be strategic about how we do them b/c they absolutely do take work
BC: keep in mind adopt-a-book has technical work implications
MK: what does adopt a digital BHL book mean and then build out requirements for low-operating costs system to implement

NG: So who's going to volunteer
Tom Baione (lead), Jane Smith, Connie Rinaldo, Tomoko Steen ==> Fundraising Committee to flesh out ideas and see if they can make something of them (maybe Doug would be interested); pick 1-2 fundraising ideas and flesh out w/ low overhead; timeline: for at least one of these ideas...descriptive piece w/ details - to report on progress during SC July call 4th Thursday

in meantime will continue to send out appeals, the more we get people in the more we can develop a donor base

JS: what about adopt-a-person? an intern for ex.
TB: want to make this as little overhead as possible
MK: lowest barrier of entry is to use Cafe Press b/c SI has a legal agreement with Cafe Press around holiday themes
TB: going to have an exhibit about the AMNH book published, going to feature BHL -
JW: archivist very creative and has been producing interesting things, wallpaper, transparencies &etc - will share this with the group

Closing out Mtg
Success! We've accomplished all our meeting action items
MS: Who all are we tapping for poss. membership?
NAL - has 3 Scribe machines, uploading to IA - MK & NG to follow up with NAL shortly
CDL - to join on behalf of UC system; Lane Farley actively lobbying UC directors to consider membership
UIUC - just launched new digital library website and mentioned that they are BHL contributors on their website, planning to approach these folks for talks soon
JW: Could EOL be a member? No b/c they would want membership from us to the tune of $20K

SF: Need to think beyond membership and small fundraising strategies - we need big donors!
NG: has 1 million campaign goal and still pursuing this
JW: what about building an endowment for the BHL? Absolutely we need to do this, nothing stopping us

BM: is there a reason why BHL not an entity? This could be complicated so we were cautioned against it, esp. also b/c we have international members + considerations about how BHL entity would compete against our current institutional entities
NG: we may at some point want to do this but we're doing OK for now so no need to really pursue this
Indeed it sounds like we need a way to drum up support from a dedicated group of donors - this may beg the question of us becoming a legal entity
TS: Asian Amer Assoc. of LC just got 501kd (?) status - this was difficult but could it be done for BHL? TS could put us in touch with her lawyer - tax exempt status
NG: Yes, we could use consult from a lawyer about this at some point
MK: keep in mind that all SI money would stop b/c SI cannot give money to a 3rd party non-profit - BIG HURDLE; could also be an issue for other gov orgs, e.g. USGS; Fed appropriations would be affected as well

Meeting is adjourned!
Thanks to everyone!