BHL Institutional Council Conference Call December, 2008

BHL Director Weekly Report
10/16/2009

1. TG drafted agenda for a technical workshop with Chinese Academy of Science staff. This can proceed now that the MOU has been signed.
2. SIL Web Services staff, Keri Thompson, who is vacationing in China will meet with staff from the CAS Institute of Botany to discuss BHL. Thanks to Keri for making her vacation time available for this bridge-building meeting.
3. I met with Vanderlie Perez Canhos, Director of CRIA (Reference Center on Environmental Information) and Alexandre Marino, a CRIA systems analyst. They discussed various projects and sytems they have underway – very, very impressive. They have significant infrastructure, they have good developers, and they are well-integrated with Brazilian museums, collections, and taxonomists. They are interested in a South American or Brazilian BHL. They have already digitized significant Brazilian texts. They wish to be involved in any BHL Brazil discussions. I will be drafting an agenda with Chris and will send it to both CRIA and BIREME for comment. CRIA and BIREME bring different agendas and different strengths to the project. CRIA as indicated is networked with working taxonomists, had digitized older texts, linked to the EOL. BIREME has a large open access journal publishing program similar to BioOne. Also it is well-funded at the State-level. Heavily in the health sciences area but they want to move into biodiversity. CRIA and BIREME have worked on projects in the past. Any BHL workshop would have to cover IT and organizational/policy issues. My hunch is that they would integrate our content into their own systems and modify them to handle our stuff rather than using our architecture. CRIA has working taxonomic/specimen/species systems. But this is speculation and to be determined. Both groups are committed to open access. We also discussed how to involve Brazilian libraries that are doing some mass digitizing. I am drafting a workshop agenda for the Brazilian partners.
4. Dr. Christian Samper, Director of the National Museum of Natural History, will has agreed to address the upcoming BHL IC meeting on November 4.
5. Many BHL staff will be in San Francisco next week for meetings on the proposed IMLS special collections scanning proposal, meetings with the Internet Archive, and a meeting with the California Academy of Sciences.