BHL Institutional Council Conference Call June 10, 2010

On call: Doug Holland, Christine Giannoni, Judy Warnement, Tom Garnett, Connie Rinaldo, Martin Kalfatovic, Eileen Mathias, Susan Fraser, Chris Mills

1. BHL Europe Developments

Connie, Martin, Suzanne, Matt P., Chris F., Mike L. and Bianca attended the Annual Meeting of BHLEurope. Learning experience. We provided a report on actual European content. BHL User survey report was interesting. The former bid list, now called the scan list will have minor improvements but there is a Global Reference Index to Biodiversity which is supposed to be comprehensive. May not become a working tool for scanning management. Continue to use new scan lists and the monographic de-duping tool.


2. Australia and BHL

Initial meeting at Univ. Museum Melbourne. Elly Wallace (biologist and informaticist) is the official project lead on BHL-Australia which is part of the Atlas of Living Australia. Met with library staff, State Library of Victoria and National Library of Australia, Melbourne botanical library. They will be ingesting already scanned items and looking for additional content, with some funding. Primarily funded for infrastructure.

Canberra (ALA offices) for technical meeting. Mirroring--partial or full or progressive. Donald Hobern is Head of ALA. Official launch of ALA is in September. Very enthusiastic and ready to go. Did a usability study. Have a copy of BHL running. Working with Chris and MOBOT to make changes. We can participate, use the new code, change it etc. Also met with TROVE people (one search across millions of items)--similar to Europeana. Signed official BHL MOA with ALA.

Melbourne has state of the art scanning facility as does the National Library.

3. Next steps on the Communication Plan

Since so many couldn't attend, we will push this to the next call for detailed discussion. Tom has send the document for comments. Informally, there is information that the current BHL logo needs improvement. Martin suggests that Connie be the liaison for the discussion of co-branding with BHL-Aus, BHL-Eur and others. ACTION: Tom will provide contact information about contacts for each of the BHL nodes to Connie.

4. Other.


A. Reallocation of funding to fund data technician was discussed and freed up some funds to apply to scanning ($150,000). Gemini tracking is helping with lateral communication among staff in all BHL libraries. FedEx account to send items to other scanning centers for gap-filling or request filling. Possibility of sending invoices directly to Smithsonian for IA scanning. This way, no one will have to rush to spend money and keep billing going. Will this work? Discussion for staff conference call?

B. Will implement soon, a "request a book" form on the portal.

C. Judy noted that she is ready for funding.