BHL Institutional Council Conference Call November 13, 2008

BHL Institutional Council Conference Call
Thurs., Nov. 13, 2008

How: Dial the same phone number: 1-866-748-1119
Type in the passcode: 1912897#

Present: Tom Garnett, Nancy Gwinn, Graham Higley, Doug Holland, Cathy Norton, Judy Warnement (recorder)

1. General Update – Tom
BHL Metadata and Workflow Workshop at MBL-WHOI a great success by all accounts.
• Action items on Wiki
• Many “loose ends” addressed
• Great team building experience (i.e. Diane’s car alarm)
• Future meetings of this group will be included in budget
• Tom will use “parking lot” concept in future
• Tom encourages all Council members to check the Wiki for action items/minutes or contact him & he will send

2. Workshop follow-up – D.H. presented the following issues raised at the meeting:
a. BHL staff must be informed as soon as possible if/when data from non-member sources is ingested. This raises critical workflow issues that must be addressed (i.e. duplicate detection).
-- TG noted that he recently met with Ivy Anderson & Heather Christenson of the California Digital Library (CDL) and they will release biodiversity literature from the CDL collection (including Microsoft content) in exchange for BHL content. Chris F. will work on duplicate detection and informing all partners. There are about 1 million pages to ingest, mainly monographs.

b. The metadata team recommends that BHL develop a “wish list” of projects that could be accomplished by non-partner libraries and recognized as “in kind” contributions to BHL. Examples might be the development of an OPAC interface using an open source product or the Univ. of Ill. graduate student who presented paper at TDWG. NG cautioned that a wish list is good but should be considered in context with the strategic plan. It was agreed that formulating and circulating the wish list was a good idea in order to take advantage of opportunities as they arise.

c. The team asked if BHL should reconsider becoming a legal entity if we are to embark on projects like the article repository. If BHL is legally responsible it might relieve concerns about institutional responsibility. This raised a discussion of the next agenda item. TG noted that additional research into the pros and cons of the “safe harbor” repository is needed. He referred to the draft circulated prior to the meeting and reported on the reaction from Smithsonian’s attorneys. Smithsonian counsel advises only for the Smithsonian so if they hosted the repository, it would be essential that contributors are responsible for assuring that the articles are copyright free/cleared via a YouTube or Scribe-like “click through” procedure. The host must have clearly stated policies that the onus is on the contributor, have a rapid “take down” policy in the case of disputes, and have a dispute resolution procedure. Jim Edwards recommends that he contact the Electronic Frontier for more information.

TG will do more research, but article level access is in high demand from the entire community. Good models exist and having an article repository in place will allow BHL to accept whole journal runs offered as PDFs (i.e. Journal of South African Natural History) and accommodate historic materials like preprints. Eventually journals will be “chunked” (CF’s term) into articles that ideally can be accessible and/or searched across the BHL and/or the article repository.

TG summarized the current trajectory as continuing research and working on architecture. If members decide the project is too “radioactive” then we will move on. NG asked if both repositories would need to be hosted by the same institution. TG will defer to Chris F. for definitive answer, but suggested that BHL is already a distributed system so it seems possible that the repository could be independent if the software and network could support the seamless search and retrieval. However, TG stressed that the host of the article repository must also be the copyright agent.

NG asked who might be considered contributors and how they would be selected since the repository will allow submissions from only “approved” contributors. TG suggested that the Species Council could advise this. He also noted that the article repository could take a different identity from the BHL. GH asked TG to send him a final draft so he can share it with EU attorneys for comment. TG hopes to accomplish this within a month.

3. BHL – Europe: Graham reported that €3.4 million was approved. It is less then the full amount requested, but equal to what they wanted. The next step is to submit a budget within two weeks and then the final proposal is due by Dec. 12. Contracts should be signed in Feb. and money should flow in April-June ’09. NHM will provide hosting services, but may lease space from a server farm. There are 26 partners, and 17 will contribute content. Some will provide translation/linguistics or technical support.

4. Updates
a. MacArthur grant round 2 update: Discussion shifts regularly, but TG will submit final proposal for next round of funding by Dec. 15. He will contact partners individually for specifics if necessary. The detailed budget can be hashed over at the March meeting.
b. Strategic plan will refer to goals (circulated by TG) set for next funding cycle.
c. The strategic plan will inform the business plan required by EOL.

5. BHL Goals
a. NG asked if metrics are realistic? (i.e. 1,000 articles by 2011? Number of bibliographies reviewed?) TG believes that they are based on materials in hand and others that are proposed/promised.
b. TG noted that the links to species web pages are already very high considering the relatively low number of pages currently available.
c. NG noted that we cannot guarantee to reduce costs of scanning special collections materials so the language should be finessed.
d. Costs for technical support/transportation must be rigorously defended in the next budget.
Note: Jim E. says we should receive about the same level of funding as the first round ($3 million) but BHL has added many related projects. We should balance the development of a better infrastructure with building content to improve efficiencies, and offer flexible delivery and management of content. Proof of concept has been accomplished so let’s focus on tools.

6. BHL Institutional Council Annual Meeting – March 2009
TG will send out potential dates.
We need to confirm a host site (JW and CR thought it was to be in Cambridge?)

7. Next call scheduled for Thurs., Dec. 11, 2008 at 11:00 EST, 10 AM CST, 4 PM GMT

Respectfully submitted by JW Nov. 13, 2008; rev. 11/18/GH