bhlstaffcalldec2014
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Staff calls main page
Dial 1-877-860-3058 and enter the passcode 961479
Lead: Bianca Crowley
Notetaker: Grace Costantino
Charge: Biodiversity Heritage Library Staff share the collaborative responsibility for the daily operation, improvement, and promotion of the BHL as related to the
mission and goals of the Library and its participating institutions. Staff participate in project communications, including monthly conference calls, BHL's issue tracking system, and various outreach and engagement activities. Staff are responsible for the digitization, discoverability and maintenance of content contributed to the BHL repository by its participating institutions.
Agenda
- Round Robin (all)
- Gemini update (Jackie)
- Current status:
- there are currently 1300 open issues in Gemini
- 86 new issues since the last call, 53 of which are still open
- Praise highlights from this month:
- "BHL is simply a boon and bonanza without parallel. [...] I am the greatest possible fan of BHL and am going to start recognizing it in the Acknowledgments of all the papers I publish that depend largely on archival resources." (Curator Emeritus, SI)
- "I am a PhD student and your library is one of the most important fountains of knowledge for me - the literature available at BHL is often not available anywhere else - since I have to rely heavily on historic works. Thanks so much again, keep up the good work"
- End-of-year backlog status:
- 817 open issues pre-date the 2014 calendar year:
- 2009: 7 remain (of 513 received that calendar year) [99% complete]
- 2010: 180 remain (of 1740 received that calendar year) [90% complete]
- 2011: 200 remain (of 1313 received that calendar year) [85% complete]
- 2012: 197 remain (of 1226 received that calendar year) [84% complete]
- 2013: 233 remain (of 1158 received that calendar year) [80% complete]
- 2014: 1371 issues received (thus far...)
- Portal Editing Queue:
- only 8 issues left! Can you take one on? Clean slate for 2015?
- [you can find the queue under the Gemini workspace called EDIT]
- Social Media update (Grace)
- FYI Tech Updates (William & Trish) We are both unable to join the call. Below are our updates. Happy Holidays all!
Art of Life
Added more volunteers to classification task.
2.6 million images uploaded to Flickr from IA - Still working with IA and Flickr to update the missing metadata for BHL records
Zooniverse - continuing to develop Zooniverse interface with ConSciCom folks and currently incorporating fields from Art of Life schema. ConSciCom have added functionality for users to classify illus for us and to identify location on pages where illustrations reside.
Purposeful Gaming and BHL
continuing scanning of seed and nursery catalogs and adding to BHL collection
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/browse/collection/seedcatalogs
Continuing Transcription of Brewster materials (ALA 69% complete and FromThePage 33% complete)
Encountering challenges with OCR output from Tesseract which we are troubleshooting. This has delayed some of the game design since design is dependent on fairly good OCR output. Still expect games to go public in May 2015
Mining Biodiversity
Our colleagues from Dalhousie University's Big Data Analytics Institute (Canada) have developed a first version of the tool that takes uncorrected OCR and produces an automatic corrected version of the text using Google n-grams algorithms. We are setting up the equipment necessary to run this application at MOBOT.
A group of annotators is giving feedback to refine the algorithms to mine the text and have better results when automatically extracting contents. A Gold standard still needs to be annotated and will be priority in the following month.
We are using AddThis to track and encourage social media shares from the BHL website. We have partnered with Altmetric.com to track DOIs and URIs related to BHL in social media. We are also collecting and analyzing additional data of online conversations on Twitter around the BHL Twitter account using SocialMediaLab's own system Netlytic.org and finally, we are using an online app called Mytweeps to better undrstand BHL's twitter followers (what they are interested in and where they are coming from, etc). The app helps to visualize one's community of followers. A live prototype is available at
http://mytweeps.com/community/BioDivLibrary.
Our new colleagues from CONABIO have expressed their interest in the results of our text mining process over the BHL corpus and would like to contribute applications they've developed (for example, a summary creator).
- Planning for a 2015 BHL Staff Meeting! (Bianca)
- subgroup needed to propose location & dates - past BHL staff meetings have occurred in November...
- FYI Conabio meeting in Mexico City - Martin, Carolyn, William, Nancy Gwinn attended in person and Connie via skype
Minutes
Attendees:
Daria Wingreen-Mason, Grace Costantino, Bianca Crowley, Diana Duncan, Cathy Buckwalter, Jackie Chapman, Matt Person, Chris Cole, David Igulden, Joe deVeer, JJ Ford, Keiko Nishimoto, Connie Rinaldo, Richard Hulser, Don Wheeler, Pat Murphy, Tomoko Steen, Alison Harding, Marty Schlabach, Diana Shih, Mike Lichtenberg, Keri Thompson, Susan Lynch, Matthew Bolin, Randy Smith
Round Robin:
SIL: Scanning normal. Just got shipment from ANSP. Shipment from Field on its way back. Busy with permissions titles. SIL doesn’t use Macaw in cloud so no slowness.
Field: Going back and forth with IA about records issue – IA can’t fetch from Field catalog for scanning. OCLC gave a couple solutions but legal language in best solution says they can’t create derivatives of any records in this process. They’re waiting to hear from IA on solutions, such as getting records from Open Library. IA also suggested using a spreadsheet to provide catalog record information for IA, but no other BHL members currently doing this so it’s not an ideal solution. Waiting to hear back from IA at this point. Chris Cole suggests Diana contact him, as he might have some background from OCLC perspective to help. Field not using Macaw.
ANSP: Have new reference librarian who has jumped into BHL work. Sent a shipment to SIL for scanning. Will get back to Bianca on permissions for ANSP malacology journal. Trying to get to point to scan in-house, and might use Macaw. They use student labor for scanning, so high turn over, but want to pursue this for new year. Have current student scanner that is very good, and they do have some items on a list that they want to scan themselves.
NAL: Nothing new since last call. Have IA on-site scanning USDA publications and nursery and seed catalogs. Scanning regularly via 3 technicians on-site. Load 4,000 items each month.
MBLWHOI: Nothing new to report. Done some QA on earlier fall shipment and it looks fine. They continue to do one facebook post a week and tweets for BHL. No plans to use Macaw at the moment.
Kew: As of yesterday, government announced that unrestricted funding for Kew will remain in place and reversed caps they were expecting next year. Progress, and government and science committee provided further evidence on Kew funding levels. Hoping to move forward on Kew scanning soon. David will provide more info to Bianca on permission title she is waiting on soon, but good to move ahead with it.
MCZ: Not much new. Still waiting on October shipment to return from IA, and they have another shipment to go once it returns. Had noticed that Macaw has been unusually fast lately. Having problems in past with slowness, but it’s improved this past month. Up until a month ago was painfully slow, but after last staff call, it improved. One of primary BHL workers leaving library on Friday with new job. Looking for someone to replace her, as her work has been focused on purposeful gaming and QA. They may slow down on some work as a result.
Harvard Botany: Same as MCZ. Macaw has been much faster lately, and they have finished all items from past month. Will not use Macaw much for a while going forward. Have a shipment ready to go and will send along with MCZ. Keiko has QAed and paginated all of last shipment, and many things will have to be sent back for rescanning from last shipment.
NHM-LA: NHM-LA has big initiate to focus on La Brea Tar Pits in 2015, so Richard will be focused on this project. This combined with search for new director for museum might impact their contribution to BHL. Working on government assessment of collections, which impacts Richard’s time. Not using Macaw yet but want to pursue and find other ways to actively contribute. Paper submitted for Computers and Libraries in April accepted, based on paper submitted in London a few months ago. First or second weekend in April. Interested in sharing time with someone in BHL for the presentation.
NYBG: Have been using Macaw to upload seed and nursery catalogs. Upload portion of process is slow in Macaw. Not sure whether it’s Macaw or NYBG internet connection. Be helpful if uploads could be done programmatically and off-shift, so they don’t have to have a person watching macaw to upload images. She will put request in email form and send to Bianca. One of digitization techs wrote blog post about seed and nursery catalogs, live on the BHL blog today. Started experimenting with having volunteers create page-level metadata in macaw, which has been successful for them.
Library of Congress: Have budget. IA has left, so Michael put in request for table-top scanner, which failed. Next step a proposal within LOC to request BHL items to be scanned. Request that Martin and BHL staff visit LOC to try to convince Mark Sweeny to provide backup support for scanning to start again. Social Media: Coming year they’d like to be involved more in social media and publicity. Grace will be in touch. Wondering if members meeting arrangement is still moving. Bianca: BHL folks happy to visit – Tomoko to send email with possible dates to visit. Members meeting will be happening in March. Agenda shortly after Christmas. Dates are 17-18 in Chicago at Field Museum. No specific planning for open session of meeting yet. Connie, Martin and Kelly to talk about this and provide planning information for open session.
NHM London: Scanning as normal. Have tried to use Macaw and very slow to upload scans. Also Macaw did not like their MARC files. Joel has accommodated their MARC files and gave tips to speed uploads. They have not had time to follow-up yet.
Cornell: Focusing on seed catalog digitization for purposeful gaming. After first of year hope to get back to other scan requests and related issues. One of their staff members used Google refine to compare catalog records of those institutions contributing seed catalogs to BHL. In January collection call, Polly who did the work will talk about how she did this work. Others beyond Collections Committee will be invited to attend that call to learn more. WebEx will be used for the talk. November post from Cornell on BHL blog – they provided idea, Grace wrote post. Marty in the process of moving his office.
AMNH: Sent shipment to IA in Princeton. Working on fulfilling Gemini requests for rare books with Macaw. 3 staff working part-time on scanning for Macaw. Matthew and Diana doing QA and metadata. Also have a volunteer working on this. They do uploading after work, so not sure about slowness with Macaw. They are open to taking more requests for rare materials, but not doing rare folios yet.
MBG: Lost one of their full-time scanners – he retired. eBook from MBG has been completed and in Botanicus. Not paginated or in BHL yet. There will be blog post about it in January. Seed Catalogs still being digitized. Bianca received segment documentation, but has not yet had time to review. This documentation talks about how to create segments in BHL, drilling down to article-level to set up links and metadata for these articles. Volunteers at Los Angeles arboretum are doing this for many of the institution’s journals produced over last 50 years. Not sure how many articles they’ve created yet. Using the BHL administrative portal to do segmentation. Bianca will include this documentation in the help wiki so that others can also create these articles for materials already in BHL.
Gemini Update:
Jackie: Gemini going well. Currently 1,300 open issues in Gemini. 86 new issues since last call, 53 of which are still open. Praise highlights from Gemini provided in the agenda, and Jackie will be sharing new testimonials each month on the calls.
• End-of-year backlog status:
o 817 open issues pre-date the 2014 calendar year:
• 2009: 7 remain (of 513 received that calendar year) [99% complete]
• 2010: 180 remain (of 1740 received that calendar year) [90% complete]
• 2011: 200 remain (of 1313 received that calendar year) [85% complete]
• 2012: 197 remain (of 1226 received that calendar year) [84% complete]
• 2013: 233 remain (of 1158 received that calendar year) [80% complete]
o 2014: 1371 issues received (thus far...)
End of Year Holiday Giving: go through portal editing queue. Only 8 issues. Let’s try to get a clean slate for 2015! In Gemini in workspace called EDIT.
Social Media Update:
Biodiversity Library Exhibitions supported by funding from Smithsonian Libraries and Smithsonian Women's Committee now out
Based on tool the BHL Europe put together
See
http://earlywomeninscience.biodiversityexhibition.com/ and
http://latinonaturalhistory.biodiversityexhibition.com/
SIL hired contractors to create virtual exhibitions as well as compose social media surrounding exhibits
Holiday appeal currently taking place on BHL social media
4 key blog posts which talk about ways literature is important to biodiversity
email appeal on Tuesday and one on Monday
Grace working w/ BHL institutions to promote appeal
Seed catalog celebration coming up March 16-21
Grace needs input from YOU, wants to do a Twitter chat, to send out a
form for folks to provide info
Book of the month blog posts going well - but
PLEASE SIGN UP for future months
Grace will write post, she just needs ideas for books to feature but certainly welcomes guest writers as well!
Library of Congress would like to be more involved with social media, Grace to follow up with Tomoko
Promotional flyer, one-page on BHL, available on our Press Room page. Bianca needed it to pass on for intern orientation for training in D.C. Good for orientations or library information desks. Take a look and download, available in promotional materials press room page.
https://biodivlib.wikispaces.com/file/view/BHL%20Promotional%20Flyer.pdf/533904138/BHL%20Promotional%20Flyer.pdf
Tech Update:
Art of Life
Added more volunteers to classification task.
2.6 million images uploaded to Flickr from IA - Still working with IA and Flickr to update the missing metadata for BHL records
Zooniverse - continuing to develop Zooniverse interface with ConSciCom folks and currently incorporating fields from Art of Life schema. ConSciCom have added functionality for users to classify illus for us and to identify location on pages where illustrations reside.
Purposeful Gaming and BHL
continuing scanning of seed and nursery catalogs and adding to BHL collection
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/browse/collection/seedcatalogs
Continuing Transcription of Brewster materials (ALA 69% complete and FromThePage 33% complete)
Encountering challenges with OCR output from Tesseract which we are troubleshooting. This has delayed some of the game design since design is dependent on fairly good OCR output. Still expect games to go public in May 2015
Joe update: Focusing at Harvard on outreach by Patrick Randall. Article about project in Harvard Gazette. Patrick has also been in touch with some local places, which has also garnered some interest, especially in transcription process. ALA is Atlas of Living Australia, where they have a transcription volunteer portal. FromThePage is at MBG. Goal is for transcriptions to be completed, or at least 2,000 pages of them completed, by April or March, 2015.
Marty: Trish is writing up first progress record to conclude first year of the grant.
Mining Biodiversity
Our colleagues from Dalhousie University's Big Data Analytics Institute (Canada) have developed a first version of the tool that takes uncorrected OCR and produces an automatic corrected version of the text using Google n-grams algorithms. We are setting up the equipment necessary to run this application at MOBOT.
A group of annotators is giving feedback to refine the algorithms to mine the text and have better results when automatically extracting contents. A Gold standard still needs to be annotated and will be priority in the following month.
We are using AddThis to track and encourage social media shares from the BHL website. We have partnered with Altmetric.com to track DOIs and URIs related to BHL in social media. We are also collecting and analyzing additional data of online conversations on Twitter around the BHL Twitter account using SocialMediaLab's own system Netlytic.org and finally, we are using an online app called Mytweeps to better undrstand BHL's twitter followers (what they are interested in and where they are coming from, etc). The app helps to visualize one's community of followers. A live prototype is available at
http://mytweeps.com/community/BioDivLibrary.
Our new colleagues from CONABIO have expressed their interest in the results of our text mining process over the BHL corpus and would like to contribute applications they've developed (for example, a summary creator).
Additional Information:
Mike: Any abstracts or notes attached to articles are now available in the article bibliography page in BHL. Examples:
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/part/140065
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/part/139241 http://biodiversitylibrary.org/part/132130 http://biodiversitylibrary.org/part/125493 http://biodiversitylibrary.org/part/137768
BHL Staff Meeting:
We will be having a BHL Staff meeting in 2015. We need a subgroup of folks who will help come up with dates and possible locations for meeting. Need to think about budget. What location is most affordable, and what time of year is best? Past meetings in November but is there a better month?
Need 2-3 volunteers to work with Bianca to figure out first step:
Matt Person
Diana Duncan
If anyone else is interested in working on location and dates, contact Bianca via email.
Other:
Martin, Carolyn, Nancy and William in Mexico meeting with Conabio.
Connie: Conabio applied for full membership in BHL. Members approved membership. Meeting this week (Monday and Tuesday) that went very well, to give introduction to BHL. Martin and William gave presentations on Wednesday too. Also signed an MOU with Conabio. Talked about their needs, our needs, and what they have to offer. They have technical skills and are also interested in building Spanish language version of BHL. They also have (current) publications to contribute. Also interested in how to expand throughout Mexico to other libraries in area. They’re not sure who will be representing them yet within BHL.
Marty: Spanish BHL meaning they’ll take current interface and create Spanish interface?
Connie: Yes, I think that’s what they’re thinking about, but we didn’t go into details. We gave Australia as an example, but also about how we incorporated Australia website into new BHL website. This is just a welcome meeting. We are planning to follow-up with a workshop, maybe even before the members meeting.
