bhlstaffcalldec2017
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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.
Attendees (All) -
TYPE DIRECTLY in the google doc
Agenda
Reminder: Toggle Mute/Unmute using *6
New to the call? Please introduce yourself and welcome!
BHL 2017 Year Recap
Project / Committee reps to provide quick recap / key highlights from 2017
- Grant Projects
- Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature (EABL) -- Mariah Lewis / Susan Lynch
- National Digital Stewardship Residency (NDSR) -- Joe deVeer / Connie Rinaldo
- Field books grants (CLIR/Arcadia) -- Adriana Marroquin
- Overall Program Highlights -- Bianca Crowley
- New Partners
- University of Toronto Libraries (Member)
- NAL went from Affiliate to Member!
- BHL China (Affiliate)
- BHL SciELO (Affiliate)
- BHL Egypt (Affiliate)
- Oak Spring Garden Foundation (Affiliate)
- Yale University Library and the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History (Member)
- 33 presentations given at 25 events
- BHL Members spent over $25,000 via the Pan-BHL Scanning fund
- 3 major meetings were held including the BHL Annual Meeting March 14-17 (Singapore), joint BHL Technical & NDSR Meeting Sept 12-14 (St. Louis, MO), BHL Executive Council Meeting Nov 30-Dec 1 (London, UK)
- BHL Secretariat delivered 5 formal training workshops to BHL Partners: NDSR, MNHN, SIL, UIUC, and Kew
Round Robin Updates / Open Discussion (All)
What about a staff call every other month?
- Outreach (Grace)
- Outreach Highlights from 2017: http://s.si.edu/2017BHLOutreachHighlights
- Highlights:
- Social media followers grew by 44% in 2017. We now have over 89,000 followers across platforms.
- 13,000 new images on Flickr. 6,400 new images tagged as part of citizen science activities.
- Thanks so much to all members of the Flickr Volunteer Group for uploading these images! :-)
- 36% increase in traffic to BHL from social media. Top referrers: Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Blog.
- Campaigns: J.D. Hooker 2017, History of Cats, Dazzling Diversity, Color Our Collections, Objects of Wonder, BHL Curtis.
- Facebook Live: Volunteer Recognition Ceremony, Celebrating Gesner, Seeds in the Stacks.
- Book of the Month blog series: >10,000 pageviews on blog posts.
- Sign up to participate in the Book of the Month series: http://s.si.edu/BHLBlogSignUp
- BHL Users blog series: >9,000 pageviews on blog posts.
- New content in promotional materials library: Flyer and Poster templates.
- Nominate books for BHL's social media using Gemini. 38 issues have this component to date. Instructions: http://s.si.edu/BHLnominateSM
- Newsletter: 1,676 new subscribers, 35% open rate, 23% click-through-rate.
- Annual Report: 339 clicks to view.
- Cataloging -- Diana Duncan--no changes in number of tickets and we did not meet last month
- Collections
- Collections Committee Highlights
- Developed policy for handling monographic separates within our repository, see http://s.si.edu/BHLmetadata
- Reviewed and took down externally linked in-copyright content contributed by the Organization for Tropical Studies for lack of valid permission information
- Submitted collection browse improvements to the Tech Team via NDSR resident Pam McClanahan
- Discussed issues with moving walls and retaining print copies across BHL consortium (Members to discuss further)
- Provided extensive support for collections analysis activities performed by NDSR resident Alicia Esquivel
- Discussed guidelines for handling uncropped pages for books
- Initiated work on a page redaction policy for any sensitive information contained within BHL books
- Began exploring the idea of linking from BHL content to related information online that may be helpful such as expedition bibliographies, archival collection records, etc.
- Supported in conjunction with Linnaeus Link via NYBG
- Consulted on segment metadata requirements in support of new batch article loading functionality
- Decided that BHL would not worry about linking different editions together
- Discussing controlled list of segment material types for BHL
- Technical Development -- Joel Richard
- Full Text search: development + Hardware obtained (requirements doc)
- Mike addressed over 75 enhancements and 10 bug fixes including, but not limited to:
- Year metadata, flickr, APIs, search indexes, data exports, author names, user feedback form, IA harvest, new metadata fields (Copy specific information, Holding Institution), DOIs, segment metadata,
- Added RIS (removed EndNote)
- Added the ability to selected multiple pages at one time in the PDF generation dialog.
- Met with Dima Mozzherin to discuss the future of Global Names Architecture scientific-name-finding services and initiated implementation of changes for BHL
- Implemented batch article loading functionality directly in BHL via the Admin Dash (more details to come next year)
- Began work to convert the BHL blog from Blogger to Wordpress
- Consulted on BHL MODS exports to support creation of BHL records in DPLA, as well as OCLC (in progress - YES!) and Europeana (in progress)
- Joel addressed a variety of Macaw improvements and enhancements
- 107 "Technical Feedback" Gemini tickets closed
- Google Analytics enhancements to improve collection of BHL usage stats (in collaboration with Grace Costantino)
- Implemented HTTPS for the BHL website
- Performed the ESSENTIAL work of regular system maintenance and managing website outages for both BHL and IA
- Mike addressed a variety of page insert issues (Remember: every time you insert/remove pages from a book in IA, Mike has to realign the pages in BHL)
- Gemini year in review to be sent out via email
- PORTAL EDITS: 17 unclaimed issues in our "EDIT" queue
- SCAN REQUESTS: 70 unclaimed issues in our "SCAN" queue | 660 scan requests still open and not yet complete (all-time)
- What would be most useful for you to know about the tickets on your plate?
- How do you feel about resetting 1+ year old issues that haven't been updated from Open to Unreviewed?
Notes
Grant Projects:
Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature:
Report from Mariah Lewis at NYBG. This will be her last call as the funding for her position is ending in the next few weeks.
2017 was a very productive year for the grant project. The year started with a number of trainings for contributors. We were also able to get many new contributors set up and scanning with the Internet Archive including the Atlanta Cherokee Garden Library, San Diego Zoo, Denver Botanic Garden, Desert Botanical Garden, Hopkins Marine Station- Stanford, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Chicago Botanic Garden, Delaware Museum of Natural History, New York Academy of Medicine, University of Texas at Austin, University of Washington Botanic Gardens, and the North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences. This does not include the permission items that BHL partners have scanned for the project- so a big thank you to those of you who have been working on this with us!
We also successfully had a contributor upload their own digitized content using Macaw. This was the Lloyd Library and Museum in Cincinnati who uploaded some fantastic content. We have had success with using the Macaw video tutorials to train volunteers to help with uploading digital content- mostly permissions titles.
In terms of permissions we have 117 new rights holders and 242 in-copyright titles*. We have a total of 122 contributors.
Currently our BHL collection holds 7745 volumes from 895 titles, containing 803351 pages. There is still quite a large about being scanned, uploaded and added to BHL.
Expanding Access has been adding a blog post to the BHL blog every month with corresponding Facebook posts and tweets. We have been to quite a few conferences as presenters and attendees and have done trainings at a few different institutions.
As for DPLA a complete re-harvest of BHL records happened in April 2017 resulting in a 52% increase of BHL items in DPLA, improved metadata and addition of thumbnail images. DPLA harvests any new BHL records on a bi-monthly basis. Current records in DPLA = 201,741 (as of 12/13/17)
Articles uploaded to BHL during EABL (as of Nov 30 2017)
• 95,518 (89% of those came from Biostor/6% from SCIELO and rest from partners)
EABL actively participated in the design and testing of a new batch article definition tool. The tool is now being used in production for EABL titles.
Training and documentation… We have created a few video tutorials in 2017. This includes a pagination tutorial, Scanning with the Internet Archive video for our contributors, and the Introduction to Gemini tutorial. Sustainability documentation has been created to make sure the success of the Expanding Access grant is not lost. This include a spreadsheet of moving wall spreadsheet of those permission titles that will need to be uploaded. Many are ongoing publications. There is also documentation on the z39.50 alternative that we have been using to include libraries in the project whose ILS does not allow for z39.50 pull. There is also a Gemini component that tracks all of the issues that we have worked on. These issues have been kept very up to date for future reference.
NDSR:
Report from Marissa Kings, NDSR resident at NHMLA.
All residents are working on the first drafts of their reports, which are due Friday, 15 December. These will include a summary of their research and recommendations. The official last day of the grant project is January 8. The residents and mentors will be meeting in DC on January 4 for a wrap-up capstone event.
Field Books Grants:
Reports from Adriana Marroquin, Project Manager, SI Field Book Project and BHL Field Notes Project.
Arcadia SI Field Book Project: 1,034 items digitized and 1,041 items published on BHL in 2017. This represents 70,180 pages in total. Overall, 1,473 digitized for the project (57% of project goal) and 1,407 items published in BHL. Cataloging component completed early in 2017 – surpassing goal of 2,000 with 2,013 field books cataloged.
CLIR Field Notes Project: The project has published 2,021 items to the collections in IA and BHL and a total of 2,246 items have been digitized. The bulk of this work was performed in 2017. Overall, 307,785 pages have been digitized (62% of the goal). Four of the project partners have exceeded their individual institution goals: AMNH, Harvard Botany, MVZ Berkley, and The Field Museum.
Project staff presented at DPLA Fest in April and as part of a DLF panel in October. The project also received a no cost extension, continuing through May 31 of 2018. The monthly blog post series will thus be continuing into the New Year.
We have also applied for another CLIR grant to continue work on the FNP. We won’t find out if we got the grant until 29 December, and Adriana will let everyone know as soon as they hear.
Round Robin Discussion
What do folks think about having the staff call every other month starting in 2018?
Matthew Person: It’s a reasonable idea. If people have mixed feelings about it, we could try every six weeks. What prompted the question on Bianca’s side?
Bianca: I was trying to find more time in my schedule to keep up with other things, especially Gemini. The staff call is possibly a way to cut out some time. Maybe we could have calls every other month and then maybe ad-hoc training sessions on days when monthly staff calls don’t happen?
Matthew Person: Certainly over many years’ time, we’ve gone through many iterations of this call. I know other people who have filled in for you will say that planning a call is a good amount of organizational work.
Randy Smith: It’s worth at least trying. If it doesn’t work out we can always go back to a monthly call.
Bianca: I’m certainly open to a trial and then seeing how it goes before deciding permanently. Some people have voiced concerns about the idea via email because they like the monthly check-in. Anyone else share these concerns?
Adriana Marroquin: We do have the listserv, which is a good way to touch base between the calls if it’s something that can’t wait the two months. I think every a call every other month would be fine.
Matthew Bolin: I support the idea of a bi-monthly call. Scanning for us has slowed down to the point that monthly calls are not necessary. The listserv is a way to communicate things in the interim.
Bianca: We’ll do a trial run for six months or so in early 2018 of a bi-monthly call and see how it goes.
Overall Program Highlights:
Seven new partners were added in 2017 (see agenda). National Agricultural Library went from Affiliate to Member. China, SciELO, and Egypt are now officially Affiliates. Everyone in the consortium is either an official Member or Affiliate.
Over 30 presentations by staff were given this year. If you give a presentation, make sure you record it through the presentations form.
Members spent 25,000 USD this year on scanning from the pan-BHL scanning fund (this is IA scanning, does not represent all scanning costs from all partners in 2017).
Three major meetings were held related to BHL central activities: the Annual Meeting in Singapore in March 2017, a joint-tech and NDSR meeting in St. Louis, and an EC meeting in London at the end of November.
The Secretariat delivers training workshops to new Members and Affiliates. We delivered five workshops this year.
Outreach Highlights:
Report from Grace Costantino, BHL Outreach and Communication Manager.
See the
2017 BHL Outreach Highlights document for highlights from the year and see agenda for key points highlighted on call.
Great to see that BHL's open and "clickthrough" rates for our newsletter is higher than the industry average for non-profits, especially our clickthrough rate which is
23% -- a very good rate considering 3% is the industry standard!
Cataloging Group:
Report from Diana Duncan, The Field Museum.
No activity last month. We will need to get started again in January. Bianca asked the cataloging group to help with getting cataloging records into OCLC, so that will be work in the new year.
Collections:
Report from Bianca Crowley, BHL Collections Manager.
See agenda for stat highlights from 2017.
Generally, for 2017, digitization was down from 2016, possibly because many of our “new” partners were actually existing partners that were already contributing content to BHL. This year they formalized their partnership but this did not result in new content coming in because they were already contributing.
Over 53 million pages as a collection. Article contributions will probably go up in 2018 because we have new functionality for contributing articles.
The biggest change is that, of pages contributed, 85% are now member and affiliate content. Last year this was only about 60%. This year almost all of our new content was mostly Member and Affiliate content. This really comes down to fact the University of Toronto is now a Member. They had been contributing content for years via IA, which was ingested into BHL, but they’re now an official Member, so this is considered part of a consortium contribution.
In-copyright content expanded considerably – mostly due to the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature project. Thank you! They really carried the in-copyright contributions for the last two years.
Collections Committee highlights:
The Collections Committee consists of staff from BHL partner institutions. See
collection committee page for more details and call minutes.
See the agenda for highlights from the year. The biggest projects were policy updates related to uncropped pages and page redactions, which will be wrapped up soon. Also worked closely with Alicia Esquivel (NDSR resident) on Collections Analysis. She contributed lots of great ideas for how we could do collections analysis for BHL and how to do python scripted analysis across our collections as well. The committee also consulted on tech team initiatives.
Diane Rielinger: Thanks to everyone who responded to my question about segmenting field notebooks. Bianca and I will begin to review the existing segment types, generate definitions for the types, and prepare a list of suggested segment types to be used as the controlled vocabulary. If anyone is interested in contributing, let us know – happy to have more input on this.
Technical Updates:
Report by Joel Richard, Smithsonian Libraries
See the agenda for highlights from 2017. Full text search was the primary focus this year. The server is now in place at the Smithsonian (took four months to get it) and development is being actively pursued.
In an effort to support continuing work on this, we will be readjusting how the tech team works in Gemini. We are working on a new process for triaging issues that come in to determine how urgent they are and when to assign to Mike. Staff should not assign tech-related issues to anyone – the tech team will be responsible for all assignments.
Mike is diligently working on full text search now. Explore the planning document.
A number of bug fixes and enhancements were made in 2017. We closed out 107 tech issues in Gemini. Also working with Dima Mozzherin from Global Names Architecture, who is reworking the global names algorithm to be faster and better identify names in BHL.
BHL went to https, meaning it is now fully secure and encrypted.
Diane Rielinger: Will Members be getting Google Analytics dashboards with collection stats?
Grace Costantino: Bianca and I are working on setting those up and plan to present them at the Members’ Meeting in March. These dashboards will be provided to Members-only, providing stats and usage information.
Gemini
Report from Bianca Crowley, BHL Collections Manager.
The portal edit queue and scan request queue are starting to get a lot of issues in them. 17 portal edits are unclaimed and 70 scan requests are unclaimed. There are over 700 total scan requests in the works. Check-in on these issues if you have the time.
Bianca question: What is useful for you to know from Gemini? Are the stats we’re giving meaningful or compelling?
Diana Duncan: Is there a way to tell how many open scan request issues are special collections?
Bianca: We can’t tell with unreviewed issues, but reviewed ones should be able to be filtered by special handling.
Bianca: I want to provide reports on Gemini at the beginning of next year. What’s most useful to know about the tickets on your plate?
Diana Duncan: Maybe which ones are the oldest?
Bianca: Do people generally know how many tickets they have assigned to them?
Mai Reitmeyer: I keep a separate spreadsheet related to the issues assigned to me. It would be nice to know if I could keep this information in Gemini somehow.
Bianca: I’d be happy to work with you to see how you manage your spreadsheet and how you can use that in Gemini. Perhaps this is a topic for one of our ad hoc non-staff-call discussions?
Diane Rielinger: I generally know about the Gemini issues that I submitted myself, but I often forget about the things I’ve been looped into. Is there a way of getting an idea of the tickets I’m assigned to but didn’t create myself?
Bianca will follow-up with Diane on this.
Bianca question: Anyone opposed to resetting anything over a year old to unreviewed? Nothing else would change but the status would go from open to unreviewed. I’m trying to think of a way to un-stagnate old issues.
Bianca will keep thinking about this and check-in with everyone before any changes made.
