bhlstaffcalljan162014

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Dial 1-877-860-3058 and enter the passcode 961479
Lead: Carolyn Sheffield
Notetaker: Jackie Chapman

Agenda:
Welcome Richard Hulser, NHM-LAC - Carolyn

New way to add grant proposals to wiki - Carolyn
Conferences+and+Grants

Survey on Quarterly Reports - Carolyn
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6LWC697

Macaw Update - Joel Richard

Gemini Update and Reminders - Jackie

Art of Life and Purposeful Gaming Updates - Trish

Round Robin Updates - all

Regrets:
Matt Person
Mike Neubert

Attending:

Kew: David Iggulden; NHM-London: Alison Harding; Harvard-BOT: JJ Ford; Harvard-MCZ: Joe deVeer; Cornell: Marty Schlabach; AMNH: Diana Shih
CalAcad: Becky Morin; NHM-LAC: Richard Hulser; ANSP: Cathy Buckwalder; Field: Diana Duncan; LC: Tomoko Steen; NYBG: Don Wheeler, John Mignault;
MOBOT: Randy Smith, Trish Rose-Sandler, Mike Lichtenberg; SI: Jackie Chapman, Keri Thompson, Daria Wingreen-Mason, Joel Richard, Carolyn Sheffield

Notes:

Welcome Richard Hulser, NHM-LAC – Carolyn Sheffield

Natural History Museum – Los Angeles County – new BHL Affiliate institution! Welcome to the fold! [Remember to differentiate: NHM-LAC vs NHM-London] Richard is the Chief Librarian, and the only librarian at NHM-LAC, has been there for ~4 years, Library had been closed for a few years, just now getting the library up and going. Researchers are big BHL users, and the library is looking forward to adding content to BHL to help fill gaps. Richard has a background in corporate and academic libraries, and is enjoying his role in cultural libraries. Richard is an SLA Fellow. Welcome!

New way to add grant proposals to wiki – Carolyn Sheffield

Conferences+and+Grants

Challenge with the old form: difficult to edit past entries (which happens a lot!). We’ve replaced the form with a spreadsheet, similar to the spreadsheet for IA spending. Any questions/issues, contact Carolyn.

Digging into Data Grant – Carolyn Sheffield
MOBOT has received a grant from IMLS, William will be adding blog post about this soon. Update – the post will go live on http://blog.biodiversitylibrary.org on January 28th!

Arcadia Foundation Grant Application – Carolyn Sheffield
Smithsonian’s NMNH has been invited to submit a proposal to the Arcadia Foundation (London). Invitation only applications, the founder of Arcadia is on NMNH board. Focus will be on SI Field Books. BHL will be included as part of that proposal for online delivery of the Field books. Two part proposal, $1 million for two years and a larger, longer term $4 million ask. Digitization staff, Social Media, etc.

Survey on Quarterly Reports – Carolyn Sheffield

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6LWC697

Provide some feedback! Let us know if there are things that you’d like to have highlighted in the QRs that haven’t been in the past. Also general feedback on appearance, clarity, etc, most welcome.

Macaw Update – Joel Richard

Macaw is online and running! It went up in late November, being hosted at Smithsonian Libraries, but open for all BHL partners to use. NYBG, Harvard, and CalAcad are the first testers, but they haven’t started using it yet (gasp!). So – it is now open to anyone who wants to test it out. The wiki will host information on how to set up your institution’s instance of Macaw, as well as documentation on how to use Macaw. Please ask questions, set up workflows, and get Macaw up and going at your institution. Ask Joel questions!

Joel: Brazil folks have asked about the format of MARC records – may be the place where most of the hiccups will occur.

JJ/Joe: JJ and Joe at Harvard are meeting next week to talk about Macaw implementation.

Becky: CalAcad will have a scanning operator up and running by the end of next month, at which point they’ll start working with Macaw as well.

Gemini Update and Reminders – Jackie Chapman
Keep up all the great communication! Thanks for adding detailed comments, and for being active participants in Gemini. We are all busy, and we are all grateful to one another for responding to Gemini issues in a timely manner. Even a comment that says ‘I need to check on these’ or ‘I need to look into this’ lets us know that an issue is still active. Sometimes they are as easy as updating your bid, and you can remove yourself immediately! Remember, treat Gemini as a big game of ‘hot potato’ – if you can’t scan it, assign it to someone else (get it off your plate!). If you need help, add someone in to help out (Carolyn/Jackie for BHL questions, other librarians for bibliographic mysteries).

Reassignment spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ak0hDkSQMhfDdF9SOGZyeGdFOUFwUm5ZVzkycEE4cXc&usp=sharing#gid=0

For next time: Try to check in on your old issues. We’ve worked our way through our unassigned scan requests backlog of hundreds – lets now work on our backlog of issues that have gone ‘inactive’. Not counting Special Handling items (because they’re bound to take a long time), we are looking at 10 issues that haven’t been updated since 2010. 62 haven’t been updated since 2011. To check on these, click on you name under Resources, and sort by date revised (date created is interesting, but some issues have been open since 2010 but are still actively being worked on).

Art of Life Updates – Trish Rose-Sandler
Making more progress on running image finding algorithms across the BHL corpus, but the Indiana Museum of Art folks are working to optimize to make the whole process faster. So far, 400,000 pages processed - 40,000 with images ready for classification! Joel is working on a version of Macaw for classification work. Expect an email looking for help with this classification work. Think about sending some staff or intern time this way!

Purposeful Gaming Updates – Trish Rose-Sandler
Picked up on Dec 1, right now they’re working on content selection for scanning. Harvard is investigating transcription tools. Currently working on RFP to gaming companies. Trish and other Purposeful Gaming folk will be attending IMLS WebWise conference in Baltimore – any other BHL staff around? There will be a dinner on Feb 11. Email Trish for more information. Hope to see many BHL staffers there!


Round Robin Updates – all

Kew – second shipment for pan BHL scanning has gone out to NHM.

NYBG – Lost digital management librarian (Kevin Nolan). Staff has been dramatically reduced for digitization processing, cutting into their ability to perform, and cutting into BHL work time. However, a shipment is headed to IA by the end of the month. Digitization staff is bare bones. Expect delays! Kevin was indispensable.

Cornell – IMLS grant project – NYBG and Cornell are meeting next week to talk about seed and nursery catalogs. Looking to coordinate with NAL – we’ve harvested a lot of this into BHL, but can we formally strategize our scanning? Marty created a sub-collection in BHL to pull these items together. Library school intern helping out at Cornell for the Spring semester, and will be working on this project. Will be presenting at internal Entomology Department Annual Symposium.

Harvard-BOT – On their third shipment to IA. Currently processing Gemini requests to add to that. Did some analytics and found that in the past 3 months there have been 17,000 downloads. People are using the content a lot, and quickly, as soon as it gets online!

• BHL Analytics.pdf
• Interactive Viz Link.
• MCZ Visualizations.

Harvard-MCZ – Joe says that JJ’s visualizations are great. Perhaps JJ can share with the group? Shipment is at the scanning center right now. Working on Purposeful Gaming, looking to transcribe field notebooks. JJ and Joe will be learning Macaw over the weekend and trying to upload some field books so that they are available for transcription. Lost BHL Metadata Librarian, Chris Carden, and Connie is working hard to get him back.

ANSP – Hired an Archivist! Two items out for scanning (BHL FedEx workflow with Smithsonian Libraries), once they return, there are items in the queue to be sent. Hope to participate in Macaw.

MOBOT – Working through all of the Gemini requests. Scanning books and correspondence.

CalAcad – BHL rescans are out at IA. IA scanning operations are still not 100% due to the fire, but they have a few Scribes at the church building. IA scanning is going slowly. Around a dozen items are ready to go out for pan BHL scanning. Excited about being a Macaw guinea pig!

Field – Was on a call with JJ and Chris to go over Flickr upload process as they have an intern working on that and pagination. In the middle of a data migration. Will also be remodeling the library reading room, rare book room, and staff areas soon – rare books being moved to storage. A busy time.

Smithsonian – A previous BHL intern will be volunteering with Flickr. MCZ and HUH mentioned Flickr being done for scans from their respective institutions. If anyone else is creating BHL Flickr sets, please send Carolyn a heads up so that we’re not duplicating efforts.

The Libraries’ Project SEARCH (a job training internship program for people with disabilities) intern, Donnie, has been working on Flickr tagging and will be working on Pagination and resequencing soon. FedScan/TSP up and going again again after a long TSP outage, and a period of understaffing for FedScan.

LC – Many items already digitized, would like to move these into BHL. Would like to meet with Collections Committee about this, would also like to talk to Mike L about the specifics. May need to discuss with Joel re: Macaw? CC meeting on the 22nd as lead by Becky.

NHM London – A new IA scanning operator has started, so looking forward to full time (vs half-week schedule) of scanning. Expect to be working more rapidly through their queue, and certainly looking forward to moving faster. Getting a table-top scanner as well! Starting a project with their official press, will be uploading their official press items to BHL. Trying to get on top of the Gemini issues as possible.

AMNH – Getting a shipment ready for BHL that will hopefully go out next week.

NHM-LAC – Curious about field notebook scanning, will follow up with Carolyn and Becky. Got approval to get some films digitized through a UC Berkley / NEH / IMLS / California State Library grant, maybe one day include in BHL? Not scholarly, but certainly significant material – just shipped out, will be digitized and in IA… Invitation to partner in grants, so please contact Richard with any potential projects.

Other comments:

Marty: Suggestions for iTunes U?
Carolyn: Wait for Bianca to return

Tomoko: In context of STEM future initiatives, one idea that’s being considered is data management, especially in terms of field noteobooks. Interested in raw data and rare data, things of that nature. Interested in collecting those things and sharing with BHL.