December 1st EC SC Conference Call

Proposed Agenda:

Recap of gBHL meeting: planning meeting
Recap of Life and Literature Conference
Recap of JRS-Funded African Workshop
Recap of BHL Staff meeting
Invoice for dues for Steering Committee Members
Other

Notes:

On call: Jane Smith, Nancy Gwinn, Tom Garnett, Chris Freeland, Connie Rinaldo, Doug Holland, Susan Fraser,
Martin Kalfatovic, Jean Farrington

Agenda:
1.Recap of gBHL meeting: planning meeting: rep from partner projects from Brazil, Australia, China, Europe, US; updates; lots of productive activity. Need for better coordination. Principles presented, reviewed and approved. By-laws are the next step (Nancy Gwinn). Nancy found it a very useful and positive meeting. GBIF, IPBES--UN sponsored biodiversity info. Need to address differences in law in different countries. Many positive comments about the Life and LIt. conference from global partners.

Next global meeting--hosting offers from Berlin and Australia. Notes: Minutes+of+the+Second+Global+BHL+Planning+Meeting%2C+Chicago%2C+IL%2C+USA%2C+Sunday+13+November+2011

2. Recap of Life and Literature Conference: about 125 attendees. Graduate seminar students attended, many from our institutions and some we hadn't met. Librarians, historians, biologists, artists, technologists. Panels, speakers, breakout sessions. These breakout sessions provide raw material for future directions. Tom is working on a synthesis. Chris noted that the summary of breakout sessions were helpful in his post meeting discussions with the Australian and Chinese teams. We are no longer a pilot project! BHL is an accepted and expected tool that is used for a variety of purposes. Nancy noted that she is focusing on finding money to support BHL.
Nancy noted that it was a great conference and added that after reading through the survey responses, even though there were only a few, it was clear that not just librarians responded. Susan said she was part of the education breakout and the ideas are great but we need to be mindful of our mission and have a discussion in March. We also need to clarify our relationship with EOL because perhaps they are the vehicle for many of these ideas. We are the literature component. Nancy noted that Eric Mata learned a lot about BHL during the conference.

3.Recap of JRS-Funded African Workshop: 10 Subsaharan African attendees with an interest in BHL. Already involved with making literature available. They are doing this on a small scale for African literature. Many wear multiple hats. They have a significant amount of published and grey literature that they would like to make available. Can provide permissions, probably. There is no clear plan yet but there is a desire to follow up. Robert Miller thinks Internet Archive might be able to provide Scribes, charging only for shipping and training. SAMBI (?) meeting in South Africa might be another opportunity to have a BHL Africa meeting. Chris noted that this was the first time that many of these people had met and most had never heard of BHL or used it. BHL is not in the tools they use in their biodiversity centers. Lawrence from Kenya noted that he would be including more librarians.

JRS+African+Meeting#JRS%20African%20Biodiversity%20Literature%20Digitization%20Workshop-Meeting%20Notes

4. Recap of BHL Staff meeting: Martin gave us an update--about 20 people attended. Bianca led organization. There was a tech breakout session. Used the breakout session organization to identify what is important and match with how the L&L breakout sessions came out. Organizing a BHL boot camp for new members--Cornell & USGS. Susan noted that the amount of work that is going on is impressive and the Smithsonian staff are amazing.

BHL+staff+fall+meeting+2011

Tom hopes that we can build an agenda for March using what we have learned. Lounsbery doesn't require a formal report but must report back to the users. Tom is working on a report that we can all contribute to and share with stakeholders. Chris suggested that we publish the report through something like Zookeys to publicize BHL. Martin noted that there is a tentative agreement to publish something from life and lit. through Smithsonian Press.

Chris's recap of the Chicago meetings: http://www.slideshare.net/chrisfreeland/global-bhl-activities

5. Invoice for dues for Steering Committee Members: due date is now Dec 31. Invoices will be sent to library directors. Tom asked if he can send this out as a scanned pdf--seems ok with everyone. Jane noted that NHM will need all the bank details.

6. Other: Martin noted that we should use the BHL Executive Committee listserv. Connie noted that the Medical Heritage Library would like to tag appropriate BHL material with MHL so it can be searched in their collection.

Tom introduced Jane Smith, who will be stepping in when Graham retires and will join us on the calls. Similarly, Holly Miller will be taking over for Cathy Norton when she rotates off the committee at the end of March.

Martin noted that there will also be an institutional council list.

Nancy asked if the March meeting is for the whole institutional council and the answer was yes. She pointed out that there needs to be a separate Executive Steering Committee meeting.