Feb2011ConfCallNotes

February Conference Call
February 24, 2011, 2 p.m. Eastern

Attending:
MBG: Michelle, Doug, Trish
SI: Grace, Erin, Bianca
Field: Diana
MBL/ WHOI: Matt, Diane R.
MCZ: Joe, Chris
CAS: Becky
AMNH Diana S., Matthew
NYBG: Kevin

BHL records in OCLC update (Becky and Bianca):

• Monograph records only. Serial records did not get into OCLC. They are scheduled to get loaded at some unspecified date
• Hathi Trust and Google data are also being ingested and data structure differs from BHL. They seem to be getting higher priority than BHL. This is one of the problems of adding serial records
• Sometimes BHL contributor is listed as “author” on ingested records, caused by a glitch in the OIAster data format
• End user services improvements still to be made
• WorldCat is getting 1500 hits per month directed from BHL. BHL is not getting traffic because our records are not well represented in WorldCat
• So far quality of results with OCLC do not equal the amount of work that has been invested to get records into WorldCat.
• We may need to modify a 5xx field to automate linking. There are ongoing questions about how to update our data to OCLC.

Life and Literature Conference:
Doug reports that the meeting and agenda are still very much under development. It has been funded by the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, and is a two day meeting. The principle goal of the meeting is to get input from a wide audience about BHL: who uses it, how it can be used and where should it go from here. The first day will be presentations, hopefully including some from outside our normal group of biologists. The second day will be working groups or breakout sessions compiling answers to questions about BHL, how it is used and how it can be improved.
Bianca suggests it's a good opportunity for BHL staff to get together.
It's scheduled for November 14-15.

BHL brief and detailed views update (Trish):
In the fall, Trish created a document proposing some refinements to some of the data views on the BHL interface. This proposal was reviewed by several people. The biggest change will be in the "detailed view", which will be more compact, cleaner and missing the MODS labels. This will hopefully be more useful to users. Changes to the interface should go live some time next week. Please send feedback about changes directly to Trish.

510 field: Should this be brought into BHL? (Trish):
The 510 is a citation field that displayed in the MARC record, but not in the MODS display. This request was initiated by MBG librarians. Trish, Chris and Mike L. met with MBG librarians to see how this field is being used and how best to display this data. Should we bring this data in for all BHL partners? Mike L. ran a spread sheet showing use by BHL partners. Summary is attached to meeting agenda.
Matt P.: At MBL/ WHOI this field is indexed information; imported with record but not finessed when in catalogue. Harvard uses it the same way.
No general objections to importing the 510 information, but NYBG does store donor information here, Kevin is checking.
Any concerns should be emailed to Trish directly by Frieday, February 25.

Conference updates:
-Two BHL proposals submitted to LITA (Trish):
Two proposals were submitted to LITA conference, to be held in St. Louis at the end of September. The first proposal, by Trish and Bianca, was on articlized content, an analysis of article pdfs users are making. Is a chance to look for patterns in the data, and encourage better metadata. For the second proposal, Trish worked with Joel Richard and Keri from the Smithsonian about building an open link library, using BHL and Smithsonian digital libraries as actual real world examples.

-Bianca worked with Connie and Boris on a proposal for Digital Libraries conference in Berlin. Although written jointly, it was officially submitted on behalf of BHL-Europe,sharing their experience with the digital library audience in Europe.

-Erin, Grace, Bianca and Becky are working on IFLA paper on the use of Gemini to monitor behaviour and how it has allowed staff to respond to users.

-Bianca did a small presentation on Computers and Libraries on ingesting content from IA. Was in Washington DC, sponsored by Information Today.

-Diane R. did a 5 minute lightning talk on BHL data, had good feedback.

-Becky will be speaking at WebWise 2011 in Baltimore on BHL and stem learning.

Collections Update (Bianca):
Collection development policy underway, see outline here
Bianca is working with Connie Rinaldo and Robing Everly (Smithsonian Botany Librarian), no hard deadline but hopefully available soon.
Admin dashboard allows us to create subcollections of groups or items. Please send any ideas for subcollections to Bianca. Perhaps will get volunteers to help create specific regional sub-collections. Tom suggested doing biota of a specific region, could help with our connection to EOL. Suggestions to do Woods Hole. Another suggested subcollection is BHL Institution publications.
Bianca asked if any institutions are scanning paleontology titles. Grace said that SMI has scanned their small paleontology collection which consisted mostly of monographs, no serials, collection is finsihed. Harvard has scanned some titles, mostly serials.

BHL Social Networking (Bianca and Grace):
Would like to ramp up social networking activity. Grace has beeing trying to post once a day to both Facebook and Twitter. The BHL blog automatically updates both Facebook and Twitter. This has led to an increase of activity on the BHL Facebook page. Bianca hopes this leads to increased conversation and dialogue on Facebook. Grace has been in talks with Chris about integrating William Ulata's Google Calendar for BHL global events into BHL Facebook page.

Grace and Bianca both try to update Twitter with a page of the day. They would appreciate suggestions on the wiki page for nice plates, interesting passages or pages with hand-written notes; anything that could stand alone as an interesting page. Please provide URL to page or book along with a few words about it.

Twitter account (Biodivlibrary) reached 500 followers last week.

Round Robin, how are people doing with Gemini issues:
MBG: mostly scanning Gemini and in-house requests. We are slightly behind on requests but find the volumes of Gemini issues manageable. As long as people don't expect a fast turn around, we're fine.
SI: smaller shipments, but still sending weekly; ramping up in-house scanning equiptment including a small shipment of folios. Have a backlog of Rare Book Gemini requests, as soon as in-house workflow is worked out, they can send more. Recently received a shipment from the Field.
Field: Christine bringing some Rare Books to the IC meeting for scanning.
MBL: working on a shipment of 4-5 carts to be shpped in 3-4 weeks. Bought a scanner about a year ago, but position denied. Looking into how to scan things locally and add to BHL; Gemini request load OK.
Harvard: shipment at scanning center now is mostly Gemini requests; 2 carts waiting to be scanned, almost all of them Gemini requests; also have some things waiting to be scanned in-house. Agrees that Gemini request rate is OK.
NYBG: sent shipment late January, was a mix of Gemini and other books. Next shipment will be March 7th and will continue monthly through July. Upcoming shipment is all Gemini requests.
AMNH: two carts sent this year, one cart mostly Gemini request, but also included some issues of Natural History Magazine, which they've received permission to scan. Second cart is all Gemini. An intern is going QA on returned cart and found that many early QA problems that were solved seems to have come back (skipped pages, etc.). Going to talk to IA to try to solve problem without returning entire cart, are wanting to send a cart/ month in future.
CAS: First shipment is ready to go to IA, but scanning center has been unresponsive to requests about how to ship and pay. No one will take Becky's money.
NHM (via Bianca): getting a little money and might start scanning in April.