January 17th

January 17th Conference Call

Proposed Agenda:
Notes:

On Call: Martin, Susan, William, Connie

William reported that John Mignault will be attending a hack-a-thon in Texas sponsored by IDigbio which will also include a poster session and panel presentation. John will be present on technical improvements in working with specimen labels and how to tie them to content in BHL.

Susan and Martin reported on the Global Plants initiative meeting in Panama. Focus of meeting were on future of GPI once Mellon funding ceases. Recommendations were that GPI live under IAPT--International Association of Plant Taxonomists. The content for GPI is held in JStor Plants and access is currently free to contributing institutions but will be fee based beginning in 2014 at tiered levels. Peter Wyse Jackson and Chuck Miller presented on the World Flora project which is a mandate under the COnvention on Biological Diversity and expected to be well underway by 2020. IN addition to Susan and Martin other BHL members in attendance were Judy Warnement and Kevin Nolan..

Webwise will be held in Baltimore in early March but the plan to have the BHL IC meeting around Webwise will not work since Nancy will likely not be able to attend. There will however, be a CAS Field notes project meeting.

Grace sent out requests to all IC members to complete the in-kind contribution spreadsheet and the grants spreadsheet.

Martin is working on SI internal funding specifically the Siddell Foundation --current funding ends in 2014 and he will prepare a proposal for future needs.

Grace, Bianca nd martin are also having discussions on BHL goals and will can discuss them at the next Exec call.

Connie is working on a CLIR grant and on the proposed IMLS grant with Cornell, Mobot and NYBG on gaming and Nursery and seed catalogs and field books.

WIlliam gave a technical report -- BHL Australia is currently beta testing the UI and looking for volunteers. Problems to the site can be reported through bugherd and the developers will get message and correct the problem. The beta test ends January 31 and the team will have 3 weeks to implement changes. The site should launch in late February.

Work with the MBL cluster is problematic and not stable. Wm. and Martin looking into other options. Nathan and Anthony at MBL agreed they would fix the problems relating to the algorithms for images but it has not happened which will now cause delays in the the goals of the NEH Art of Life grant. A solution would be to look into the Smithsonian cluster. We will hold off on paying the $5500 invoice from MBL until we know status of cluster and related support.

Suggestion for future agenda discussions would be Strategic Planning and Fundraising. Will discuss next week.

Susan and David Kohn discussed with Graham Arader the possibility of including his content --of thousands of botanical images (original art) to the BHL for the Art of Life Project. Susan awarded another $3000 METRO grant to digitize Diatom and Algae materials--through the IA. They will be coded for BHL.