January 29, 2008 BHL Executive Committee Notes

BHL Executive Committee minutes January 29, 2008

• Graham: EOL SC meeting: space in the lobby at TED, next to Starbucks. Breakfast will have 15 tables with each EOL partner

hosting a table; most of Steering Committee will be there. Discussion with each organization about press releases for day. Might want to put out a BHL press release, too, for our community. Tom will talk with Jim. Trip from SF to Monterey. Presentation to Moore Foundation—Jim Edwards has incorporated BHL wishlist into a wider wishlist. TG to review with Jim.. Jim E. will send wish list to Jim Omura and JO will socialize within Moore. Moore will then decide what to discuss with us. We might want to add hardware (storage) to the wish list.

Alpha portal release: content is as follows: 1 mill stub pages with on/off switch (default is off). 30-40 thousand good quality pages (mostly fish). May be as many as 32 exemplar pages completely fitted out. Not sure about the breadth so BHL coverage may not be there. We have Chromis!

There will be a donations page on the launch (Cybersource will take cash on our behalf).

• Connie: IMLS grant is virtually done.....being reviewed by Harvard's Office of Sponsored Programs.

• Tom: Biodiversity Collections Index project: significant amount of interest in this proposal--digitizing log books, field notes etc.

Need agenda for Architecture meeting; consider 1-2 page position papers for people to react to. How integrate already scanned material. Need to know how much storage we might need so we can float it at TED (end of February). Tom will give a heads up to Jim about storage needs and also talking to Brewster. For the March Architecture Meeting, Chris will draft an agenda and we need to id some appropriate documents for participants to read beforehand

Looks like LC will have a 10 scanner pod and Smithsonian is likely to start sending stuff soon.

Tom and Paddy working on NSF proposal--may address long term management and curation.

Smithsonian and IA has funded graduate work at Penn state for automated mark up. Sketched out the boundaries of an important functionality. Moore support has been delayed. Tom would like to keep this process moving. Brewster suggested that maybe IA could hire the student with BHL money. Is this a good model? We want to be sure the solution meets the needs of BHL users and the publishers we are negotiating with. We need to be very concerned about quality of solution. Do we have the money--maybe, depending on storage costs.

Tom will send a clearer revised budget document to Directors before March meeting. Discretionary fund has been very important.

Paddy noted that there was a decision to not use Fedora by EOL. Chris will look into this. If Paddy can articulate what specifically is needed to use Fedora, it might help. May not matter to us.

• Chris: Flippy jpgs are sometimes not readable; Chris suggests hosting jpg2's at MOBOT; Brewster so far is not interested in hosting the Luratech/ lizardtech; Chris says to move all BHL JP2s local to our JP2 server, as we can't pull from IA & decode in real time - would need a 100Mbps + line and our I2 is 45Mbps. Given our anticipated volume, that's a 60-100TB repository. Not insurmountable, but mass storage was not included in BHL funds. We have the petabox in Moore, but that's a Q4'09 deliverable. Many researchers may want to download the pdfs. Other users will want an interactive online experience. We are launching EOLs with the jpg, don't have time to do anything with the jp2s. Will work on this at the Architecture meeting. Numbers and volume and cost--anticipated 60 mill but reality is that we are not going fast. MBL has done 2 mill. 60 mill is understated, more like 100 mill eventually. Chris will get ballpark storage needs and costs so Graham can have something for the TED meeting. Be ready to explain the lessons learned --archive is one thing but serving the data (delivery) is something else. "google.org"-- where does this come in? Could they host? Backed up at IA and driven from MOBOT. Have a further conversation after TED. Chris will do a blue sky estimate for the next 6 months and also 5 year plan.

Need to get enough storage for the short-term: Have enough for demonstration storage of OCR. Long-term needs should be addressed. Chris will prepare an estimate for Tom of short term 6-10 months storage needs so he can factor it into the budget.

Chris drafted a Tutorial agenda for JCDL. Need to be careful about budget. JCDL doesn't pay even if presenting. Taxon Finder problems should be addressed by Neil or Patrick.

Cathy: BIOONE and WEBWISE are paying for Cathy to address groups. Also giving a talk at ASU on BHL and EOL. Cathy will send new Taxa Toy web service.


NEXT CALL: Tuesday Feb 5 at 11 AM EST; 4pm GMT