January 6, 2009 BHL Executive Committee Notes

BHL Executive Committee Minutes
Institutional Council call on Thursday Jan 8 at 11 AM EST

Hosting BHL at Smithsonian: Tom and Chris reviewed the level of resources needed to host BHL (EOL is also being discussed). Redundant hosting of files, user interface and database. Tom would like 2 scenarios: A) storage, including IA files and B) full operational site. Looking for non-MacArthur/Sloane money. Harvard is working to deposit Harvard BHL material in the Harvard Digital Repository Service.

MacArthur/Sloan proposal: review panel (friendly but unbiased) formed to offer advice to EOL SC and MacArthur/Sloan: Michael Clegg, Foreign Secretary, US National Academy of Sciences; Robert Fri, Director Emeritus, National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC and Daniel Huttenlocher, Professor of Computing, Information Science, and Business, Cornell U. Tom met with Robert Fri recently. Jim E. has received input from all component leaders and is working on a draft to be ready next week. BHL expectation is 3 million minimum with 1.5 million supplemental funding request. Jim seemed happy with the proposal. More to come, probably will get additional requests for information.

Technical priorities list will be presented to IC on Thursday for input and will be the main issue for the meeting. Chris has not added the timeframe for the tasks--he is waiting to hear from IC. Chris will lead the presentation. Chris will have the information about level of effort. Disagreements will require providing more context and information. Tom will try to get some information together about strategic planning.

Chris reminded us that we talked about having an Architecture meeting in conjunction with the Institutional Council meeting. Tom noted that we have the money to do both. We will use the list from last year to plan the meeting. Mike Lichtenberg has a conflict for the 19th so we will have to plan a different date and somewhere else. Arrive in the afternoon, Chris give keynote--where we are, where we are going, then dinner conversation and then a day long meeting. We will shoot for week of March 2 either Woods Hole or DC.

Admin changes that allow staff to make changes in the BHL will be in production by the end of this week. The pdf creation tool will also be in this release.

djatoka--open source jp2; better because it is open source and has a thumbnail. It is an infrastructure change that liberates us from proprietary software and MOBOT's maintenance fees etc. Tom asked for a paragraph to send to Jim Edwards.

Next call January 13 11 AM EST, 10 AM CST, 4 PM GMT