January 8, 2008 BHL Executive Committee Notes

BHL Conference Call January 8, 2008

Cathy, Graham, Chris, Tom and Connie

Happy New Year!

Tom: Bowker offer to donate ISBNs--draft contract doesn't work because addressed to BHL as legal entity and BHL is not a legal entity. Smithsonian thinks we can write one contract with signatures from all libraries. Won't cost institution money but can't divulge Bowker secrets. David Shorthouse leading effort to provide each EOL species page with a DOI. We need to discuss this. Tom has been working on a DataNet proposal with EOL, UI, Cornell,... --very high quality proposal. Will bring needed expertise for data preservation to EOL/BHL. Will hear in February if the group will be invited to submit a full proposal. EOL may get money for this--allocation not set yet. Data scientists would be hired centrally and loaned out to various projects. Money for meetings and development.

AMNH MOU signed!!! Preparing paperwork for subaward. Darrel Frost, Asst. Director of AMNH, may be attending the BHL Directors meeting.

Miscalculation of overhead rates by Smithsonian but it will not affect subawards. It may create a $9000 lien on the contingency fund.

Architecture meeting needs an agenda--Chris will work on this week after next.

Chris and Martin are travelling to SF to meet with Fedora and attend a workshop on Fedora/Topaz and then a day of planning for grant from Moore. Will also spend some time with Internet Archive, if they respond. Cathy has been communicating with Brewster about metadata and other issues but he wants to wait to reply until after meeting with Martin and Chris. Robert Miller wants to have a webinar for us about MetaManager. MBL has scanned more than 3000 books but MetaManager only has 1600. Ingesting inconsistencies. QA not getting completed in timely fashion. Brewster wants some money for development. But the software is not functioning as expected so this is not development but maintenance. Wonderfetch might need some development on their end. If there are specific needs to change existing software we can consider funding. How much will it cost to fix the software? After Martin and Chris have talked to IA, then we can ask for specific items fixed or something new, then we should consider paying to have the development done. But we need a proposal with specific information about development needs and costs. Automated indexing program--Chris will see Jim Omura and will mention it. Chris and Martin should stop by CalAcademy and talk with Stan Blum and Jean Farrington. Brewster wants BHL to provide money so CalAcademy can send stuff to N. California scanning center.

Tom prepared a draft letter of application to be a member for Phil Acad of Sciences. Tom will send a copy with Chris and Martin in case Cal Acad is interested in membership. Should have categories of membership description, too.

Connie reported that the rare book project is underway to submit a planning grant, maybe with Judy and Connie (Harvard) as the lead institution. Nancy Gwinn noted that there will be a meeting at ALA of Special Collections Librarians related to a similar issue: relationship between special collections and digitization. Connie reported that the demonstration session for Museums and the Web in Montreal in April 2008 has been accepted. Nancy Gwinn and Connie also submitted an abstract for a paper to the Science and Technology section of IFLA. A decision will be made on Feb. 15 by IFLA.

Chris suggested that MOBOT might want to submit an IMLS grant for the title resolver. BHL would write a letter of support.

De-duping tool from MBL is almost ready for everyone to use. Portal development--can we get a new timeline. Can we put tools on the BHL portal? Yes--there will be an area for developers. Chris --Worked out scripts and bugs and polishing taking from staging to production. What needs to be ready for EOL launch? All plumbing is done--services complete, index run etc. but still need content! If beta ingesting works well, then we should have robust content by launch. Chris will check with MOBOT designers regarding reworking of logo so we can maybe have it for launch! Remember that the "launch"
is just the beginning--a work in progress. Focus on expectation control. IS BHL now beta or version 1 and no longer prototype?

Graham--EOL conference call. Discussed options on stub pages? How many of what types? How signal that this is a demonstrator/model not final? It must be very transparent that some parts are non-functional and only demonstration. Preferable for BHL to use common wording with EOL.

Species pages are now Species sites and different levels (1-2-3....to full page).

Unlike the EOL, BHL content will be real content! It is usable now!
Button "about" on BHL page with original synopsis. Could have a
status report on that button or another or through BHL updates.
Something that can be updated easily. The blog was intended to do that. Wherever you are in the site, you should be clear that the site is still under development.

Cathy has an offer to include the journal Oceanography--online but would like maybe to be a part of BHL. Can we ingest their electronic files? Will need a new agreement document.

Graham -- minutes out soon from EOL conference call, there will be another the last week of January. Discussion about structure of EOL Steering Committee deferred. Keep the same for now but maybe change in Autumn. Debate about TED meeting in SF. Will issue invitations to all the TED developers. Update 'needs and wishes' document. Better OCR hasn't been on the TED agenda. The list we developed is still useful to distribute to TED attendees. Tom will send the latest version so we can review.

Marie Studer will work at Harvard on the Education and Outreach part of EOL.

ZipCodeZoo not impressive. Discussion paper on interactions with federal government and EOL. Tom will follow up. Agreed to take a proposal through Institute for Learning Innovations that promotes tools and activities and market research. Commissioned to do some user feedback and analysis. Tom will follow up so that BHL can participate. eContentplus European led by Germans is on hold for the moment because Michael Ohl is hospitalized. Graham is going to Berlin to follow up.

Anton Guentsch from Germany will attend Architecture meeting.

Graham will check on uploading of data at OCLC is going in case Cathy needs to intervene.


NEXT CALL: Tuesday January 22, 2008 at 11 AM EST