July 1, 2008 BHL Executive Committee Notes

BHL Executive Committee Call July 1, 2008

ROUND ROBIN
Graham: 1. EOL Steering Committee minutes--BHL is funded in upcoming
year, including 2 new positions.
2. Wellcome Trust and possibly Microsoft are interested in providing
funding for Darwin-related material. All Darwin specimens at NHM
will hopefully be digitized and a Royal Society grant is being sought for this. 'Darwin Connections' will probably hire a project manager and IT team
to develop the portal (what the funding is for).
3. BBC is interested in hooking up with EOL and BHL for projects, including publicity on
Web and in broadcast media. Some ideas from Daniel Heaf:

he is interested in taxonomic intelligence and our names management
technology as a way into the BBC material
he is interested in making BBC content available through the EOL
He would like to align our metadata approaches so that we can
exchange data, even if we don't create a formal relationship
he is interested in promoting EOL through the BBC in programme-
related partnerships
he is interested in citizen science projects, particularly the large
scale ones that we have discussed like the bird migrations - he can
see how this might work with multiple broadcasters
he is interested in using the BBC reach at the low age, less
professional end of the user range to help us penetrate the mass market.
Daniel has list of top 100 UK and top 100 US charismatic animals.

4. GH atteneded EUROPEANA conference in The Hague and they are very interested in
working with BHL and BHL-Europe. They are very supportive of BHL-
Europe. They have good open source technology. Stefan Gradmann leads
metadata and technology standards component. A working version needs
to be out by Nov. They also have an eContentplus grant bid in.
EUROPEANA will almost certainly be funded and if BHL-Europe isn't, we may be able to
work with them.

Cathy: 1. Neil Sarkar has finished final code of Taxon Finder
version 2. Talk at SLA that was well-received. 3. Working with
Gary. Paddy is away. 4. Jennifer Schopf is leaving architect
position. Peter is interim. 5. Jesse Ausobel in Woods Hole for
summer--census of marine life might be used as gold standard for
names of marine life. Suggested a meeting with component leaders
plus others and make sure that EOL is always a major part of our
conversations about BHL. October component leader meeting will be
highly focused so it may not be a good time for a rally.

Tom: 1. Staff workshop: pros and cons about where it will be. Tom
thinks the library directors need to be involved.

Connie: 1. Poster at SLA was well-received. Connie will send
poster to execs. 2. Answering BHL mail has been difficult because of
slow network response. It is hard to check issues with the slow
network.

Chris: 1. AT&T is now pushing upgrade at MOBOT until August. MOBOT
users have fine access to the BHL but ouside of MOBOT it is hard.
BHL/Botanicus swamping MOBOT networks. What is dragging the
networks down is people grabbing Botanicus pdfs. So if about 80-100
gb of pdfs off the MOBOT server, then this should be resolved. It is
possible that the Smithsonian can host the pdfs. Can't move
immediately but possibly soon. Tom will send an email to Chuck at
MOBOT about the problems with AT&T's decision. Graham suggested that
this is a good opportunity to experiment with backup plans and multiple repositories serving out the large files. 2.
Passed the 6 million page mark! 22 million taxonomic names.
Additional content is not dragging down the speed of the site, at
least not until hundreds of millions of pages. 3. Chris was at U of
I a couple of weeks ago, at most MOBOT will have one scanner, one
shift at about 25 books a day which is low volume and won't use the
money up. 4. Data analyst position has been approved at highest
level. Tom can issue a subaward-this will be a revision to the
existing subaward. 5. Trying to stick to the development timeline
determined at the architecture meeting. Tom says we need a new
schedule incorporating Moore funding and that it should be updated
monthly.
6. Chris will visit NY site next week since he will be there for a
meeting at NYBG.

Tom: 1. Before Aug 15, Tom will have a draft goals/milestones and
budget for review. Must be done by Oct. 1. Open access policy will
come out later this month for review. Suggested that we look at
Cambridge Information Group and see if there is anything they can
offer. Tom will send a URL.

Next Call Tuesday July 8 at 11 AM EST, 10 AM CST, 4 PM GMT