July 15, 2008 BHL Executive Committee Notes

BHL Executive Committee Minutes July 15, 2008

1. Update on Wellcome and Darwin for All. – Graham

Cambridge University will join the Darwin for All project--this is good news. Graham is representing both the BHL and the Natural History Museum in the project. There will be many partners.

2. JSTOR & BHL; Scanning capacity in NY – Chris
Aluka (Latin American Plant initiative scanning) content will be going into JSTOR. Will content be managed by JSTOR or will there be changes in data model? Aluka was a Mellon funded project. What does this mean for the digitized literature that went along with this? These are going into JSTOR as closed content. Mellon foundation is not totally aware of BHL. Tom and Chris will need to meet again with JSTOR in DC. Chris will need to arrange this. This is extremely important. At the time of the award, Susan Fraser noted that the content should go into the BHL but this needs to be clarified.
Network upgrade: date is August 7 but may be as early as next week.
Scanning capacity in NY: Chris met with NY folks. There are some problems working with IA. At first IA pushed for more items but now that NYBG and AMNH are ramping up, IA asked them to slow down. Chris couldn't get into the scanning center in NY. Cathy and Tom had a conference call with Robert and then Susan joined. There was a slowdown and it seems rather slippery. Probably problems due to Microsoft funding loss but also because NYBG seems to have used up money available to them. Susan will be having biweekly phone calls with Robert and Tom may join sometimes.

3. Connie- Downloading issues from BHL – Connie and Tom both noted that sometimes downloads take forever and sometimes they are quick. Many questions that come in from the BHL comment line are download issues. Chris noted that there is no good answer--many of the problems may be due to the IA servers and many others due to the erratic behavior of the open internet. If there is no option to download on the BHL page, then there is probably no file available although this is not always the case.

Collections paper nearing completion; Doug and Connie are taking a free workshop and also paying for individualized training on the Collections Analysis Tool.

Ernst Mayr Library is contracting with Harvard's Imaging Services to complete scanning of items rejected by IA. Harvard's Imaging Services can handle all large foldouts and also narrow margins as well as any size book. This will be expensive (could be as much as $10 a page in some cases) but Jim Hanken has agreed that it is a priority for the Harvard publications and the publications that we have agreed to scan for which we have permissions. Harvard uses Docworks to provide article-level structured metadata and to flag illustrations but when the data are loaded into the Digital Repository (DRS), this information is stripped out of the metadata. Although we can make the items loaded into the DRS open to all, downloading will not be allowed. Connie needs to know how we can arrange for the data to be harvested and made available for downloading (big discussion!). Harvard can provide DVDs of everything but will need technical specs.

4. SI hosting of BHL in some capacity; finances and planning; updates – Tom

Existing budget with allocations; major upcoming expenses--BHL staff meeting, collection manager September, data analyst manager soon; BHL Institutional Council meeting and Chris and Tom will be doing some expensive travel. A series of discussions is underway for EOL and BHL about the Smithsonian Data Center backing up data or hosting data--all or some. Discretionary money allocation may have to wait until numbers are crunched. Cathy wondered if some of the money in other groups might be repurposed for data storage. Tom hopes to have more information by the end of the month.

We need a date and more definition for the staff meeting.

5. Cathy is always full of good news.

Next call: July 22 at 11 AM EST, 10 AM CST, 4 PM GMT