July 7, 2007 BHL Executive Committee Notes

CONFERENCE CALL, BHL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE July 5, 2007
Present: Chris Freeland, Tom Garnett, Graham Higley, Cathy Norton,
Connie Rinaldo
July 5, 2007 BHL Executive Committee Conference Call Notes
AGENDA

1. MOU
2. Funding
3. BHL portal development as regards to other data content sources 4. Technical Committee



1) Letter from Michael Goodow from FMNH with notes from lawyer regarding MOU, some tweaking but also some substantive suggestions-- confidential so could not send it off to BHL Directors; talked to MG later but lawyer said to restate in own words. There is no agreed MOU yet. Some questions from Chicago lawyer: What are the conditions for which we can take our deposits out of portal? Cathy suggested that if the funding comes from Sloane/MacArthur can't remove. IA does have dark policy, there is an "inactive" phase.
Several of us said this isn't appropriate--anyone can extract anytime but no one should be allowed to remove just because they no longer want to be members. Tom will respond to lawyer and will send response out to all of us. Will run by Smithsonian lawyers. (MOU) conversation with Jim Edwards: wants to get money out. SI won't let anything go out without signed MOU; MOU is supposed to be loose--not a contract to exchange intellectual property rights. Connie will hold off on MOU until some of these Chicago issues are resolved. Tom wants to solicit other BHL Director’s input and have an opportunity to talk to/respond to the lawyer. It was suggested that those who sign should get the money but if someone doesn't sign, they will not get the money and we shouldn't try to make the MOU perfectly agreeable to all. Tom will check with Jim and respond to the lawyer.

2. Funding. Tom sent out the draft spreadsheet and logic for how to make cuts. Comments and questions were not forthcoming. Need to hear from those affected. Tom will immediately start the paperwork (template subsheet for each institution....very complicated!). Tom needs to do 8 in a timely manner. Graham will contact Chris Mills. We all think we need to move forward!

3. Portal Development

Other people's content--how can we add it without producing unique
solutions for each offering. Chris envisions the goal as 1)
Repository with all suite of functionality, scalable images, taxonomic resolution, citation analysis 2) deposit but maybe not all the bells and whistles; other organizations need to get data in line with our standard, e.g. a METS delivery envelope so that all the functionality can be applied.

Graham also suggested distributed databases, remote storage. Should all databases be live and active all the time? Scans distributed across several portals and the taxonomic intelligence and OCR held centrally. E-content plus bid--could fund a look at the best way to
Distribute and sustain the collection? We need to investigate this.
Leiden is very interested. They are willing to give us all their stuff and we will figure out how to ingest but we don't necessarily want to do this for everyone!
Investigate different ways to develop this. Oct 4 bid for E- content. Try to get Leiden and Germany to come to St. Louis. This fits with current strategy. In current budget--get repository going. Opening up BHL is a great strategy but will require additional funds. Sebastian Hammer to help with federated searches?
Also Berlin group has been working on this for collections. Vincent Smith with NHM has been working with Berlin group. Chris suggested
that we need a couple of timelines for BHL technical developments:
What we want to do and what we are funded to do. Need a clear picture of what Neil and Patrick are going to do because they may be able to contribute. There is some wiggle room in how we define what we have been funded to do.

Focus session for September: long-term plan for portal and relationship to additional providers/deposit issues/technical issues; several of us have good technical folks to send. Tom will figure out how many can be funded through BHL ($30,000 for funding for September meeting).

Graham to Berlin next Thursday---take some technical people


4. Putting together a technical group--we should think about who.
Chris should define what/who is helpful. Another technical issue:
packing list and getting info out of catalog to IA. 1) need to build consensus within BHL what we want to get back from IA and what we send 2) BLC/UI probably want same thing 3) getting agreement from IA to do this! Robert wants standard for all; they think what we want is ok but Excel may not be best venue. Chris will send out note to BHL directors and get comments on what the packing list should include.

5. Governance issues: Cathy will tackle governance: Tom's
position and what decisions he can make. We need to see job description so Tom can be hired as BHL Director. Cathy will get a draft out as soon as she talks to Nancy Gwinn. MOU is silent on BHL Director but we need to define governance issues. Need to give Tom some powers for signing with publishers etc.

Next call July 10, 2007 at 11