June 15 2012 BHL Africa Notes

June 15, 2012 BHL-Africa Notes

Break-Out Sessions:

Scanning:

Session Lead: Martin Kalfatovic; Session Notes: Ashah Owano

Infrastructure:

Session Lead: William Ulate; Session Notes: Christine Giannoni

Collaboration:

Session Lead: Anne-Lise Fourie; Session Notes: Doug Holland

Governance:

Session Lead: Nancy Gwinn; Session Notes: Grace Costantino

For breakout session notes, see Google Doc:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dj5GS_JDbC4q2wq5WPJSb0YPN8loKtl8_GX38cP1l7U/edit

Break-Out Session Reports:

Scanning:

Strength: Some institutions already have digitized content.
Strength: BHL participants can be used as points of contact for additional scanning materials and partners at other institutions
Strength: BHL can participate in existing initiatives like EIFL
Strength: Internet Archive already has infrastructure for scanning and they're willing to provide equipment and training for digitization
Strength: Have lots of students available as interns for digitization
Strength: BHL already has workflow tools that can be used by BHL-Africa

Collection Development Policy: http://biodivlib.wikispaces.com/Collection+Development+Policy
Permissions Form: http://biodivlib.wikispaces.com/Permissions

Infrastructure:

Needs: more serve/storage and IT support;
Opportunity: Networking in rural areas
Opportunity: Mobile technology
Strength: Initial & potential users are already connected and embracing technology, so BHL in a good spot to move forward
Opportunity/Aspiration: "BHL in a Box"
Strength: Open Access principles already exist for BHL
Strength: Good systems like institutional repositories already being put into place at institutions
Aspiration: Lend equipment among institutions to build capacity and infrastructure
Opportunity: Relationships exist among regions that might allow us to share equipment
Opportunity: Regional digitization training
Aspiration: Strong documentation
Strength: Previous experience from digitization projects
Opportunity: Sharing equipment might encourage more funding opportunities. Funding agencies like to see that they're benefiting more than one institution.

steady growth in bandwidth improvement but will still take time to build.

How does Africa relate to South american with bandwidth issues? Can we collaborate with them?
William: There are areas where there's no internet access. I don't think that will change anytime soon. Urban areas have better access.

Collaboration to lend equipment: Who takes responsibility if machines malfunction when lent?
William: We talked about this in relation to Brazil project. In Brazil, it's the central foundation who's the owner and responsible body for scanning equipment. In the case of BHL-Africa, we may have to explore this.
Anne-Lise: I would think the institute that lends you the equipment would be responsible unless you have an agreement with that institution.

Many think lending equipment would be scary.

William: We thought about this because possibility of moving material to scanning facilities might not be possible. Instead, perhaps you could move machines instead.

Sally: Instrument should be insured. Africa does allow for insurance for equipment, so that could answer the issue.

QA will be responsibility of scanning institutions. People doing training must enforce those quality standards.

Ashah: If machine needs servicing, who does it?

Anne-Lise: I propose that the institution that owns the machine will be responsible for maintaining.

Mary: When we do our funding proposals, we set aside money for maintenance.

Collaboration:

Aspirations: collaboration among institutions
Aspiration: Representative in each country that people can go to for questions/issues
strength: already strong presence on wiki that BHL-Africa can use
strength: existing repositories that can be utilized
Aspiration: BHL in a box - good for collaborative funding
Measurable Results: Grant applications submitted to support BHL
Strength: Existing strong environmental educational programs that could be exposed to BHL
Aspiration: Compile master list of potential participants in BHL-Africa

BHL-US had library leadership but strong technical participation. BHL-Europe project was almost IT driven - a much poorer model. Need strong library component to drive the project.

Scientists are also another stake-holder in the mix.

SANBI will work on roadshows around country to promote BHL.

Lawrence can be IT spokesperson for BHL-Africa.

Governance:

Presented Concept Document. Document was liked among meeting participants. See document draft below:

Elements of Concept Document:

Introduction to BHL (globally)
“Introduction to BHL” Document can provide this section, with some editing:

"The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a consortium of 14 natural history and botanical libraries that collaborate to digitize past and present biodiversity literature, all of which is made freely available online at www.biodiversitylibrary.org. BHL contains over 38.7 million pages of digitized literature (representing over 55,000 titles and 105,000 volumes), which can be freely downloaded as PDFs or high resolution images.

BHL is a global initiative, with project nodes in Europe, China, Brazil, Australia, and Egypt. In June, 2012, the BHL, in collaboration with the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), will host a meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, attended by representatives from across Africa to discuss the creation of a BHL for
sub-Saharan Africa."

Additionally, include statements about:
BHL-Africa supports conventions such as the Convention on Biological Diversity. BHL-Africa partners with the Internet Archive, which provides free storage and access to all BHL digitized materials.

Mission Statement (for African participation)
BHL-Africa is a consortium of natural history, botanical, research and other biodiversity-related organizations that aim to improve access to biodiversity literature through digitization and open access principles as part of a global biodiversity commons.

Guiding Principles and Values
1) The BHL-Africa consortium works with the international taxonomic community, rights holders, and other interested parties to ensure that this biodiversity heritage is made available to a global audience through open access principles
2) Open Access: This digital content served by the BHL is available without cost, can be reused by other projects and users, and is either in the public domain or subject to the Creative Commons CCBY license.
3) Collaboration: BHL-Africa participants will actively collaborate to achieve shared project objectives
4) Interoperability: BHL systems will interoperate with major biodiversity project systems.
5) Transparency: The processes and administration of the BHL will be clear and documented.

Proposed Organizational structure
Initially, BHL-Africa will be organized according to western and central, eastern, and southern African regions. Others may be added later. Within each region, there will be BHL-Africa nodes comprised of one or more scanning institutions. Membership within nodes will be at the institutional level.
The Steering Committee will be composed of one member from each node.
The Steering Committee will oversee BHL-Africa activities.
The Steering Committee will be responsible for electing Executive Council members that will be overseeing day-to-day activities of BHL Africa.

Funding
BHL Africa will be comprised of a 3 level funding structure:
1) committing resources at your institution
2) pulling together resources among BHL partners
3) proposal writing and fund raising

Expected Outcomes:
BHL-Africa will provide a body of digital biodiversity information openly available to users such as conservationist, researchers, students, and the larger community.

Benefits
The benefits of participating within BHL-Africa includeeasy access to biodiversity literature, improved visibility of member institutions, capacity building within partner institutions (developing staff skills, sharing experiences and building digitization infrastructure), sharing information among partner institutions and the world, archiving material, and reaching new audiences.

Timeframes: Interim regional leadership should be assigned now. Over the next three months these regional leaders will collect feedback about the Concept Document; In 3 months this group will reconvene to review feedback and present coordinated MOU created from institutional MOUs; Gracian will organize MOU development.

At the Berlin10 conference in November, we will officially launch BHL-Africa. We nominate SANBI as the institution to lead the writing of a proposal to receive funding (perhaps from JRS Foundation) to bring institutional representatives to the Berlin10 conference meeting.

We also suggest that SANBI will be the lead institution while BHL-Africa is getting organized.

SANBI has agreed to be the lead institution and organize efforts to secure funding for November meeting.

Supporting Documents:
BHL US MOU Biodiversity MOU final.docx
gBHL By-Laws

Implementation Plan:

BHL_Africa_Implementation_Plan.pdf