June 8 2012 global meeting
June 8, 2012 Global Meeting Notes
Scan Requests, Deduplication, Feedback
Deduplication
Avoiding duplication of scanning. what is the status of the GRIB and how will it be used beyond BHL-Europe?
Group has discussed how the GRIB will be developed and extended.
Bianca: US/European plan in shortterm but in longterm hopefully global, though we didn't specifically discuss intergating global aprtners yet. Work needs to be done on the GRIB to get it to a stable point, after which we can integrate non-European content. No firm timeline yet. US/UK libraries will continue to work with scanlist and monographic deduper, (scanlist managed through Vienna). Additional work on GRIB will finalize digitization widget and fix a bug or two. We will integrate MARC records only (any MARC standardized through Library of Congress somehow). Over next few months both Eu and US/UK libraries will work to see which libraries have MARC and can easily contribute them. There will be a survey to see what libraries currently have in their catalogs. There will be a potential test of integrating a static copy of the US BHL portal into the GRIB, as well as additional Eu catalogs. After this we will integrate US catalogs and existing scanlist information. Finally, we will ingest the BHL US/UK portal and hopefully the tool can them be used by global community. We want to encourage more Eu libraries to participate in the scanlist. We are not sure if Eu libraries should also be encouraged to use the monographic deduper. However, the general practice should be to check BHL to make sure what they want to scan is not already in BHL. Of course, there is a gap between when people send books for scanning and when they show up in the portal, so that's where the monographic deduper and scanlist come in to fill that gap of time so people know what not to scan. The timeline for all of this work is about 12 months.
Martin: It might be good to have a discussion soon with Ely to determine how the Au scanlist fits into this GRIB development to get them into the process as soon as possible.
Ely: If you give us another couple of months, we'll be good. We already have a union catalog for Au libraries, so we don't need that aspect from the GRIB. We don't yet have holdings information in our scanlist but that is not needed for the GRIB. The first step, however, is to get the Au scanlist information integrated into the overall scanlist. This can be done at any point.
Action Item: Simon at Au and Wolfgang to work out getting Au scanlist into the overall scanlist.
Patricia: Many Eu libraries have commented to say it takes too long to check the scanlist and BHL to tell if the books is already scanned. Therefore, they don't mind a level of duplication because it is faster and more cost effective, in some instances, to just scan regardless of duplication.
Connie: US libraries often have very expensive scanning, so we don't want to duplicate the scanning of these items for cost reasons. However, less expensive scanning isn't as big of a deal for duplication.
Henning: it's true that we need a balance of how much time is taken for deduplication.
Wolfgang: Is there content in the Au scanlist already?
Ely: Yes, monographs and serials.
Wolfgang: If we integrate Au content that already has monographs in it, does it make sense to include US monographs in the scanlist as well.
Martin: It wouldn't hurt, but US wouldn't be bidding on monographs in the scanlist.
Bianca: We work with the monographic deduper because it's easier to upload these lists in bulk. What is the format of the scanlist. Is there a way we can integrate the spreadsheets we have in the deduper to indicate which monographs we're scanning in a bulk scale.
Martin: We could export all monographs from the portal periodically and ingested into the scanlist rather than trying with the monographic spreadsheets.
Bianca: Yes, we could ingest content from BHL portal. So, when and who will work on this?
Martin: Periodically, like monthly, we will pull spreadsheet from BHL portal of monographs for scanlist.
William: Is scanlst multilingual.
Wolfgang: The interface is English only, but content is in the language it was published in.
Bianca will be in touch with Wolfgang about getting BHL export of monographs for scanlist.
Graham: The idea of a GRIB is an attractive tool - somethign that has a global list of biodiversity literature, and that's a useful tool for users. In the future, as budgets contract, there will be difficult questions for librarians to determine who keeps copies of materials and without a master list you can't have conversations about who has what and who should keep what. So this is a potential tool for both the user and library communities. So using the GRIB as a workflow tool is also good, but there are advantages beyond workflow digitization tool.
Henning: Yes, but for now we need a pragmatic tool to work with as yes get the GRIB running.
Jane: We did discuss that we needed to lock down timescales for our GRIB development.
Bianca: We have to re-evaluate where we are after the summer.
Henning: First we need minimum requirements for MARC data, how easy it is for libraries to get MARC to us, and then get the widget working. This probably will not be finished before the end of this year. In six months we can see where we are and move towards the next step, to see how easy it is to combine US catalogs, scanlist information, and portal information.
Bianca: So, we will re-evaluate in January but we can keep each other informed regularly.
Action Item: GRIB group checks in with each other about GRIB progress in January. (Martin, Grace, Bianca, Connie, Boris, Ely, Jane, Henning, Andreas)
Action Item: Bianca will send Wolfgang example of monographic de-duper
Bianca: After we see how the group is doing, do we think global? We haven't talked about how we work with other non-US/Eu partners about scanning de-duplication and tools.
Abel: Do we have a network, standard way to communicate within group what we're scanning?
Bianca: We do within certain partners.
Abel: When we get a book from the shelf, is there a system to enter information about what we'll scan?
Henning: If you give us your catalogs, we'll put that in the GRIB and then eventually you can mark what you'll be scanning. we still have to test this functionality to make sure it will work for monographs and serials. It is not yet working, however.
Bianca: There is currently no way for Brazil to indicate what they're scanning and avoid duplication. Is there a way we can brainstorm a system?
Abel: Can we share lists through excel or some other format? We currently check the portal to see if what we want to scan is available.
Henning: Scanlist will tell you what serials are being scanned. GRIB will eventually tell you everything that is going to be scanned (monographs, serials, articles).
Martin: Our short term solution is to use the existing scanlist and monographic deduplication tools. If we can get the list of serials from Brazil into the scanlist in the short term, brazil can use the scanlist. Since Brazil is prioritizing scanning serials, this would be the easiest approach.
Action Item: SIL will work with Fabiano and Fabio to get list of starting scanning centers and lists of serials from these institutions from Brazil for the scanlist.
Noha: So where do we check to see if something is scanned right now?
Henning: Just the scanlist. You don't need to check the GRIB to see digitization status yet. If the record is already in the scanlist, you can place a bid on the content without waiting for your catalog to get imported. You only need to wait for your catalogs to get ingested for records not already in the scanlist.
Bianca: Is there a need for any more help in managing the scanlist, since global partners will now use it?
Wolfgang: Maybe.
Martin: If there's a way for someone else to help with pre-ingest into scanlist, that would be good.
Action Item: BHL-US/UK will talk to see if anyone in US can assist with pre-ingest workflow for scanlist and develop standard format for all information to get into the scanlist by September.
Action Item: In the immediate future, Wolfgang will get logins for global partners. SIL will share the tutorials they already have the scanlist and monographic deduper. Bianca, Grace and Henning will work on disseminating information about scanlist and monographic de-duper.
Bianca: We should also think about future Skype calls to go over these tutorials.
Feedback/Scan Requests
How to coordinate feedback issues between nodes.
John: How often is there a need to coordinate feedback issues?
Bianca: Never now, but it will happen once other portals are live with content from other partners.
Henning: Right now we will use the Gemini system US is using for feedback. The only thing we have to do is manually check to see if the feedback is for US or Eu and assign across the projects appropriately. We might need to tweak other things over time. For scan requests, we have performance-ready technology but as we're not sure how much work and effort it will be, about how much scanning with happen in Eu, we will not do scan requests right now. At some point, once the GRIB is functioning, scan request functionality can be moved to the GRIB.
Bianca: Part of this issue is the bigger question of how users interact with BHL content. When we talk about feedback in this sense, we're talking about users who use our sites. This could be any user using any global portal - using different systems. In a sense, there's not a lot of need to coordinate feedback until we have a single system. Otherwise each node just processes the feedback within their own portals.
Ely: I could see users in Au submitting feedback about US content. So how do we communicate with US to tell them about this feedback?
Bianca: in US we have issue tracking system dedicated to managing user feedback. Eu will have an instance of a feedback system for the Eu portal. I wonder if we should do the same for Au. Do we want to create other projects for other nodes, or do we just go via email? One of the pieces of the puzzle was that Eu had to design a webform that could plug into the system.
Ely: This issue might go away in a few months if we incorporate Au portal into US portal.
Jane: The question is how we coordinate centrally in fewest steps possible.
William: How big is Gemini? How often do you get issues?
Bianca: We have scan requests and non-scan requests. It depends on the day, how many we get. We also must check the tools we have for scan requests to determine if they're already being scanned or have been ingested. It requires a human being to moderate.
Jiri: Could we map these scan requests to the GRIB in the future?
Henning: Possible but we're not there yet.
Ely: Au is taking minimal requests for scanning. We vote the requests up in the bidlist to indicate that they're been requested. However, so far, most people are coming saying they already have scans and want them uploaded, not that they want something scanned. Upload requests rather than scan requests. We do have partners who are interested in knowing how to prioritize their scanning for their money. So far we haven't had any requests from users for scanning.
Fabio: Brazil does not take requests directly from users for scanning. We are not in a position yet to scan user requests. All books we're digitizing are those selected by libraries. However, this would work in a common issue tracking system, so we could share the facilities to scan these requests.
Bianca: It seems like we can create multiple projects in our issue tracking system, with no restriction on users.
Action Item: We will try to incorporate more partners into the Gemini system. Eu will create documentation on how to create webforms to feed into Gemini project.
Documentation from BHL-Europe for webform into Gemini:
gemini_project_drupal_integration.txt
php code link.doc
php code link.docx
William: How does Egypt determine what to scan?
Noha: Basically we're scanning all our Arabic content in our library. For Latin content, we're scanning everything out of copyright. Right now we're working on determining which of this content is appropriate for BHL. We are not accepting scan requests from users. We're almost finished scanning our collection. We're also working on scanning special collections outside of our libraries, but they have limited scanning abilities. We do take feedback through our repository. For books that are in copyright that we digitize, we digitize for preservation and only 5% available outside BA. The rest we can only provide as many copies as we have copies in the library (for digital access). We haven't really received feedback on our content yet, other than errors with the system or praise. If there are errors, we send to the librarians to resolve or other IT staff.
Bianca: If someone said there was a page missing from a BHL item, how do we communicate this to Egypt.
Noha: We could capture the feedback, and if there is a communication channel set up, then we can send the issue to the appropriate person. Right now all errors we receive are for content we scanned, so we can resolve it. If we have the contact information for the people working on the feedback system, we can commuicate these issues.
Bianca: We created a way for our current system to accept emails as issue into system. People could submit issues to this email address and then it would get into our system. We're making the decision to use Gemini, but if we find that there's an issue that the US can't take care of, how do we get it back to the appropriate node? If there is a decision to use this system, there needs to be a commitment for global partners to contribute a resource to the system to deal with feedback for that node.
Nancy: This seems relatively simple. Will other nodes agree to this?
Henning: It's a fairly simple system, though it does take getting used to. Currently I will handle the system for Eu.
Noha: We could use Gemini also, though we have not used it yet.
Decision: We will use Gemini as our global issue tracking system.
Paper About Gemini:
http://si-pddr.si.edu/dspace/handle/10088/16155
Gemini Tutorial:
BHL Gemini User Guide.doc
Gemini Cheat Sheet.docx
Bianca demonstrates Gemini. Explains US workflow.
Action Item: Bianca and Henning will work to establish US/Eu workflow that can then be expanded to other global partners. We will probably create a project for each node in Gemini.
Scan Permissions, Subcollections, Communications Plan
Scan Permissions
Coordinating permission to scan in-copyright content. Any international issues we would like to consider?
How do we coordinate copyright?
How do we look into the copyright from an international view?
William: Egypt puts 5% of its content available to anyone, outside of the library. The rest can be accessed inside the library, with only as many scans available as the copies the library holds.
Noha: We have 200,000 books, and 10% are out of copyright.
Martin: Technically we can scan a copyright book if it's a preservation copy and only making available as many copies as the library holds. However, it is a tricky issue.
Jane: The situation in London is similar. Beyond public domain, we have two other categories of content. Our main cut-off date is about 1907. We've been doing additional work to determine what else we might be able to scan, plus securing permissions from rights holders. Most of the rights-holders we're working with are small societies. We think we can scan content that is in copyright and then only make a copy or two available locally.
Bianca: One of the principles of gBHL is providing content through open access. Perhaps we can make a policy that, when we scan in-copyright material it could be made available under open access principles.
Jane: Broader issue is that we need an explicit framework for all partners so that they know the basis on which they're contributing and how that content is likely to be used.
Decision: We make sure that, if it's scanned, it can be made available under open access principles.
Graham: There is no concept of international copyright. That is the fundamental problem. You have to know what your wiggle room is to get as much content as possible and share it within the restrictions that you can. However, it is difficult to document these variations.
Jane: At least we're addressing it and trying to do our best so that whomever is using our content is aware of our principles.
Nancy: Do all of the partners have a take-down policy.
Grace: BHL-US does on our public wiki for BHL.
Ely: Au does not.
Graham: Eu does not have a policy. It's about best efforts.
Nancy: So we should have a global agreement about taking content down.
Joel: if we get a request to take something down, we need to communicate with each other. Is there any way to make it known that due diligence has been done?
Bianca: it must come down to the scanning institution, because it's the institution that's brokering the permissions.
Jane: we share some of our permissions, but we also keep our own records.
John: it is possible for something to be legitimate at one node, and not at another.
Ely: Public domain is 1954 in Au. We can make lots of things available.
John: Has there been something we've been asked to take down?
Patricia: We had journal of zoology that we digitized and then found out it was not an open access journal. We tried to contact all of the authors to clear the copyright, but we couldn't contact all of them, so we can now only make parts of the journal available.
William: US public domain is 1923. Latin America has 70 years after the author's death. Since we're moving content around, we might have instances where some content we try to share is not in public domain in some nodes.
Connie: Google has solved that problem by blocking certain content in countries where it is still in copyright.
Graham: It's only in the last 10 years that this kind of multi-country databases have been built up. The approach in the museum (NHM) is about risk. We have to determine how likely it is that we copy something without due diligence and someone calls it infringement. We've determined that the risk is low, so as long as we make best efforts, we'll discount the issue.
Nancy: the other side of risk management is recognizing if something is likely to raise an issue. Here the likelihood is low, so in the US we've been encouraged that our orphan works in the US (1923-1950) that, if we can't find the copyright holder, we scan the works and then have a take-down policy.
Ely: Au has scanned content from 1923-1955, but only with permission from the publisher. So we only scan up to 1923 without explicit permission.
Joel: Is permission easy to obtain?
Ely: We've only worked with other museums publishing in-house journals so far, and that's easy to get permission. We've also worked with field naturalists that publish their own journals, and they let us scan up to two years back.
William: China talks to their copyright offices to determine what they can provide access to.
Noha: Egypt is not working with other publishers to get permission to make content available yet. For Arabic material we can scan copies of in copyright material for preservation purposes and make limited access to that within the library.
Laws are different for each country.
Graham: We have to say that we are an organization where each node has done its own copyright checking. Also, these restrictions are based on the country of publication, not the country you're in where you're digitizing. As long as every country's comfortable with what they digitize and publish, it's all right. It's about best efforts.
Bianca: Someone could submit feedback to our system and we'd deal with it on an individual basis.
Martin: In the US, we're following US policy, where it's not clear whether copyright law applies to country of publication or country of scanning. So we scan everything up until 1923 regardless of place of publication.
William: Some partners are offering to scan gaps in our collection where other partners can't scan the content, but their copyright allows them to.
John: This issue is related to synchronization and sharing content. However, since this is the internet, you can access the content wherever you are through the other nodes' portals.
Nancy: Some authors are happy to have access to their content because it gets them more exposure. Others are not happy because they don't get money for it.
John: There are services where people can request PDFs that are in-copyright.
Bianca: Is there a way for us to have some sort of policy? Do we require certain metadata and documentation? People to contact if we run into problems? In my everyday work I need to know what to do.
Joel: Put more guidelines on the deaccession page, that can include information about each partner's policies.
Jane: I think that's too much detail. We have some good practice guidelines. Maybe we should link to things that like. But I think our general framework should be expressing that we're making best efforts.
Connie: For the public statement it should be big and broad and if they want more information, they can contact the node.
John: Possibly anytime you come to something in copyright in the portal that you've obtained permission for, it could include a link to the policy page for BHL.
Graham: The institution that scanned the work in our network is ultimately responsible for the item.
Bianca: We have 4 metadata fields for BHL US. In one of those fields we have a link to a copyright page. This is only for US content. If someone contacts me about content from another portal, I will contact them. My concern is that copyright metadata is part of the metadata profile for the synchronization discussions. We have standard metadata fields, but do we or do we not require that other nodes have these standard fields as well? Metadata itself needs to communicate our baseline information. We should reach an agreement on what kinds of metadata we want to capture.
Ely: It comes down to a communication effort. If US is proposing different metadata fields, they just need to be communicated among nodes. If Macaw needs to be changed or something, we communicate it and make the changes.
Martin: We've had discussions in US regarding our exact copyright metadata. this might be a complex issue for global partners, but doable.
Bianca: I'm not talking about specific language about copyright or our policy. I'm just talking about standardizing our statements in the metadata about copyright.
Martin: We said for US in our metadata, not in copyright or scanned with permission.
Abel: Suggest a small survey with members to define the copyright in their countries. That way the information is shared with everyone. This could then be shared with the network for informational purposes. This is a way to formalize a definition by each member.
Bianca: 3 categories for US content: Scanned with Permission, Due Diligence (no known copyright), public domain. Do we require this metadata as standard for everyone?
Graham: Eu is already doing this, but they have 2 fields - in copyright with permissions or public domain.
Nancy: There are two points at issue. One is it's useful to have copyright metadata field information. US has 3 copyright status options. Is it useful everyone to have this information as part of metadata? If so, is it technically possible? Is the language from US sufficient for everyone? Are we talking about only going forward or going back retrospectively?
Au: Yes, useful to have.
Eu: Yes.
Brazil: Yes.
Egypt: Yes.
Decision: Each node agrees to use the standard copyright metadata fields US is using. It's up to each node to decide the actual language put within these fields.
Can each node add that information to the metadata fields?
Joel: These fields could be added as suggestions to Macaw.
Abel: I think it should be going forward.
Nancy: We could make available what US is doing in these fields, and individual nodes can adapt to meet their needs.
Ely: The available fields, for in copyright books, there is no field for copyright holder. Also, we don't have jurisdication field.
Graham: The jurisdication is indicated by scanning institution field.
Bianca: These fields are a recent change to US policies. We decided to keep information generic on copyright holder. By linking to our permissions page within the fields, we can explain where to find copyright holder information.
Ely: Creative Content license we're using requires attribution.
Graham: We have that information in our permissions list. It's easier to point to the permissions list, but that might not be the best way to present it.
Bianca: This points to requiring that certain fields be filled out, but each node can determine how they fill those fields out.
Decision: We will ask Joel to revise Macaw to include US standard fields. US will send out list of how we're using fields with language we're using. It will then be up to each node to decide how to adapt language being used to their particular node, but each node agrees to use these standard fields.
Timeline: Revised copyright page will be available soon. Macaw will be updated by August 1st. Permissions page will only be about what US node is doing regarding copyright.
Subcollections
John: How are the virtual xhibitions produced?
Jiri: It's a separate application than the portal.
John: Do you write against portal database?
Jiri: Yes. i'm also working on the OpenUp! project to get multimedia images linked to exhibitions. Next step is the sandbox, to let users start playing with the application to create their own exhibitions.
Patricia: On our website we put together a virtual exhibition with linking to Europeana on our own website. Built on Drupal 7 as an extra module to our website, but we put a skin that looks like our website over the application so it still looks like our website. It's just a website that links to BHL, Europeana and other sites.
Jiri: How can the user duplication what's been done without creatig a new website?
Patricia: Then can just create a copy of our environment. It's just a website with links.
Jiri: If the user is not using Drupal, what do they do?
Patricia: Then they use what they have. It's just basic html, using Drupal as a content management service. We did a datrabase with a few images and then links to pages in BHL and Europeana. It's content-based. You can very easily replicate for your own website.
Open source. We can provide it through code itself, which can be cloned to create website for you own purposes. We could also view this as a gBHL where there is one application of the exhibitions that we all contribute to.
We will create a group to talk about exhibitions further: Jiri, Grace, Bianca, John, Joel, Connie (other US partners), open to others.
Martin: Can we package in a different format, like as an iBook?
Jiri: We have submitted proposals for new projects, showing that this content could be used in other ways. The goal is to create a platform built on BLE but in an expanded environment, like BLE-2. This data we create can be used for things like gaming.
Jiri will disseminate the information on BLE to everyone. Next step is the implement links to content, then to add topics.
We would be able to fill out a form and BLE would use that information to create an exhibit that BLE would support. Right now it's hosted in Prague, but it could be at NHM or London or US after project ends at end of year.
Action Item: We will have a Skype call when Jiri is ready to start letting other partners contribute to go over how to create your own exhibitions. Jiri will indicate when he is ready to have this call. The call will be open to everyone and then each person can then decide what kind of exhibitions they want to create.
Action Item: Create Skype directory page on private wiki.
Action Item: On the gBHL website, we will also have a page collating all of our subcollections for the various nodes.
Bianca: Do we want a gBHL collection with the quintessential items from each partner? Like Treasures of the BHL.
Nancy: As long as we are inclusive.
Connie: It would have to be dynamic.
Action Item: Discuss making a "treasures of BHL" collection on our exhibition Skype call - quintessential items from each BHL node.
Communications
Who is in charge of outreach and communication for each node? What communication activites are you performing? How can we coordinate activites across global nodes?
BHLUs: Grace and Bianca. Flickr, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, iTunes U, Blog, newsletter, quarterly reports.
BHL-E: We still have to decide how we will organize our communications going forward. We have blog, facebook, twitter. Blog is what we need to focus on. Nicolas did that, but no longer with us after next week. Henning and Jiri have to decide how to move forward with these applications.
Jiri: We have prepared a spice of the week for the next two years. We also prepared a few blog articles for the next few weeks. Maybe there cold be some sharing between BHL-US and BHL-E.
Henning: It was agreed that each node had its own activities but that we'd find a way to align certain activities.
Australia: We have twitter. We've been blogging on Museum Victoria and Atlas of Living Australia.
Joel: The organic way the system has grown is good.
Dissemination Team:
US: Grace
Au: Ely
Brazil: Grillo/Fabiana (technical Fabio)
Egypt: Mariam Nagui
Europe: Henning/Jiri
Action Item: There is a
global dissemination wiki page. Each node will document their activities on that page.
Action Item: There will be a page on the gBHL website listing all social media outlets for each node and this gBHL website will be linked to in each of the node blogs.
Executive Election
gBHL-CC Chair: Ely Wallis
gBHL-CC Vice-Chair: Henning Scholz
gBHL-CC Secretary: Nancy Gwinn
They will have a Skype call in a month and there will be a record of this and future meetings. Next global meeting will be held in Australia next year around October.
Parked Items
Cleaning up black edges on scans
Martin: Perhaps as a basis we could use the BHL best practices guide. We should also use this to cover retrospective scans. However, we don't have enough partners here to really address the issue.
Action Item: Create workgroup on scanning standards and post-processing. (Noha, Connie, Joel, others from US)
Noha: There are two issues to this problem: Finding resources to do this. Then, once the updates are created, figuring out how to get these updates on to IA.
Connie: We do have quality control standards, but they don't cover this. Maybe this could be addressed by people working with quality control. They should be part of the workgroup.
Joel: I was working on a way to bring pages out of IA through Macaw an then re-upload to IA. We'd just need permission to update those items in IA.
Martin: it would be difficult to get that permission unless other partners signed on (like California digital library and LoC).
Connie: We're talking about different types of images. Things we've scanned and items that we ingest from non-partners. Those are images that we might actually want to rescan. It's not just a matter of cropping the image. It might also be a matter of rescanning the pages.
Scanning Standards and Post-Processing Group: Noha (or delegate), Connie (or delegate), Joel,
Martin: Other relevant people probably aren't here. Perhaps Christine Giannoni, Matt Person.
Timeline for first meeting: by August 1st.
OCR Processing
We don't have a way to change the OCR and guarantee that IA will not overwrite it.
Martin: We should say that the IA OCR file will always be there and we don't overwrite it. If there are additional OCR files and OCR with text coordinates files, these should be added as additional files to IA. Synchronizations from IA must then use the new files in their portals not the IA files.
Ely: We now have two different OCRs in IA: Abby and Tesseract. If we could create 3 OCR files, we could compare the 3 files and only correct or flag the instances where the 3 different OCR files don't match. This could be an interesting research project.
Joel: Summer of Code group might be a group that could look into this comparing 3 OCR files for correction issue.
Exhibit Tools
Patricia will provide link about the Royal Museum exhibit tool.
Example of Virtual Exhibition at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Tervuren, Belgium) :
Local Virtual Exhibition integrating BHL-Europe and OpenUp!.ppthttp://cybertaxonomy.africamuseum.be//drupal7/home >>
Global BHL Ahead
Sustainability
Some projects are ending. How do we sustain our overall project?
Regionalization
Can an individual library join global BHL without joining a particular node?
John: This is for libraries that want to contribute content?
William: Yes. Also, as it's described in the by-laws, they could join as participating instead of certified members if they don't have to contribute content to the portals but want to provide other services.
John: The danger with setting up various nodes continually, it could result in terrible fragmentation and we could lose control of the brand. But there is a question that if a partner doesn't fit within an existing node, where do we put them?
Martin: We've had a variety of discussions related to how we would divide up regions into nodes and what if a group wants to join a node outside of its region? For instance, we need to encourage Canada to join, but would they join BHL-Classic or form their own node?
Nancy: According to by-laws, existing members have say over who gets to join and anyone that joins we will have to work with to develop their involvement. We will want to develop some sort of application system that will tell us that a potential member should join, and how they should join (go through an existing node or form a new node). Perhaps this is something that the Executive Committee can work on this and develop something for everyone to look at.
Martin: Another way we could break this up is by language.
William: So there might be a single partner in multiple nodes or multiple nodes in a single region.
Nancy: We can't foresee all of the things that might happen, but in our area we've developed a Memorandum of Understanding that each certified member signs to ensure that each member knows what they're responsible for. We could take the by-laws and develop them into a Memorandum of Understanding that we all sign in order to be a certified member. We need to decide what we mean in terms of participating members. Perhaps we say that you can only bring a certain number of people for each certified node. We don't mind having observers but it depends on the situation we're in. So my feeling: It would be good to develop a Memorandum of Understanding and let the gBHL-CC Executive Committee deal with these issues in the immediate term.
Abel: With whom would you sign the memorandum of understanding? My experience is that if you develop something that requires legal intervention, it takes too long to accomplish anything. Every time we need to sign something, it has to go through multiple channels.
Nancy: As a group we would certainly want to know certain things about anyone wanting to join with membership to our group. For anyone wanting to join as a member we could have an application process for them to go through.
Ely: This application process is not on a member library level but on a regional node level. If a library wants to become a member all by themselves and not join a node, we'd need an application process to gather information to know why.
William: Well my question is - if a new individual institution wants to join, do they have to join their regional node or will we let them join by themselves or another node outside their region?
Bianca: Are there any considerations related to technical issues? If a new partner has a methodology set up that matches better with a node outside their region, can they join that different node?
Nancy: This would be on a case-by-case basis.
Connie: We can make recommendations about which node they should join but ultimately they make the decision about whether they want to pursue partnership based on options.
Patricia: You also have to consider bandwidth capabilities for membership and node issues. Some areas have poor bandwidth capabilities and thus working with those partners requires alternative approaches and workflows.
Nancy: So we will not make a decision yet about applications or criteria or minimum requirements yet. We will think about it and then the gBHL-CC will work through the processes and draft final criteria and applications. We want our nodes to be as autonomous as possible so they can decide things for themselves, but we can also recommend how they should operate based on existing issues.
Action Item: Develop criteria and application for potential members. This would be beyond the minimum requirements for Certified Members. The gBHL-CC Executive Committee will work on developing these criteria.
Minimum Requirements Draft:
gBHL certified members are entitled to participate in the gBHL-CC with full rights of voice and vote in the meetings and are eligible to be elected for any executive roles.
Certified Members are expected to accomplish the following minimum requirements:
1. Agreement with the gBHL principles as expressed in the gBHL by-laws. This should be done by the time of acceptance as gBHL member and made public in its website.
2. Regular production and publication of contents in a manner compatible with the gBHL methodology in order to guarantee interoperability and exchange of data. An update report on member's activities and progress is required every quarter. Proactive participation and sharing of ideas, information and knowledge in the gBHL wikispaces and other instances is expected. The certified member should provide a significant amount of content consistent with the scope of the project.
3. Participation in the gBHL cooordinating meetings with managerial and technical people. The certified members are also expected to collaborate with the hosting of coordinating meetings.
(Potentially add to minimum requirements something about each institution being required to take on collections decisions like copyright issues and content types)
Unpublished Material
William: Does anyone have an issue with unpublished content coming into BHL?
Patricia: We've found Citebank an interesting alternative for unpublished material. We're interested to know whether BHL would accept content from individuals.
Henning: If it has appropriate metadata, it shouldn't be an issue.
Bianca: Collections considerations should be at the node level. As long as you provide the appropriate metadata, each node should decide what they want to allow into their BHL node.
Martin: As part of Field Notebooks project, they are doing cataloging of field notebooks and scanning them, then ingesting them into BHL.
Decision: Each node decides what they contribute. They just have to make sure the metadata meets the minimum metadata standards (to be developed by Synchronization Subcommittee) and copyright compliance.
Being willing to take these collections decisions on is a requirement for member institutions
Future Project Ideas and Proposals
Eu: Future projects: BLE exhibition; applying for crowd-sourcing platform project; Federated archive system across Europe which would help further develop preservation archive system; Project working towards open biodiversity management system - figuring out what system upgrades are necessary to achieve this.
Bianca: Maybe there's a need for a communication network to keep track of what kinds of proposals global nodes are submitting and working towards.
