May 27, 2008 BHL Executive Committee Notes
BHL Executive Committee Notes May 27, 2008
1. Update on the Component Leaders meeting.
EOL component leader meeting lasted 6 hours. Reviewed annual reports and covered areas of synergy. This should happen more frequently. BHL should articulate a brief list of requirements for taxonomic intelligence by June 20. Tom will work on a draft of a list of functional requirements for BHL and send it to the Execs. Bioinformatics needs to have something clear from us.
GBIF and Namebank names have only 25% overlap. David Remson wants to combine forces. UBIO expects to be holder of the names.
Cathy said that names harvested from BHL will be deposited in Namebank.
Chris reported that Qin Wei begins evaluation for name-finding May 28 and to be done by July.
2. OCLC harvesting. Martin wrote: "Do you think we need to revisit the linking of OCLC records and BHL content? Suzanne had initiated a number of conversations with Bill Carney at OCLC that were based on how to harvest from IA and include both the IA and BHL identifier - this was before we had agreed that the BHL portal would be the key access point for our material. I think that we now have a suffifient quantity of material that we could reopen this discussion with the goal being to have an OCLC harvest against BHL and an ingest/link to the BHL identifier (and let IA figure out how/if they will be harvested by OCLC). If we agree, I would like to nominate Suzanne as the initial OCLC contact point. As we're going to ALA in a few short weeks, I'm sure we could set up some time to meet with Bill in Anaheim."
Cathy responded, “The person you need to talk with about this is Cathy De Rosa... she is the guru Vp for tyhe Americas and Global VP of Marketing .. I will be giving a talk with "Chip" William Nigles the VP for Business Development next week at the Scientific Scholarly Publishing Meeting in Boston... I will start a conversation with him.... Remember I am on Members Council and know all those players... let me see if there is some interest in this... and then we can get down to the how to's or f we want to's if there is enough interest..... Remember we bring something else to the table that might be of great interest and that is the TI for the scientific tomes... this might turn into some sustainable venture for BHL. I think Martin and Suzanne should proceed with Bill Carney because it’s a straightforward operation that give our content and the Portal more recognition. I don’t see what TI has to do with it."
We should have OCLC link back to us. OCLC should be able to harvest us but we need to be OAI compliant. We need to figure out the best conduit. We want OCLC to know that BHL has a digital surrogate but we don't want to pay to have the digital record recorded. Martin will be meeting with Bill Carney at ALA. Get questions to Martin so he can pose them at ALA. Cathy will be meeting with the VP for Business of OCLC on Thursday and will talk to him about this.
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3. Education and Outreach for the EOL, meeting in Cambridge run by Marie Studer:
Tom and Connie were invited observers. The Advisory group: Elizabeth Babcock (FMNH), Donald Bockler (Pre. Mass Assoc. of Biology Teachers), Claudia Charpentier (INBioarque, Costa Rica), Chris Dede (Harvard Graduate School of Education), Tina ? (Director of Citizen Science Cornell Lab of Ornithology), Honor Gay (NHM), Tricia Jones (Animal Diversity Web, UMi), Barbara Kline Pope (National Academies Press), Helida Oyieke (National Museums of Kenya), William Spitzer (New England Aquarium), Gill Stevens (NHM), Shari Rosenstein (NMNH), Liz Werby (HMNH) and Nathan Wilson (Citizen Scientist--Mushroom Observer). There were a few others in attendance, including Jim Edwards.
Good for BHL to be there--could drive some of the scanning. For instance if a pilot about Madagascar is chosen, BHL will need to work on literature about Madagascar t.
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4. Internet Archive developments
Tom has the impression that some libraries are directing users to IA but Chris suggested that they may be sending them in addition to BHL.
We ma be able to approach Microsoft-funded institutions to possibly ingest their content (18,000 from UCA, for instance may be relevant). Need to talk to donor libraries and be sure that MSN restrictions are no longer relevant. Need to explore ongoing plan of UCal's digitizing project.
“controversial items” in BHL –
BTW, some of the examples Chris sent out on this highlight how needed a full-time collection manager is.
If no patron identification, then it makes it easier to avoid liability issues. Will need to have a liability waiver. We would like to collect some information about the users--professional taxonomist, citizen scientist etc or geographic location. Chris pointed out that the under 13 crowd create a new set of liabilities. So we need to discuss the "My BHL" functionality but not an immediate need.
BHL could reflect what is in our collections but the MacArthur money is limited and targeted and must support the Encyclopedia of Life. Not even paleontology fits in here. Now that there is a species page coordinator for EOL, we may start receiving lists of what needs to be provided. We should have some generic responses. We should put something in writing
"We have broad selection criteria but each library is responsible for its own specific selection" "We need to do whole runs of journals"
5. Article-level access can be discussed next call.
6. Chris noted that last weeks staff call showed that there is a lot of confusion in NY. Tom and Cathy are working with Robert on this. John Mignault and Tom Baione are not sure who to talk to. Wonderfetch isn't up and running there. They can't implement it at the scanning center. The head of the scanning center needs to implement this. NY doesn't seem to use the bid list. Whole pod has to be moved. Martin will be working to facilitate the situation at the NY center. A one day workshop on site in NY might be good.
7. Chris talked with Bob Morris (UMass) and he has done electronic field guides. He wants to work on automated markup and use BHL for test bed. He is planning to apply for an NSF grant along with a former student of Bryan Heidorn.
8. Next week is EOL Steering Committee in London. Graham noted the whole Steering Committee will attend and representatives from MSN and Wellcome Trust have been invited to the EOL dinner.
9. Connie reported .that she and Doug have been working on collections issues starting with a document that describes "the state of the BHL: collections" and the use of the various tools.
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Next call: June 10 at 11 AM EST, 10 AM CST, 4 PM GMT
