May 4 (Executive Committee)

4 May 2017

BHL Executive Committee Call

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Attendance:

xxxxx

AGENDA and NOTES

Secretariat Update (Martin)
1. BHL Africa. SANBI *might* have their Zfetch problem fixed…waiting for confirmation. Bianca will be meeting with U Pretoria’s Lidia Swart and IA’s Elizabeth MacLeod next week to help them start digitization for some SAIAB materials. She is also seeing if she can help National Museums of Kenya to complete their lingering items in Macaw that lack MARCXML and correct item metadata. Communication remains spotty. Might be a need for Bianca to do uploads of MARCXML for existing content to get it into BHL.
2. Kenya visit. MRK and CAS will be attending the XXI AETFAT Congress in Nairobi (15-19 May) and participating in a BHL Symposium. CAS will also give a presentation on BHL at the US Embassy on 19 May and at the Mpala Research Centre and Wildlife Foundation on 20-22 May. MRK will be giving additional talks at both locations on Smithsonian related research activities.
3. Advances in Cladistics v.2 (1983). BHL was unable to negotiate permission for this title from Columbia U Press because they would not accept the BHL indemnity clause. This is the first time we've had this issue come up.
4. BHL Donations. Grace worked with the Smithsonian Libraries Advancement Office on placement of the "donate" buttons on the PDF request form. Since the change in this, we have seen an increase in the number of small donations (under USD100) since the change (in mid-April).
5. NDSR Symposium and related activities. Was a great success; the NDSR Residents gave a great "discussion" talk; Carolyn attended for BHL. The NDSR Residents also presented at DPLAFest (presentation here: Stay tuned for Resident blog posts
Technical Update (Martin)
1. User Generated Article Metadata. It come to my attention that there was never any action on the 2013 recommendation from the Collections Committee that the user generated metadata from PDF generation be added to the BHL article metadata stack. The Collections Committee reviewed the quality of the metadata and found it usable for discoverability. I recommend that we move this to the development priorities.
2. BHL and Z39.50. MRK has concerns about the long term viability of Z39.50. BHL relies on Z39.50 in the context of the IA scanning workflow. We will be looking into some longer-term options (e.g. OCLC APIs); Joel and the tech team will be looking into this (could also assist with Macaw metadata). No near term implications at this point in time.
3. NHM BHL Europe Stack. Note from Chris Sleep (NHM) on BHL Europe stack: Just a quick note to let you know we’ve some work planned on our storage backend for the upcoming weekend, which we’ve been informed will not be as non disruptive as we’d intended – and as such, to make sure all of the data is secure, we’ll be shutting down the bhl-europe machines while the work is going on (shut down over the weekend, so a little longer than the work is expected to take to be fair!)
4. FOLIO (Future of Libraries is Open). I'm interested in exploring the FOLIO platform as we move forward on BHL Version 2. I've suggested that the NDSR group look into this. I've discussed with staff from IndexData (a firm working on FOLIO dev) having a staff person from FOLIO/IndexData attend the September Tech meeting. I like the concept of "APIs all the way down" which lets users interact with any/all layers of the tech stack directly with out dependencies on other layers (or portions that people aren't interested in). More info on the FOLIO platform here.
5. Link Shortening. We're looking into moving to Bit.ly as the official link shortener.
Topics from the Chair (Connie)
1. Report on EOL call. Nancy introduced Connie to the EOL call. She gave a report on who was on the call; main topics were EOL V.3; meetings attended by EOL people; and
2. Should Member Council votes be private/anonymous (e.g. secret ballot) or public? Review of Article IV. Section 4 of Bylaws:
  Section 4. Action by Consent. Any action required or permitted to be taken at any meeting of the Council may be taken without a meeting provided that Council representatives submit their votes in writing or electronic vote. Any Council representative who fails to submit a written /electronic vote will be recorded as an abstention. An action by consent shall be effective when agreed to by a simple majority of the Council members submitting votes. The record of such action and the result of such vote shall be filed with the records of the meetings of the Council. DECISION: Calls for electronic votes will be sent by the Secretary. Members shall be encouraged to respond to electronic votes to either the Members List or directly to the BHL EC Secretary. The Secretary will tally the votes and report the results to the Members. The BHL Program Director will document these results for reporting at the Annual Meeting.
3. Secretariat resources: What is available for EC and other members/Prioritization of tasks & staff workloads. Martin and Carolyn will work to make sure that the parameters of support are clear for the EC and Membership. Martin will work with the EC on an ongoing basis
4. Clarification of how we define the new Affiliates (BHL SciELO and BHL China into the BHL messaging and publicity (Martin). DECISION: BHL SciELO and China will be treated as "New Affiliates" and offered the same services that we offer to new Affiliates. Martin will also draft a message for Connie to send to BHL Egypt and notify them that they will have Affiliate status under the same terms as SciELO and China until such time as the technical work for Membership is finalized.
5. Input on planned business model for DPLA, how does BHL want to respond to the call for input? (Martin). Doug will participate in the call on behalf of BHL. He will join the 16 May call at 1000 Eastern; Connie and Doug will consult on the second call.
Planning for 2018 Annual Meeting (MRK/Connie/Carolyn)
1. Results of the Meeting Evaluation are here
2. Format for the meeting/broad strokes. I would like a discussion on how we'd like to format the meeting for this year and the number of days that you want the meeting to run for. As soon as we can pin this down, we can get back to our hosts in terms of where the meetings will take place and which day/date options that we want to give to the Members within the week that we've selected
3. It looks like the week of March 12-16, 2018 is the best week of availability of facilities for the BHL 2018 annual meeting.
  1. The NHMLAC facilities should be fine that week except Friday, March 16, 2018 there may be a hold for our annual Nature Fest weekend Load-in. That is not a firm date at this point. If that affects the conference room needed for BHL the Research Library is one alternative. We can work that out.
  2. The Arboretum is good for that week according to Susan (though she is checking to be sure).
  3. The University of Southern California has Spring Break that week and the room needed is available. The other weeks have events already scheduled. However, as you can see below, the library building has limited hours from 9AM to 5PM and to ensure everyone is out of the building in time (they padlock and chain the doors) the meeting day is suggested to be 9:30AM to 4PM
    1. This would be OK as we could have an hour break for people to get to NHMLAC and have a reception there later – ideally around 6:30PM but could be a bit earlier.
4. NOTES: A call with LA will be scheduled ASAP; EC will continue to pre-plan. The next EC call will focus on the meeting planning.

Other
1. N/A