May 4, 2010 BHL Executive Committee notes

On call: Tom, Chris, Graham, Cathy, Connie and Martin

1. EOL Steering Committee Meeting
Component leaders meeting first; some asked for more money. Then Steering Committee Budget will be managed over 2 years--reviewing all figures. Should be ready by the end of May. Permission granted to BHL to reallocate 300k. Not likely to be more money for BHL from EOL. Possible grant possibilities. The component leader presentations were excellent and fit together. Detailed SWOT analysis showed that content, curation and infrastructure are key. Some gaps could be filled if all institutions provided the promised $5mill. Jim Edwards has formally resigned and there will be a search for his successor.

Bob Corrigan is a very effective product manager. Graham has been elected as Chair of EOL.

2. $300k reallocation: approved. Part of this is for hiring a data technician/analyst at MOBOT. Should any of this money go to travel? Once Tom has the budgets for the tech meeting, he can respond. Rest will be applied to scanning. Try to come up with process for allocating by May 13 IC conference call.

3. Unibio Press and Japan: Bianca has been in touch with Yuko Nagai who is editor of Unibio Press and involved with J. Zoological Soc. Would like to provide BHL with backfiles of 4-5 journals. Japan may want to become a BHL hub and become more involved--preliminary discussions.

4. Citebank development--Chris has interviewed and hope to hire by June. It means a full 6 months of a high performing developer to work on Citebank. Making changes to OAI bridge so any OAI repository can provide content (Zookeys, SciElo, repositories).


5. Mrs. Mellon (of foundation) has private library (French horticulture and lots of everything else--well curated but no catalog) and MOBOT helped set up an in-house scanning operation. Bill Robertson is encouraging her to contact MOBOT so that more materials could be added to JSTOR/BHL. Susan Leopold is librarian. Visit to Smithsonian by Susan and also visit to estate, once permission has been granted.

6. BHL APIs have been released into production (blog, wiki, listservs, twitter).

7. Process for decision on scanning allocations: ACTION: Tom will draft by May 13 IC conference call.

8. BHL Technical Meeting in September - status
Cathy is putting together budgets for proposed cost for workshop (including lodging) and the budget for hosting. Cathy noted that she is getting a van so Chinese and Brasilians and Egyptians can be picked up in Boston.

9. Seidell grant submitted at Smithsonian.

10. IAPTF--email confirmation and Martin and others will finalize in Vienna.

11. IA bookplates: Robert has stopped for all BHL books, going along with the LC and Smithsonian. Executive Committee recommends that we KEEP the bookplate. ACTION: Martin will draft the recommendation. ACTION: will go on May 13 IC agenda

NEXT MEETING: May 11, 11 a.m. EDT