Minutes of the Second Global BHL Planning Meeting, Chicago, IL, USA, Sunday 13 November 2011

• COFFEE, tea, continental breakfast

• A. Welcome, introductions, review of agenda (Cathy Norton)

Cathy: welcome everyone to 2nd annual global BHL meeting. Egypt is the only partner missing. Thank you to William to pulling the agenda together. Introductions: Cathy Norton, Connie Rinaldo, Nancy Gwinn, Boris Jacob, Simon Sherrin BHL Australia, Museum of Victoria, Jana Hoffmann Project Asst BHL Eur, Henning Scholz , Chris Freeland MOBOT, Martin Kalfatovic, Cui Jinzhong Director of BHL China, Fenghong Liu, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Botany, Xu Zheping BHL Systems Architecture, Graham Higley NHMLondon-BHL, BHLEur, Abel Packer, BHL Scielo and Brazil, Tom Garnett Program Dir BHL, William Ulate program manager BHL global

• B. Status update from each partner

BHL US
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/
Martin on BHL: highlights of what we have done, broad overview since last September:
New logo assisted by BHL Australia,
Content ingest as of 11/12: almost 36 million pages, 48, 851 titles.
Usage statistics: working tool --used during the week. almost 1 mill visits looking at 4.9 million pages.
Darwin Library project: Spike in use thanks to Mike Lichtenberg and the .
Restructured goverance of BHL: Executive committee elected: chair, vice chair, secretary, Project direcor, deputy project director, plus steering committee as contributers: 8 members of steering committee--Smithsonian, MOBOT, NMH, Kew, NYBG, Cal Acad, MBL, MCZ;
Newest members of the institutional council: Cornell and USGS Libraries;
Attended many meetings presenting BHL: Australia, China, BHL Europe, Global names meeting, Biosystmeatics, TDWG, Sherborne Symposium. 4 staff won the De Gruyter Saur IFLA research paper award;
Added a Donate button to BHL;
Increased outreach via swag and brochure thanks to inspiration of BHL Europe 10) active social media network
FLICKR: pushing images into FLICKR (20,000+ images). Goal is to improve metadata so can get directly to image, now we can only get to book.
Black Rhino officially extinct sadly, but information lives on in BHL.

BHLEurope

Henning Scholz: Overview of progress of BHL Europe; mobilizing and preserving digital European literature and facilitating open access (not digitizing--that is individual partners).
Developing portal to pull all digitzed biodiversity literature together. Archive is in London on dedicated architecture. Portal is in draft but not fully functional. In drupal and other open source components. webservices for metadata management, Name finding--taxon finder, cat of life, pesi, author names (viaf) www.viaf.org, serial names http://www.zeitschriftendatenbank.de/ ; Europeana; GUID system (global unique identifier): ready but needs to be tested;
GRIB: bibliographic database/union catalogue. In the process of being rebuilt--about 575,000 de-duplicated records. Designed to manage scanning process and reduce duplication. If there are questions--ask Boris. In principal, data can be added from Australia etc. Contract is with BHL and BHL Europe; Is available until 2020 at least.
Best Practice Guide (incorporates BHL classic info): draft and in revision for next year; including digitization workflow, scanning cost estimates, IPR, etc., schema mapping tool, open literature exchange format
OCR: IMPACT (improving access to text) to improve OCR: test with 100 pages and some books for about 2000 pages from bhl us: working on quality checks and will present the results in about 2 weeks; comparing current with IMPACT. Not free--must be funded to improve automatic OCR correction.
Business Plan: draft using BHL prinicples. Vienna and LANDOE to provide development, maintenance; London infrastructure; Help desk in Teveuren, coordination and network management--MHN) Existing partners will continue to digitize and these institutions must provide data in proper format. Growing the network will likely require more funding. Tom noted that this is a strong base from which to acquire additional funding. Cathy noted that the audience is basically scientists, taxonomists, librarians--what about citizen scientists? Henning noted that Europeana is the interface for the broader audience including the general public. Different access points for different groups.

Information on the Europeana Data Model EDM - which will replace the Europeana Semantic Elements in the future - can be found here: http://version1.europeana.eu/web/europeana-project/technicaldocuments/

BHL SciELO/Brasil: Abel Packer
http://biodiversidade.scielo.br/php/index.php
began 2006;
Plan of work 10/2010
Launch of BHL SciELO Dec 2010
Now have scanners as of 9/2011
Portuguese version of Biodiversity Thesaurus ready Dec 2011
Will have 2000 documents digitized by Dec 2013 and published in BHL
Portal is based on SciELO Network gold open access journals (1.2 million downloads per day); 16 countries, public health, biodiversity and social sciences; SciELO Books to launch in 2012: open access, no embargo; ebooks from university press; evaluation of books regarding citations--all the university press books? Will use epub and pdf. Biodiversity related books will be in BHL.

BHL SciELO includes: BHL Brazil: Brazilian library collections, biodiversity related journal collections (SciELO and non-SciELO), Brazilian OA repository of non-SciELO) journals, Biodiversity mulitlingual thesaurus--english, portuguese, spanish; other features --list of species?, index legislation?, news, blog, twitter, directories to internet sources?, info management and quality control, advisory committee. Repository is still a problem--embargos although there is a requirement that scientists deposit.

5 scanners to be distributed to libraries for local scanning and storage with transfer to central storage and then to BHL. 12 libraries in the digitization network. Some sites require people as well as scanners. Tom asked if more librarians are enthusiastic than were in 2010 and Abel noted that they are coming around. Should have 3 scanning units in regular operation by 3/2012 and an Advisory Committee meeting in March.

Bureaucratic barriers still, political support is aligned with national policies, scientific support aligned with research programs

BHL China
http://www.bhl-china.org/cms/
Liu Fenghong: 11/ 2009 formally initiated; by December--online portal; MOU signed; Book scanning--all the local floras for many provinces; also OCR beginning; Mostly Botany--plant ecology, agriculture, forestry, fungi, algae; Planning to scan zoology, paleobiology, microbiology, marine biology.... Scanned 9000 books, 115,000 articles that include 1.7 mil names. Shared 12 TB content

Next steps: metadata (cnmarc to marc21), more content, taxonfinder to extract species names, copyright issues, do more with in other biodiversity related events.

Zheping Xu: Extension of BHL China; links to other biodiversity systems and mining and searching. Content added to extend public service--ocr; searching for content; appication of data --Chinese Virtual Herbarium--distribution data for instance: one species, one page
China National Specimen platform is the next project --integrating data from multiple platforms into one (plant, animal, educational, natural reserves, minerals and fossils,...)
http://www.cvh.org.cn/is/
linking with EOL
http://www.biota.org.cn China Biodiversity Information Network
Linking BHL China to E-science infrastructure More global and more local.

BREAK

BHL Australia
http://bhl.ala.org.au/
Structure and backgound: Atlas of Living Australia and Museum of Victoria (lead for BHL from ALA); ALA vast range of parts data repository (specimen occurence records from Museums and observational records); classification set with list of Australian names and ultimately get to EOL, morphbank, authored work, genomics, volunteers, spatial portal including predictive modelling, and BHL as literature component. If do a search in ALA, there is a species page including a literature page from BHL (link directly to BHL). 2 fulltime staff and 3 others. BHL Au live in June 2011:
Index replication (not full database): currently mirroring is done manually--lots of failures before it works--Simon working with Mike at MOBOT,
Search: will implement Advanced search as in BHL, also SOLR index with less literal searching,
Annotations Need page markup that shows where individual species mentioned, original descriptions--ties into OCR,
Bid List--a way to nominate titles to scan--not as comprehensive as the GRIB; Took species names and references--how many published in Aus J Ent, for instance and get a list of these, to pre-populate bid list. Then match with BHL and then can extend scanning. Can scan to 1955 and still be in public domain in Australia. Will work with Australian copyright holders to extend access. Not sure how this will work globally. If registered with ALA, can go into bid list and select titles to add for scanning. Queries libraries of Australia data to find out where titles are held. Can convey this info. to herbarium and museum libraries (all are partners with ALA and then by extension to BHL). Martin noted that articles with few species may be more interesting. Simon noted that someone who chooses a title counts more than number of species.
Book viewer different in Au than US.
Usabiliy tests with Au and US. Au scanning will be mostly boutique since the mass scanning has been mostly done in US/UK. So BHL AU will be contributing technical assistance.
Scanning equipment is being reviewed and reengineered
Processes: scanning is the easiest but the post processing is more difficult. Have own bucket in IA. Working to get Smithsonian software up and running in AU for post processing and pagination. Scott sisters butterfly volumes
http://australianmuseum.net.au/Beauty-from-Nature-art-of-the-Scott-Sisters/
Scanned diaries connected to specimens as a pilot.
Prioritization: Australian publications from local institutions; some already scanned and can ingest/upload;
Volunteers: plan to use volunteers for scanning; Many volunteer projects for ALA--specimen and label scanning, especially entomology collections. Also have a volunteer portal (in beta) so people can participate in crowd-sourcing of specimen label transcriptions, for instance. The Scott sisters had extensive handwritten diaries that are already scanned and are being transcribed by volunteers. Also looking into using for OCR correction. Volunteer work is reviewed. As people volunteer, they move up in labels--"reserach assistant", "scientist", "expedition leader"--kind of gaming. Nancy asked if there is a way to exclude "bad" volunteers? Yes, because it is not anonymous--volunteers have to identify themselves. The quality assurers work for the Australian Museum and the volunteer portal is under their administration.
ALA funding runs out next year and it doesn't look like more money is forthcoming for 2012/2013. Government will try to find money for 2013/2014. BHL is run out of Museum of Victoira and the museum will provide some funding.

SUMMARY: Cathy noted that all of the presentations were inspiring. Please give your presentations to William. Can post with minutes and other places.

• C. Vision Discussion of what the Global BHL should be (Abel Packer)

Good position to continue vision. Much has been done and so there are some restrictions regarding what is possible and what we have already committed to.
1. Is it Biodiversity Heritage Library or global BHL? Abel prefers BHL and make it global then qualify when speaking about a local implementation. If we conceive it as one library, it is important.
2. Make BHL a reference for anything related to scientific content. Link that to a bigger vision related to humans and the planet. Identify decisions based on scientific evidence. Should BHL contain other literature besides published literature? Contextualization? Decisionmaking?
3. All relevant content must be available and needs curation. Not only historical collections, Learning objects, other tools to contribute to education. Translation.
4. Functions of the BHL: searching, indexing, making accessible but should include evaluation and analysis (how much content contributed by each country and what does this mean?)
5. Not just sharing content but how content is generated.
6. How do we make it really global? Region-based not necessarily country based.
7. As BHL is global it should be autonomous. Perhaps we will one day need an institution to establish a foundation, keep agreements and make BHL visible even though we are virtual.
8. Norway/Brazil meeting to establish a UN agency for biodiversity and ecosystem services with one component as information. BHL may be involved as this component. How do we make this a reality? Establish plan of work. Intergovernmental science platform. (IPBES).
DISCUSSION
Cathy: How do we move this to the next step? Concerns--does the UN know about us? Would this new group want to support dissemination through us? Tom: Who do they call when they want to do a joint project? There is no institution there. So how do we institutionalize without bureaucracy and be streamlined? What is necessary to interact with a group like IPBES. Currently we are MOU based and this makes it difficult to represent ourselves to emerging projects and programs.
Chris We need to be integrated with global efforts although perhaps not necesary to institutionalize.
Tom noted that institutionalizing may open us to potential restrictions. Could become source of direction and restraint. Connie noted that funding sources also impose restraints.
Chris:-can we do both?
Abel:--If we don't do it, others will. We need to be aware.
Boris: noted that the library is still a service primarily to scientists and though we should have contacts with policymakers--- keep moving in the direction we are going and add more services. Scientists deal with the policymakers.
Chris:--can we do both--. If you look at funding--national funding streams but in US have had private funding. Moore Foundation funding the globalization of BHL. There is no single institution looking at this globally --it is a magnitude of funding above what we have been given and not sustainable.
Graham: noted that insitutionalization is a nice idea but we don't have a global representation of museum/libraray institutions. Can create an institution but wouldn't have the robustness to answer questions from Abel.
Tom: It is not simple! If properly done, making a globalized institution may be fundable. GBIF has a model. IPBES is new and we must follow. Don't know if there is funding there.Tom does think it is a problem that when someone wants to talk to global BHL, no clear communication stream.
Nancy: asked if there is an example of someone trying to reach global BHL.
Chris: The answer is there is no one asking today but people are talking to BHL US because we are established.
Nancy: Who are we? We are a group of libraries with a historical service role in society. Knowledgeable experts get information to get decisions. Maybe we can make it easier for them with the services we build into repositories. But who among us can sit in on discussions with force of BHL?
Tom: Not that we would become decisionmakers IPBES but they are recognizing that players should be defined in large issuess--they will recognize GBIF which they can do because they can say here is the address and who to contact. They could recognize one of the BHL partner projects but they can't really recognize a global BHL (yet).
Graham: NHM has an advisor who makes contacts (eg environment minister). NHM asked how can we help but the ministry responded that the last thing we want is more information! Too confusing. In that context, perhaps we are moving to a global presence (website?), sort of a faux institutionality, but the IPBES and issues like that are more tactical--should we actively engage? If so, we need to drive that engagement. Managing that as a global group is difficult because no one has authority. Can we create a tactical approach that will work for this kind of opportunity? Different model that allows an institutional approach without an institution.
Chris: How different is what we have described here than our drafted governance policy? Do we need to change it? Chris and Donald Hoberm had a conversation: As part of GBIF, wouldn't it be great if BHL was more integrated into GBIF? Is GBIF an infrastructure we can fit into for these kinds of discussions?
Cathy noted we would governance discuss later in meeting.
Graham when someone contacts the virtual entity how do we handle it?
Abel: May have an ideal vision but again we are restricted by what we are doing. BHL already has a centrality--does it have enough energy and force for us to be autonomous or do we need to negotiate something different? GBIF and BHL are different but have commonalities. We need to make the library more capable of helping researchers generate new content that can be incorporated into the library. Biodiversity is a big problem and the information in BHL can support decisions, if we have enough services and content.
Cathy Is IPBES real?
Abel: not yet but soon. It is becoming an organizing body.
Cathy: as Graham noted, we need a tactical plan. As a body we are meeting once a year. Need a communication network.
William: regarding GBIF, it has problems every year with funding. They have problems meeting committments when changes happen. They are interested in becoming a source of information--including literature. TDWG mentions BHL a lot but not as regional. They say "BHL". BHL is global already.
Tom Whatever we do, our current modes of communication must be improved. If communication improves, then many things become possible that may seem impossible today. For instance moving towards a more institutionalized body.
Chris: William's point is a good one. We are already considered as a global umbrella body. When people talk about BHL, they are talking about all of us.Whether we recogniae it or not, it has already been decided.
Ely: GBIF talks about pulling in other content. With Donald Hobern leaving ALA for GBIF, he will be supportive of efforts to bring BHL up in awareness within GBIF.
Cathy, GBIF has small revenue stream for runoff projectsl It is easy to be a partner.
Chris: Can we bring this discussion to a close.
Cathy: Should we move towards institutionaliation? Should we have a centralized contact? Communication is a big
William: Provision of raw data, translation--there is a whole new area to address.
Ely likes Graham's suggestion of a website . BHL wiki is already there--put a front page with the global identification. Make it tactical.
Nancy: Likes that idea but thinks we need a public page not attached to the wiki but we need a specific page with mission and global partners and probably names of coordinating committee and chair, as contacts. Vision statement not yet crafted but should come out of discussions. ONe problem--we can't include current literature and this will keep us from becoming a full information provider.

• LUNCH (catered)
• D. Review of Global BHL Principles document; Date and Location of the Global BHL Coordinating Committee Meeting (Nancy Gwinn)

Reviewing vision and operational framework document. Need to ensure there is complete understanding of principles. Then can vote on adoption. If you don't understand what is written, please ask for clarification. This has been discussed before but not everyone was present. Open access doesn't just mean openly available but freely open and reusable (with attribution). Open access doesn't mean we have to provide publishable quality.
Boris noted that open access means that author grants openness. Can we be rights holders for public domain?
Nancy noted that we are not trying to be rights holders.
Graham noted that if you digitize an object, in some jurisdictions you have certain rights.
Ely: In australia, difficult discussions about commercial use of open access material and how it is defined.
Nancy noted that commercial use is problematic especially if you have 3rd party rights negotiated but that this applies to scholarly research material.
Tom: Open access is an evolving issue. It has changed and will continue to change. In a high level document like we are developing, we should avoid getting too specific about issues that are in flux today.
Boris noted that using "open access" there is a political meaning. We should use open and freely available.
Chris disagrees. If we don't use the term "open access" then funding bodies will be confused.
Cathy: Springer has a different interpretation
Martin do we want to draw a difference between the metadata and objects. A commercial organization wants to use our metadata but our statement says not for commercial use.
Tom Defer metadata.
Graham noted we are discussing principles, not legal requirements. This is softer but appropriate for the non-institution agency we are. Keep general statement of our principles.
Abel: If we use term "open access" then it is open access. If we try to define too carefully it becomes a political decision. Should adopt CC non-commercial. This is the concept of open access in SciELO.
Nancy noted there are many places that define that way but that is not what IA says, and our stuff is in IA, or what we are saying.
Chris says so what if someone takes an image and makes a tee shirt?
Tom: Looking at BHL permissions statement: "for any and all non-commercial purposes with attribution" This is what has been signed for post 1923. We can't change our mind--we don't hold the copyright! If some 3rd party makes commercial use, then copyright holder can go after the party making the use but the liability does not reside with BHL member institutions. We are not tracking.
Nancy notes that we can't say everything can be reused in our principles. We shouldn't have a principle if we can't honor it.
Cathy noted that the words "in general" cover this.
Xu: If in copyright, the user can see only part. Can also link to publisher to enable ordering. Only putting into BHL what is not in copyright.
Chris noted that we are trying to bring in only what has no access restrictions.
Abel: we need to keep term "open access" with appropriate attribution from sources. "reused in general by other projects"
Xu:
Tom: IA notes on website that you must certify that your use is non-commercial.
Boris: from our perspective, anyone can do what they want.
Abel but we break the principles
Martin: we have 2 different streams--public domain and negotiated.
Tom: disagrees. BHL makes no claim of authority over anything, including public domain. For signed agreements, copyright stays with copyright holder but have not signed over any copyright.
Martin agrees.
Tom No transfer of rights to us.
Nancy should we have a note like in libraries telling the user that he/she uses content at own risk.
Graham trying to generalize into legal statements and we can't enforce. The simple first statement captures the principle and that is the aim, but not necessarily the same execution in all jurisdictions.
Abel: In the end we operate within the legal framework regionally.
Nancy/Tom: End at reuse.
Cathy/Chris attribution is critical.
Nancy: Attribution is end.
Boris:
Xu: schema for contributers. data contributer can select when transferring data
Chris BHL strives for open access content. Xu described technical implementation.

Moving on to COLLABORATION
Nancy/Chris/graham--lose converge and change agreed-to to agreed.
Nancy would like to change to approved because in American english needs to or upon.
Graham says approved doesn't work for UK English.
Tom: time out--talk about this at a different time.
ACTION: Nancy and Graham will figure it out.
Abel: converge is an important concept
Chris doesn't like converge because it sounds like we don't have individuality in projects.
Graham we need cooperation not necessarily convergence.
Not necessary.

DECENTRALIZATION
Self governing and self funded.

We all agree.


INTEROPERABILITY

Tom Highly desirable but is it too strong
Nancy it is a principle so it is ok.
William: What about technology?
Chris:Implied.
Nancy code and content are too different things.
Graham Easier to share all content, not necessarily code.
Martin: code could be most important
Chris disagrees. could be shared but not the most important thing.
Nancy agree to share with each other not necessarily public. We could but that isn't the point of this doc
Ely: Principle 1-digital content so in 4 say digital content and services
Graham Principles of sharing code will be determined by local factors. Need to be more general.
Nancy Agreed if add digital
"sharing of digital content"
"gBHL members"

TRANSPARENCY
Graham thinks it would be more helpful to be as transparent as possible
Cathy: change so transparent and clear to all members and the public


LEGALITY
Ely: how does this describe principle? Respect and solidarity:
Graham: respect local environment where services are delivered.We can't fit within one approach.
Graham remove statutory and leave as legal frameworks.
Chris Is legality a principle?
Nancy Yes! There are varied legal frameworks and we will try to work within all of them, not just one.
Abel: all international agreements: we do not submit to local legislation.
Simon: Should it say "gBHL members" "within their countries"
General agreement.
"The gBHL members will operate within their legal frameworks."
Abel suggested adding legal "affiliation" frameworks.
Graham keep it short, leave out affiliation.

MEMBERSHIP
Change: membership is composed of "organizations" programs and projects.....
Change: strike #1
2. Change:Each member (drop project). Martin--does this reiterate principle? Jana--what happens to the representative? (see next section).
Remove structure and funding

3. Do we still have two classes of members? In our local structure this is defined by cash. But is there a distinction between an institution who signs on but doesn't contribute and a contributor? Abel notes that a network is organized to do something. Then there are members who can contribute and possibly those who can't but may be able to later. So need to have minimal requirements. Nancy noted that we should decide if voting members are contributors and others can participate but not be voting members. Assuming we will have a voting structure. So add to membership statement: Membership is composed of organizations, programs and projects that are contibuting....others may participate. Abel noted that if we establish requirements, we may be missing good partners who can use requirements to request governmental assistance????
Graham--drop the whole section on two classes of memberships. It all comes up in next section.

FUNCTIONING OF BHL AS NETWORK


turn around statement to: gbhl cc oversees the functioning of the bhl
Nancy: 1. remove certified
Nancy: Revise most decisions by consensus but in the case of a vote, each rep gets one vote. Majority vote.
Tom: we should have a document that specifies all of the details. The basic idea is that there is one vote per project.
Nancy: Make the statement that each representative gets one vote a separate statement.
Nancy: CC has responsibility for determining membership, strategic planning and recommending policy for collaborative work.
Cathy: nodes will establish themselves. Need to have process for membership.
Graham: CC meets once a year: may be too specific. just remove and address in bylaws.
Many of these statements can be addressed in the by-laws more specifically.
Tom "may choose to establish "secretariat" is appropriate.
Cathy thinks we should say "will"
Tom: resource issue. what will the secretariat do?
Abel:maintains site, communication,
Nancy we haven't said much about governance.
Tom thinks we should strike #6, the secretariat because we haven't really addressed many issues. Is establishing a secretariat the way to do it We don't know yet.
Cathy thinks we should leave it as "may choose"
Abel this is very important--we need to leave it because it shows we might make it more formal.
William notes that it just determines who would establish the secretariat if it happens.
Nancy: #4 should go into the by-laws? take out ex-officio. "may choose to invite relevant individuals to meeting"
Chris: take out technical and use "temporary working groups"
Nancy: #5 CC will establish by-laws
Cathy "will have by-laws"

William: When will this document go public? Does it have to have the by-laws?


The Global Biodiversity Heritage Library (gBHL) is a cooperative network of autonomous members operating programs and projects to make biodiversity literature available to all through open access principles.
.
The goals of the gBHL are:

1. Digitize and aggregate as much biodiversity literature as funding and copyright law allows through the member programs and projects.
2. Maintain repositories for the indexing, storage, preservation, and serving of this digital content.
3. Develop services to make this digital content widely and easily available.

With all the accepted changes, can we take out the "draft" and make this accepted as of this date? Yes--unanimous: The Global Biodiversity Heritage Library
Vision and Operational Framework Document November 13, 2011
DATE/LOCATION of next meeting

• E. Communication for the Global BHL: What will work? wiki, conference calls, video chat, etc. (Henning Scholz)

Two routes--within the group and external between us and the public. Suggestions above for within the group. Everyone should be using the wiki. Still hard to follow everything and easy to get lost. Annual updates may not be enough. Many email lists but everyone not on the same list. Should have a global list for updates, new documents, completed milestones, draft documents. Would a blog or particular wiki page work. Tom suggests that we are very networked but he thinks we need more face-to-face interaction. Doesn't have to be everyone. National, linguistic, cultural and geographic differences. Somehow we need more face to face communication for topical and thematic areas. This would improve our understanding of our projects. Chris noted that this is a funding pressure. William has had a lot of interaction with specific projects. Tom thinks this advances things. Graham noted that a voluntary approach to communication is difficult to manage. LIke Tom, Graham thinks a few skype bilaterals with centralized updates may be a better approach. Henning noted that there are some times that everyone is available. But Simon went through the times and it seems unlikely. Chris and Martin noted that William is already doing these bilaterals but we need to synthesize and share with the group. Tom noted these syntheses should be availabe beyond the coordinating group.
Who are the voting members? Then who else would require information. Graham: Each of us who is a lead, should have a conversation with William on a monthly? or quarterly? or bimonthly? basis. William would play the role of secretary. There should be a record that is shared. Tom wonders if this will really improve communication. William might make contact more often. Cathy suggested that we ask for quarterly status update that William would coordinate. If a call is needed then William can organize it. Reports should be publicly shareable--major activities. Martin can share template. Data is fed to Grace and it takes her a week to assemble. Henning asked what happens when there is no funding. Cathy suggested others just send in what they are used to doing and William can organize them. Chris said don't put too many restrictions since the projects are different. Whatever gets information out most easily is what should be done.

William will also manage wiki page with global information.

Any other ideas? Sending everything to William works. He will synthesize and make available to everyone.

What about external? The internal reports will inform external reports
Nancy noted that we need a press release on the formation of the gBHL. Smithsonian has great PR.

Face to Face annual meeting: Not written in stone. When is a good time? Henning noted that the Final BHL Europe meeting in June 2012 and will invite others. Maybe we can use that as a global bHL? Chris thinks it is a good idea. Or link with next TDWG meeting in Beijing next November. Dr. Cui will confer with Dr. Ma. EOL is going to Beijing July 23-27 2012. Decision must be made by January 30. Coordinate through William. Australia would be happy to host a meeting too, preferably May or September.

• F. Content/Data sharing: What is realistic to expect? How will it work? (Chris Freeland )This is a more technical discussion than philosophical. Does the group agree that we want to share content as widely as possible--YES.
  Copyright: A book published in 1945 is available for scanning in Australia (as long as author is dead). What happens when content is supplied to IA, Alexandria, Woods Hole...etc. Are we the group that can make this decision. The view from the UK is that sharing metadata is fine. The issue is where the master file resides. If it resides in Australia, we need to point at Australian file. Similar issues with French items. Where the master copy is is where the "offense" takes place. This becomes an interesting technical issue. This allows us to provide what we want without copyright issues. But does it work in other jurisdictions. Ely noted that the access copies are in the Internet Archive even though the master copies are in Australia. Tom doesn't see how a US person or corporation could bring suit in a US courtroom for something digitzed in Australia under Australian copyright. Graham noted that taking a slightly conservative approach as described, reduces risk. Ely noted that at the last global meeting we agreed to centralize content. Chris asked what the risk is if the global BHL doesn't exist yet. Graham noted that risk is with the institutions, not gBHL. The organization that enabled the infringement is at risk. NOte the suit brought against Hathitrust and Googlebooks. Cathy noted that if an institution registers then you have some time to take the offending item down (safe harbor). Tom isn't sure safe harbor applies here. Chris noted that if everyone respects copyright in their locality then global content can be shared, metadata can be shared, and there is some content that can't be shared. These are discussions of risk management. There is always human error. We already have a take-down policy and procedures. Tom would like more information about the risks and some specific examples so he can assess the risk. Graham noted that there will be more copies than just the IA. This is a difficult problem to solve but that doesn't mean it can't be done. Tom suggests a short term task force with Tom, Bianca and a few others to address this problem.

• G. Should we have a Global BHL technical meeting in the future? What should the agenda be? (Chris Freeland )
• H. Next steps – what concrete actions will advance access to the biodiversity literature? (William Ulate)

Copyright sharing
more local scanning
more global coordination
metadata cleaning
taxon finder for species names
annotations of books
risk assessment for copyright: ACTION: Sub group established and organized by Tom Garnett
web presence for global BHL to improve collaborations with organizations like GBIF and IPBES--need strategy ACTION: Ely will coordinate GBIF collaboration; Abel will coordinate IPBES contacts
gBHL-CC must establish by-laws: voting, membership, meetings for cc, etc. ACTION: Nancy will be the coordinator.
maintenance of website
date/location of gBHL meeting by Jan 30, 2012 (3 possibilities: Berlin, Beijing, Melbourne)
William should be secretary and engage with partners on bimonthly basis. Each program will send quarterly update to William who will share.
William will update wiki with updates and write blog
Smithsonian will provide a press release about the formation of gBHL.
Technical meeting will be in conjunction with gBHL meeting

• I. Summary, actions items; assignments; closing remarks. (Tom Garnett)

Once by-laws established--where do they go? They should go to the voting members: Ely, Henning, Cathy, Abel, Dr. Cui, Noha
Others can review it. There needs to be a document where we state publicly who are the voting members--the website. ACTION: Chris's teamwill establish this global website as part of Moore funding
It would not be wise to approve by-laws without meeting. Abel noted that we can call this a transitory agreement until next meeting. May need to have these reviewed by legal council. If the by-laws call for structure with officials--will these be elected and should there be an election at next meeting? This points to having an earlier rather than later meeting. Tom expects that the IPR risk assessment will be done before any meeting so it can be reviewed ahead of time. It will be a general document that might lead to selection policies for each member.
Chris noted that there is a lack of contemporary literature in BHL--this is a stumbling point. We need to acknowledge and address this as a group. But how do we do that? The Life and Literature conference is supposed to set the agenda for the future. Let's wait and see what arises in the discussions. Today's meeting is structural. We need to hear from the audience that will be attending.
Any additions to the agenda? Chris noted that he will bring up the issue of copyright in content sharing discussion