November 4, 2009 IC Meeting

Institutional Council Meeting

November 4, 2009

Attending:

• Tom Garnett
• Judy Warnement
• Christine Giannoni
• Cathy Norton
• Doug Holland
• Danianne Mizzy
• Christopher Mills
• Nancy Gwinn
• Don Wheeler
• Larry Currie
• Tom Baione
• Chris Freeland
• Martin Kalfatovic
• Connie Rinaldo (Phone)

Introductions and Welcome (Cathy Norton)

Round robin introduction for new members.

Administration Updates (Tom Garnett)

• Hired the new collections manager (Bianca Lipscomb)
• Review of EOL/BHL for the next phase involved a report that was well-received by MacArthur and Sloan
• BHL is becoming increasinlgy globalized. BHL is a demontration project for a varietyof other projects and galvanized interest in biodiversity literature around the world. A snapshot of what's going on now includes the successful eContentPlusprogram of the EU for the creation of a BHL Europe. funding was for 3.6 million Euros and will focus on software and tools deveolpment. Just last week, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) signed an MOU with BHL to form a BHL China. The CAS has formed a group of various parts of the CAS to oversee the BHL China and EOL China.
• Tom has also been in touch with a Brazilian organizations BIEREME. An informational mmeeting will be held in Egypt in December to explore a BHL Arab World.

Welcome by Cristian Samper

Thanked the participaing library and staff for their work. CS also offered to work with the parent institutions of BHL member libraries to work for getting more support for BHL (both internally and externally). He also asked about South America and the status of discussions there.

Project Updates (Chris Freeland)

Chris Freeland gave an update of the project for Jan-September 2009. See presentation the wiki.

Summary Report and Discussion of BHL Staff Meeting (Bianca Lipscomb)

• PowerPoint will be available on the wiki
• Gemini. Overview of the Gemini software tool used to track BHL issues and questions. Raised specific questions related to continual maintenance, reporting statistics, and funding/support needs.TG asked if there was a way to measure resource needs that could be used to generate funding requests. General discussion of issues around Gemini.
• Gap-fill Piggy Bank. The BHL staff recommended that a fund be set aside so that libraries that may not be scanning at this point in time can fund ad hoc scanning. The IC was generally positive to this idea; TG asked Bianca to go back to the group and work out the details and come back with a proposal. - tgarnett Nov 8, 2009How to administer this excellent idea is unclear. Do libraries submit invoices to me? These invoices for the subawards or separate from them?
• Pagination. Pointed out the importance of pagination to the usefulness of BHL; it also sets BHL apart from other mass digitization efforts and is crucial to research. BHL does have a method to do pagination. What does the IC feel about the prioritization of pagination in relation to other tasks?
• Ingest issues. BHL staff feel that the BHL should be able to delete any content that we ingest. IC had no problem with that.
• Quality Assurance. All future funding requests should include not only direct scanning costs but all associated costs.The idea of having a "roving technician" that would work on QA (either at the participating libraries or perhaps housed at an IA facility). Will be discussed further.
• Successful Meeting! Many items were assigned to the technology group; many action items are shared among the group Felt there should be more regular (at least one a year or preferably bi-annual) meetings.
• Recommendations.. CN requested that the points be summarized and given to TG to evaluate for possible funding.
• BHL Staff meeting Action items. Please also see the Action Items from the meeting.

Report on BHL Financae and Current fund-raising.

Finances (Tom Garnett)

• Scanning & Digitization Component Cost Projections: submitted to EOL?; already covered in emails; original plan = funded for 2 years for 3 million, BUT only 2.8+ million available now over 3 years; EOL requirement for a sustainability plan prompted use of MacArthur money over 3 years; scanning $ as only variable for additional year stretch;
• BHL Grant Budget & Expenses xls: translated from submitted budget
  • 2nd year money not completely spent and has been carried over into 3rd year
  • Travel & Meetings and Contingency Funds to be actualized soon after reimbursements sent
  • Concern that by year 5 there is no $ for salary or scanning -- suggestion to defer discussion on budget to March mtg; too many variables re: Moore funding
  • Importance of discussing the budget F2F
  • Helpful before March:
    • put $ on recommendations from staffing group; prioritize recommendations; Bianca to compile Staff recommendations for prioritization and funding considerations
    • 5th yr expenses
    • what's available for reallocation
    • Tom to send out a Doodle to schedule March meeting soon
• In-kind donations from the group: MK has best format for template; Tom to send out and have folks re-submit calculations
  • Action Item: By December 1st fill out in-kind template
• Fund-raising: Moore grant has been submitted; invited to submit proposal to BREC -- group of computer scientists and bioinformaticists to encourage data-mining projects that work with BHL data and conference to be held, also funding for a metadata editor
• IMLS update (Kathy Warnement): what IMLS will fund vs. what we do, need to still put together questions as a result of the meeting to send out and reassess; what we actually want to do we won't be able to do; write what it is we want to do and then find funders that can sufficiently fund our efforts; goal to develop a portable model for scanning special collections; consulted with Boston group that gave $2/page cost; IMLS leadership grant is round hole to round-hole needs of scanning BHL special collections; goal to develop metrics; Connie and Judy to outline final report; study of institutional collections contents to be completed
• Field notebooks plan: discussions before SF meetings, next step: form group for next development stage, Feb 1 deadline, anyone interested in going forward Becky is point person from which group will organize; content to be incorporated in BHL; part of funding would be for technical development; background = CLIR proposal submitted by Rusty Russell to create registries and inventories of field notebooks - he should be included as a component in this discussion; JW to look at RR's CLIR grant
• (Tom Baione): NEH grant for images; Risk assessment grant; CLIR grant for archives, to process library archive materials, non-print
• FM (Christine Giannoni): NEH grant to get autobon journals published
• NYBG (Don Wheeler): IMLS to fund X; ongoing Mellon grant for LAPI materials, to be ingested into BHL; CLIR grant in for archives as a component for collection development, same as AMNH
• Kew: Mellon funds to make African letters, Latin letters, other letters avaiable in JSTOR
• Doug: Trio grant pays for scanner for 1/2 a year; Engleman IMLS grant to scan Engleman specimens and literature (to go into BHL)
• Nancy: going to "own" resources to continue staff salaries; not putting in for scanning; potential for Adobe funding for BHL via MK + CF
• Cathy: still working on improving taxonomic intelligence, working with GBIF
• TG: Cristian is willing to consult with private donors re: BHL funding needs; TG to send out collections analysis numbers to create compelling case for Cristian and thus private donors
• Ellinor Michel's email on electronic publication (CN): BHL has oar in this water, electronic publication would suffice but it wouldn't have to be in a paper journal; we could propose that BHL would be deposit library for the electronic publications, our libraries in business to sustain natural heritage so we should be the ones to take responsibility for this role; NG: debate over issue based on emotion not technology; TG: folks soliciting our views on acceptability of electronic publication for new species; whether or not it's going to be accepted, we can propose that it should be deposited in the BHL; CR: concerns over preservation status of BHL; today we are not a trusted digital repository but we will grow into that, if we have the support of these big organizations ICZN, etc. it becomes an extremely big push for funding; MK: need for more immediate preservation plan; NG: our stance is that we support moving to electronic, institutions should archive publications; as secondary statement BHL would become the repository; MK: suggestion to pursue demo via CiteBank to DOI within ; TG: we need internal document that states BHL position by January 15, Rich Pyle wants us to do this - we want to move in the direction of being a trusted digital repository to support electronic publishing movement; DM: LOCKSS box model for nomenclature
  • Action Item: Creation of internal document stating BHL position on creating secure repository for born-digital publications in support of burgeoning electronic publishing models - tgarnett Nov 8, 2009 My understanding was different. It was specifically the BHL serving as repository of record for ICZN and ICBN for publications describing new species; not a general-purpose born-digital publication repository. - ConnieR Nov 8, 2009My memory matches that of Tom. This is specifically for new species descriptions.
  • *** Who: Nancy, Doug, Tom B., Connie R., Tom G.
    • Due: Jan 15 - tgarnett Nov 8, 2009It is unlikely I will meet this deadline, which I agreed to in the meeting.

TL2 (Chris Mills): IAPT owns copyright for TL2, IAPT interested in allowing BHL to scan; issues surrounding ownership of copyright for electronic version - Dutch publishers BRILL digitized TL2 but it is not clear who owns copyright, BRILL or IAPT, 10,000 pages, 30,000 works, Larry Dorr working from archives at NYBG w/ Dan Nicholson complied A-E; BRILLs quality not the best, recommendation is to re-scan TL2 anyway; subscription cost issues - seen as modest $ to lose b/c benefit would outweigh; IDC did scanning originally, has TL2 microfilm collection; TL2 as bridge to special collections; Larry Dorr is key player in potential work; need for TL2 vision...

• Chris Freeland, Judy, Chris M., Doug w/ Larry Dorr, Cathy Norton to work together to submit vision grant

Reference tool for BHL: Becky, Connie and Tom B. as reference staff

Transparency Issues (TG)

• How do we communicate/transparency of communication
  • TG's weekly IC report
  • issues with conference calls
  • the wiki is overwhelming
  • communication components of strategic plan -- need to think of procedures for communication, not just goals
  • BHL folks need to arrange to meet F2F whenever their in town

• Roles
  • of the IC
  • Staff Roles
  • Technical Team Roles
  • me: to liaison b/w Staff and IC? -- executive summary w/ deadlines; consider Technical Development priorities and the push and pull on their time from top-down and bottom-up; "staff decide by consensus and report decisions to IC for approval"
  • EC <==> IC communications

Discussion to continue tomorrow.