October 13, 2009 BHL Executive Committe notes

BHL Executive Committee Conference Call Notes
October 13, 2009

Connie Rinaldo, Tom Garnett, Cathy Norton, Chris, Martin

11 a.m. EDT
Agenda: BHL IC meeting in Nov.
Cathy wondered why New BHL platform on the staff agenda--questions
about search relevancy rankings, how users will interact.
On IC agenda: Global BHL -- new governance configuration? Is the IC
the right body? Do we need in addition to IC, do we need a separate
body or some kind of coordinating group? IC is not set up for
participation of the other projects.
Susan Fraser also requested that we add quality control and the QC
summit reviewed in the IC. Cathy noted that the staff needs to
discuss this too. Tom noted that we should have "recommendations from
the staff workshop". Martin suggested that a staff member present
this live to the IC. Tom will call Susan and discuss then post on the
wiki.

BHL portal beta and Ingest

Chris said that he and Mike will meet today to plan and schedule the
ingest. The last time data was pulled from IA was in July. 2000 non-
BHL volumes added since then. (BHL volumes pulled on a weekly
basis. )Will use the hard drive shifting rather than pulling directly
(it is faster).
Development of drupal front end: (relates to BHL Europe); came away
from last meeting with a clear plan but funding of BHL Europe and the
decision to make the drupal platform the front end of BHL. BHL Europe
moving forward and concerned about doing too much while BHL Europe is
coming up to speed but has delayed us. Our priorities have not been
met. TDWG soon and Rod Page and others leaping on BHL apis, eg,
Tropicos being released with links to BHL this week. Originally
planned to be in production release with Drupal by OCT but now it will
be labeled beta and Chris will hold a TDWG session for discussion--
what does the research community need from BHL. So what will the BHL
site be into January? It will be what it is now. Chris will work
with BHLEurope to come up with a timeline that works with BHL Europe
community. Is BHL Europe going down a different path? Well, it is
unclear. In May we had a completed version of drupal version but BHL
Europe did not see it as fulfilling Europeana requirements. So it has
been reworked from the ground up in BHL Europe but does not take into
account what we are engaging in with science community. Will the de-
duping tools work for all of us? No timeline for delivery of
functioning tools. BHL Europe is not using the bidlist developed at
NHM--they are developing something new. There may be a long-term
solution but no immediate solution. There are language and cultural
issues. Engineering vs. evolution. There will be a discussion with
Graham about some of these issues. The projects may end up more
separate than originally envisioned.

EOL steering committee: Tom talked about new portal describing it as
drupal based and home for community-vetted bibliographies--EOLSC noted
that this is exactly what we need to do. Strong approval....the idea
of a common repository was a home-run. So our funders approve the
direction we are going; also the taxonomic community wants this. We
can't diverge too much from that. Europeana has other mandates and
must work on those.

1. sending content to Europeana and will all be BHL content
2. what will they be sharing with us?

EOL test site operating in China!

European Union wants more than software development for BHL...want a
European project. They are resolving the BHL data redundancy problem--
and that is huge.

3 weeks of intense software development by Chris/Mike for TDWG.
Adrian and Kai will be there and can see the progress. We have to
come to some mutually beneficial agreement--Chris can't put so much
time in if it is not advancing the BHL.

**We will have beta release of drupal front end by Nov 2 then TDWG,
BHL Europe. Then a new timeline with BHL/BHL Europe. Staff using
beta site for ingest analysis but now can move forward.
What will be dropped if go back to pursuing technical work?

Who should Chris consult with? Staff, Technical, Exec, IC? Staff
should provide input and high level decisions made by Execs. Chris
needs flexibility to respond to TDWG, BHL Europe. Cathy also going to
TDWG. Chris has a broad plan that can be the framework plus the
deliverables for BHL Europe and this can be the basis for more
details. He can deliver a more detailed development plan for us (and
BHL Europe) in December.

PLAN: Move on ingest, produce development timeline something to
review for all of BHL and TDWG and based on that, can provide more
detail after input. Use Dec 10 IC call as review with presentation
ahead of time.

Martin noted that doing timeline at technical meeting, and then Exec
and IC approve.



Next call October 27