September 22, 2009 Executive Committee Notes

BHL Executive Conference Call Notes
September 23, 2009

Tom Garnett, Martin Kalfatovic, Connie Rinaldo, Cathy Norton, Chris Freeland, Graham Higley

1. Moore Foundation submission has a short time frame--please get comments to
Tom immediately. Chris noted that the budget has been re-formatted, using percentages of time with dollar figures. Tom will send with the final draft of the narrative this afternoon. Chris asked what happens if we get the funding? Money would come to MOBOT and how will the project manager's salary be distributed. Mike Blomberg and Lucy Fisher, from the library, will have percentages of their time as project manager and share the work. If we get the Moore funding, Chris's salary is covered for 2 years and so the MacArthur award money can be redistributed. Chris and Tom are hoping to meet with Jim Omura and Chris Mentzel from Moore at Moore Foundation when we are all at
San Francisco. More exploration of funding. Chris M. should be invited to a global BHL meeting to cement the BHL relationship if possible.

2. Tom noted that Chinese Academy of Sciences made some minor edits to MOU. Christian Samper will sign it and it will go back to China. Tom will ask about a technical meeting as next steps. CAS is also working on another MOU with Internet Archive for digitization. IA will set up a scanning center in China and then we can ingest content.


3. Knowledge Commons (Maura Marx) has submitted discipline-specific (medicine) grant to Moore called, “The Medical Heritage Library.” They will be using BHL tools like de-duping. BHL Europe is improving de-duping tool at the global level in work package 2. Will need to be sure that Maura Marx connects with BHL-Europe.

4. Chris noted that he and Kai Stalman (BHL-Europe developer) and Adrian Smales will have a regular Skype call. Moore-funded project manager will maintain a BHL-wide calendar of events including tasks and timelines.

5. Tom has been in contact with BIREME, http://www.bireme.br/local/Site/bireme/I/homepage.htm, The Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences, which has a major digital biological journal program about establishing a Latin American BHL. CRIA, http://www.cria.org.br/, (Reference Center on Environmental Information) is another Latin American group that may be interested. BRIME wants to have a workshop soon for a Latin American BHL. Tom suggested we should have them send one observer to the November BHL-Europe meeting. Graham suggested that Tom speak with Henning.

6. Graham has been working with Europeana to get all BHL content metadata into Europeana in early 2010. First stage is to mirror BHL data in UK. What is an item--page, chapter etc. is work that Kai has been doing.

7. Darwin's Library project has been funded by JISC and NEH with Darwin scholar, David Kohn, as PI: scanning and digitization and enhancement of books from Darwin’s own library. This project will fund work to make annotation viewable in the BHL for these texts. Jane Smith is delegating the workload formerly held by Bernard. This is a phase 1 project that will lead to stage 2. Some digitization mostly at Cambridge U and NHM with a little by AMNH. New money is available for NHM to work on this. Chris noted that there is a meeting in October to select books for phase 1 of the project. They will use BHL de-duping tools. Some of the items of interest that do not make it into their scanning pool may be useful selections for BHL. Graham has a new boutique scanning unit in the budget submission. Cathy noted that she has been awarded a capital amount for a boutique scanner. Martin noted that Smithsonian has priced out a boutique scanner. It would be good to use similar platforms.

8. Chris asked what we thought about the illustrated changes in BHL with ingest--he sent some interesting figures. Tom noted that there is a lot of discussion about ingestion among the wiki readers. This will be at the top of the agenda for the next BHL Executive Committee conference call so that we can move forward to take advantage of this opportunity to increase the holdings available through the BHL.

9. Martin suggested that there be some jobs for the Deputy Director. Martin will help with weekly updates/dissemination of information. Martin noted that he and Nancy Gwinn have been in discussions with the World Digital Library. He suggested that BHL should be involved at some point. Cathy thinks that the Deputy Director should make a global calendar for meetings that we are all attending. Martin will talk with Chris about this.

ACTION ITEMS: All send comments to Tom regarding Moore submission.
Tom/Chris arrange to meet with Moore in San Francisco
Tom will invite Chris Mentzel to global BHL meeting
Tom should ensure that Maura Marx knows about BHL-Europe involvement in de-duping
Tom will talk to Henning about inviting someone from BIREME to attend the November BHL-Europe meeting.
Martin will help Tom with weekly updates
Martin and Chris will coordinate on the global calendar.

NEXT Conference Call: October 7 at 11 AM EDT