September 23, 2008 BHL Executive Committee Notes

BHL Executive Committee Call September 23, 2008

1. Strategic Planning

Should have a plan for BHL. The Execs should think about the components: sustainability, stewardship: both have a financial component. We agree that we should begin the process of developing a strategic plan. This process will take many months of work by the Institutional Council. This plan should move us into the next 10 years--post grant.

Tom, Cathy and Graham will develop a process during the meeting in Woods Hole next week. Connie will be on the phone.

We also need to develop a plan for the next proposal to MacArthur that shows how the BHL is integral to the other components of EOL.

2. Workflow meeting coming together well. Tom needs to send out a letter of invitation to all who will be funded so the invitees can begin planning.

3. Chris noted that the first BHL export of metadata has been pushed out and Rod Page is reviewing it. Tom talked about bibliographies available from Fishbase and Decapod community. With Fishbase analysis, the full citations are not available. It seems that the data is imprecise. The level of granularity needed to match citations may not exist in these databases. These lists in principle, can help us think more systematically about what we digitize and by annotating them, we can communicate with the taxonomists. Connie noted that Joe deVeer found this way of selecting extremely useful and very efficient. Chris will be asking around at TDWG for other bibliographies. There is a lot of material that is post-1923 and article-based.

There are some new thoughts on a model for articles on the portal. FEDORA has been implemented as an article repository--well-developed software and collaboration. BHL wants complete runs but not necessarily possible. A separate article repository on FEDORA on a youtube model. Articles can be deposited by scientific community. We can offer a place to deposit with the taxonomic community depositing the articles. EFF lawyers thinks this is legally ok. BHL can't create and upload but we can provide a safe harbor environment and if copyright holders object, we can remove. Access open to the world. Deposit is only open to vetted community. We have explicit policies that we are asserting no copyright and if infringement, we will take it down. So BHL can continue scanning full runs but also opens the door to harness the work that has been already done by the greater taxonomic community. If we provide teh legal and technical infrastructure then the scientists can aggregate the content they want.

Chris noted some criticism from Jesse Ausobel at EOL informatics meeting: Launching from EOL into the mass of BHL is confusing. The protologues and original descriptions are our strength, The data mining using taxonomic intelligence needs more work and research.

4. Presentation to EOL steering committee meeting with a very specific format. Chris and Tom will revise based on feedback. Please send comments. Too text intensive, use bullet points and expand in talk.

Next call: October 7 at 11 AM EST, 10 AM CST, 4 PM GMT.