September 25, 2007 BHL Executive Committee Notes

Biodiversity Heritage Library September 25, 2007 Exec Committee

Graham: Natural History Museum of Malaysia: interested to have all the literature on the taxonomy of Malayasia scanned; pilot of $25,000 (roughly 700 volumes) for scanning may be possible: Dr. Frances Ng; NHM probably has the best collection for this area. Great model! Contract establisher should be the BHL office (Tom). Feeds the international model. Graham has a meeting with Hans Walter Lack (retired from Berlin Botanical Garden). Impact on picklist because they may do all the German language material. Bratislava: TDWG, presented about BHL and there were some questions about EOL but not too challenging. Universal approbation and delight for the BHL Key2Nature project has been funded --building open source key technology (school kids); providing a whole range of components for different classes of users with mediation by professionals: TDWG discussions identified unfulfilled needs: no central metadata stored for images in natural history, need a metadata repository; also need single sign-ons to do editing within various systems. May be some deliverable products within the various funded projects now around that will overlap. Should fund Chris Freeland to come to Berlin to meet with some of these developers to identify places where we can work together and what we need to build independently. Cathy suggested that David Remson be involved.Quentin Wheeler at Arizona is using a Fedora platform for a biodiversity site. Using Fedora seems to get a positive response.
Graham put Rich Pyle (BBC) in touch with Jim Edwards. Lots of video and stills of a new charismatic fish. Will be published in Zootaxa and first registration in Zoobank. Link back to BBC as a completely electronic species and will be part of the 3 programme TV series. BBC is excited and this means good publicity.

Tricked out EOL pages: Graham will write to Sarah and note that BHL is agnostic but the species choices should be ones that the BHL has literature to digitize for linking.

Cathy: PR event at Boston Public Library; BLC and BHL; Judy Warnement from Harvard attended. Doran Weber came from Sloane Foundation--very excited about the BLC using own money to digitize first wave; Sloane is interested in more digitization; BLC and BHL are seen as leaders. Boston Public Library is investing in this center for digitization. Will build glass walls so that people can observe without going in and out. How can we get Library of Congress to move more quickly? Cathy will send out press release re BPL/ that can be tailored for BHL.

Tom: Chris drafted Moore proposal--Tom edited and added. Don't have the IA narrative, yet. Chris will submit good proposal for funding BHL/Fedora; new tech position discussions: need to be sure that the position is a collaborative one.
Fruitful conference call with 3 botanical librarians to be sure focus and concerns are represented at MOBOT meeting of international botanists regarding EOL pages.

Christie will follow-up on OCR/IMLS possibility.

Cathy talked to Doran about data mining and OCR--Doran agreed that it needs to be tackled.

New information on scheduling of EOL in Feb: dates Feb: 26/27 in California; architecture meeting will probably occur right after this meeting (Boston?--Connie will work on space as soon as we have dates). Need high speed internet connections, at least 2. Harvard Club? Can we set up a router?

Signed MOU from everyone except AMNH (with counsel).

Open Content Alliance meeting in San Francisco (BHL meeting Tuesday afternoon; Tech meeting Thursday morning).

IA software is blocking post 1923 and foldouts still not resolved. copyright field can be solved but not solved yet. Need to resolve these issues!

NYBG has checked out the IA scanning center at NYPL and are moving ahead.

Architecture meeting: Tom will pursue outside consultant from Fedora

Oct 2 is next conference call 11 am EST.