StaffCallMeetingNotes_09162010

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BHL Staff Call Notes

Attendees: Trish, Suz, Grace, Erin, Bianca, Keri, Diana S., Matthew B., Chris C., Joe, Michelle, Diane, John M., Becky,

Becky working on new video conf system at Cal Acad, InterCall has VTC capability, anyone else?

Welcome Trish!
Trish: Data Analyst specifically for BHL, to assist with getting metadata into BHL system from contributors, actual files manually or automated, address file/metadata clean-up needs. Background -- UC San Diego, Metadata librarian for over 7 years. Hired for Mellon-funded project UCAI http://gort.ucsd.edu/ucai/ - prototype for sharing art image metadta. When project ended moved in perm position working with a broader range of digital objects (images, video, audio, text).

Round Robin:
AMNH (Diana S., Matthew B.): fulfilling Gemini issues (sending to NJ), Matt supervising volunteer working post cart return quality review. QA individual books. Lists of items that need work. Skipped pages etc. Biggest issue – early carts variability machine to machine amount of light. Some reading okay but weird gray background. Does not effect OCR but weird hard to read.
MCZ (Joe, Chris C.): still waiting for shipment to return from scanning center, next shipment ready, last ship ment that was QA failed carts. Missing pages and cropped text. Effected items only sent back. Katy M. is helping a lot with filling Gemini and prep shipment and QA. Chris paginating, updating and normalizing local records
SIL(Grace, Erin, Keri): a lot of Gemini requests, sending 50 books/wk, QA on all shipments - things have been good, Keri has new camera for new scanning workflow, namely for folios and other oversized materials, main pieces of software finished but still in testing, not quite able to pipe to IA yet but soon
MOBOT (Michelle): Mostly Gemini requests and gap-filling
MBLWHOI (Diane): Matt Person is usually the call – Acting Director right now; had summer person who did some pagination work but she's leaving at end of the month, scanning non bhl – oceanography through another consortium, to start scanning after the 1st of the year, to be doing gap-filling, Gemini requests, and rejects, through private funding to scan large maps (either in-house or contractor) and scan rest of book through IA and have maps stitched in, hosting BHL Global Tech mtg
Cal Acad (Becky): Solo Librarian on staff – archivist & Para staff also on staff. Searching for a Lib Director; one of BHL's newer members; not yet doing large scale scanning, doing gap-fills via FedEx, involved in grant writing for field notebooks; to get $ with next scanning allocation
NYBG (Don): It's been quiet, just got final shipment back, Don fielding Gemini requests, Kevin doing some gap-fills, NO orange bag items sent recently to MOBOT, Gearing up of year three of the global plant intiative.

IMLS update: to hear any day now…some minor adjustments to budget were made (NSF new digitization grants announced), to participate via Skype in Fieldbooks Registry Project through CLIR

IC/EC news: crickets…China is the theme

Cookbook: need to get cracking on it! Suzanne to call and IV people to get the process going; BHL-E writing some best practices and looking to BHL for some tips. Cookbook not necessarily best practices, just a document of what we've actually done. For internal purposes? yes, for partners, people who want "company information", document of "institutional knowledge". Would be great for new employees, esp. Trish! Bianca talked to CUA digital library students all about BHL, paper to come soon, Bianca to share. Trish to send questions to BHL staff list. Digital Specification – many documents on wiki need to be reconciled and made into two pages. 2 diff purposes of image for digitization specifications 1) image and metadata specifications for content contributers (Mike L.) 2) public documentation on existing scans, IA specs summary, MOBOT specs (to serve for digital masters for OCLC)

Feedback email update: new automated email now includes feedback that users submitted.

Requests update: Bianca took some stats a couple of hours ago. Grace has been doing work making them change! :-) Requests: 569 to date. New form was launched in mid June. Solved 100+ and 344 are in progress. Bianca and Grace working on some. 122 requests still to go that need to be looked at and assigned. 85 new requests since last call. Average 2 to 3 a day. Seems great. The first month had a giant spike. New launch = the ability to mark requests as <component> "Rare" (vs. regular workflow requests). Collections committee found “rare” definition not quite right. Special Handling is more applicable. More general. Oversized as a different qualification. Maybe done by next allocations are out to help with prioritize. Oversized, special handling, are more costly to address - to hold off for later. Rare requested so far = 147.
rare/special handling/oversized - being able to count these can help the IC go for funding, not just 147 items - really TITLES, i.e. there's a lot more rare stuff that needs to be calculated. Diane and Becky Monday 2 eastern collection call to talk about taking forward the rare / special handling issues Gemini tracking to take to IC for special fund needs.

Collections Group Update: Bianca – collection is working away – completing a visual diagram on subject matter. Priority on zoology and botany lists. Next prioritizing the priorities. How do we decide what to do. Permission are included. Diane permission is interested.

Review last mtg
Scanlist: NYBG has requested a report to summarize their bids; Request for volunteers - Joe, Grace, Matt, Don?, Michelle, Diana S., Suzanne, Erin T., Diana D.?
F2F mtg?: There's no BHL money. Any other way for us to meet? VTC?

Next mtg: to be hosted by MCZ, Chris C. to be the cat wrangler