StaffCallMeetingNotes_10202010
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Agenda
BHL Staff Call 10/20/10
Attendees:
Bianca, Grace, Suzanne (SIL)
Michelle, Trish, Chris F. (MOBOT)
Jane (NHM)
Matt P. (MBLWHOI)
John M. (NYBG)
Becky (CA)
Diana D. (Field)
Diana S., Matthew B. (AMNH)
Chris C., Joe (MCZ)
CiteBank and other updates from Chris F.
Chris reported on the London meeting for the Darwin Library Project that will digitize and pull together about 150 heavily annotated volumes from Charles Darwin’s personal library. AMNH and NHM reached agreement on what the user interface will be. Chris will send out a design document to the BHL listserv shortly.
Chris pointed out that this is an example of how titles may be pulled together thematically to create a collection. It will be possible to create similar thematic collections in the BHL portal by pulling together groups of titles or items via the admin site.
Chris reported that BHL is moving forward with CrossRef membership and implementation of DOIs. This will be less expensive than previously thought with the cost at $0.15/DOI. Membership will be through the Smithsonian and should be in effect by the end of the year. DOIs may be assigned at any level, i.e., journal, article, page, figure on page, sentence, or word.
Chris reported on an ongoing daily problem with the use of the PDF generator. A single user is creating PDFs in 100 page chunks, and emailing them to him/herself, greatly slowing down or effectively blocking access to the system. The decision was made to cut off the user, explaining the reason to them and asking that they contact us. It will be pointed out that an entire book may be downloaded from the portal without resorting to the PDF generator.
Much progress has been made with CiteBank. Chris reports that automated ingest and better features for manual upload have been developed. Two new staff members are on hand at MOBOT to facilitate implementation of CiteBank:
David Heskett – developer
Trish Rose-Sandler – documentation and data loading
Can now retrieve data from any OAI provider such as dSpace or contemporary publications like ZooKeys and SciElo, as well as “orange bag” contributions. Automated ingest is now possible after metadata retrieval and a one-time setup.
The goal is to facilitate publisher self-service, i.e., development of a utility that will allow publishers to map their metadata to BHL.
CiteBank to be in production 12/1/2010. At that time, books and article-ized content in BHL will be available via CiteBank.
Call for 5 users to be data testers. Scour CiteBank and document thoughts and impressions. What’s needed for Dec. 1 launch? E-mail Chris if you’d like to volunteer. A 2nd test set will involve scientists and users.
Scanlist updates
Wolfgang has implemented functionality that allows libraries to export a .csv report of their bids. Bianca is in touch with Wolfgang about various issues such as the filtering functionality, which is confusing, and the inability to export bids for ingested content.
E-mail Bianca with any requests for improvements to the export function.
GRIB
At the Global Tech Meeting in Woods Hole (9/22 – 9/24/10), a group was formed to take a look at the current GRIB prototype and provide feedback to Boris Jacob of the Museum fur Naturkunde. Boris is meeting with the developers on 10/25. Boris sent out a document that Bianca distributed to the group on 10/19. Bianca created a wiki page for the group to provide comments and questions.
SIL is sending their picklists (comprehensive list of all SIL material scanned or to be scanned) to populate GRIB with their items.
GRIB is scheduled for production in 4/2011.
IMLS update
Becky gave an update on the IMLS field notebook grant. The money has not yet been received. In the meantime, Cal Academy is in the process of organizing things legally and administratively for distribution of the money, which should commence after the 11/10/10 IMLS conference call.
IC/EC news
Chris mentioned 2 upcoming trips:
Austria – Connie and ? attending from US for Best Practice meeting
China – Martin, Keri, and Chris F. traveling to China to help with scanning, WonderFetch, getting content into the BHL portal, and setting up a mirror site.
DFG and NEH joint funding for cultural heritage material. Might possibly provide funding for BHL US participants to participate in BHL Europe activities.
Cookbook update
Suzanne urged everyone to contribute to the Cookbook, preferably before the Austria Best Practice meeting (11/8 – 11/9/10). Simply write down what you do.
Gemini Requests updates
Bianca and Grace are currently working through the request backlog, as well as creating requests based on the core list of titles. BHL partners are fulfilling the requests where possible.
Collections group
Conference calls held every Monday. The group recently released a Collections Diagram to help visualize an ideal picture of BHL core collections using LC subject headings. The diagram has been posted to the wiki. Please send feedback to Bianca for the Committee to review.
The group is preparing recommendations for the next scanning phase to begin 11/1/10. To prioritize on the institutional level, each partner is asked to search Gemini under their name to see what they need to scan and then prioritize. The Collections Committee may provide some suggestions on prioritization of titles.
Portal editing updates
BHL is now in WorldCat. Becky volunteered to edit the name that appears in the WorldCat registry [currently as: BIODIVERSITY HERITAGE LIBR-SMITHSONIAN] to clarify that BHL is a digital, as opposed to a physical, library.
Mike has added title association field selections (770, 772, 775, 777, and 787) to the drop-down menu in portal admin so that these may be added to MARC records.
The MARC display has been removed from the portal. A MODS display and a detailed display generated from the MODS record are now available. This was done because the MODS/detailed display are dynamic – updated bibliographic information is displayed. The old MARC display was static – it showed the record as it was upon import with changes not reflected. The MARC record, however, is still accessible via the admin dashboard and in the IA records. MODS records can be exported.
Some refinements, such as cleaning up certain items from the detailed display, are needed. Rose will send requests to Mike to see what can be done.
Establish call calendar for the next few months
Suzanne will put up a call-hosting sign-up list on the wiki.
Video conferencing
Skype cannot be used for video conferencing as it provides for only point-to-point meetings. Looking for multiple point conferencing. MOBOT uses Koala open-source video conferencing software (
http://evo.caltech.edu).
End of call miscellany
Bianca reported that for the next phase of scanning, direct upload to IA for in-house scanning is being implemented.
Bianca asked if there is any previously scanned content that partners might have that they’d like added to BHL. An early list of possibilities may be found on the page
Affiliated Digital Projects on the public-facing wiki.