NOTES 9/25/07

 

Tom Clareson

Laura Blanchard

John Barnett

Dan Iddings

Bob Kieft

Katherine Skinner

 

 

 

 

2. Beginnings of outline for 10/22 agenda [I've put in times with no provision for breaks and/or Q&A].

 

Coffee: 10:00 a.m.

intro everyone (Bob/Tom) [Panelists report on their topics now or later?] [John thinks you guys are right--better to save this until the session is opened up. Bob and Tom concede being right.]	10:35
agenda review, review background docs, and intro grant and purposes of these meetings discuss parameters of our work, with emphasis on audiences and list of kinds of sources to be digitized from grant text (RHK has a short version of Cole's short version); identify partner orgs and planning comm.  (Bob)	10:45
Context setting (PA Advisory Council, ist other projects, and digitization overall; info on statewide digitzation projects elsewhere and what has been done in PA so far--Historic Pitt, ContentDM, Statewide Resource Partners work on newspapers etc.,  with show and tel (Tom)l	11:00
[Laura again -- maybe there could be some advisory board participation at this point so that the meeting becomes more interactive. Some talk about topics here before we go into an hour of briefing? Bob thinks that by encouraging questions we can accpmplish this]
Katherine presents GA and other projects she has worked on	11:20
Lunch	12:00
Begin discussions	12:30
Afternoon session	What subjects? What do audiences want? What do you use now in online archives that works/doesn't work?   Bring and discuss a list of archives or subjects/types you'd see as priorities for digitization (e.g., newspapers)

Wrapup, process review, next steps, what to do between meetings; intro online work space;  look at calendar for next weetings

Output from meeting: Meeting report and outline of topic areas, collections, audiences to form basis for next discussion

 

Some very raw notes

 

Katherine (sorry -- I had trouble wtih Katherine's consonants (Oh goodness! Have I gone that "Southern" or is my phone connection that bad? -K) (No, I'm a little deaf in the frequencies of some women's voices-L. ) and I'm not familiar with her projects, so this surely contains some howlers) – short form of projects she's been involved in. American South Project (Emory University 2000-2003) which was basis for other Mellon funded projects. Music for Social Change. MetaArchive. MetaArchive is a distributed digital preservation network. UGA, GA tech, Va tech, Univ Louisville, Auburn, Emory. Part of LOC NDIIPP program. Nodes replicate content at geographically distributed locations. A network that was collection based -- this helped with buy-in from institutions. Spent much of first year defining southern digital culture – what that means. What formats to allow in, issues of format migration. Big subject and format oriented project. This followed on American South project, which sought to define that southern subject area. Part of OAI project. Music of Social Change – created tool that could take metadata records save as tab delimited files etc and enter into system they designed that maps fields directly into Dublin Core. Very small orgs can support creating Dublin core records without having a big technical infrastructure. An open source tool they'd be happy to share. (Tom says look at those in metadata and technical committees.) Talk about a collection development policy as opposed to an agnostic acceptance of whatever folks digitize. Want discussion of how they arrived at areas they wanted to preserve/digitize. Risk factors are another thing… items that are at risk, how do you define that, criteria for preservation.

 

Dan would like her to talk about how the collections are being used now that they're created – some anecdotal will be fine. [MetaArchives is dark.]

 

Break for Lunch ca 12:30 – begin discussions ca 1:00

 

• Work – how do we connect the interests of these panelists with digitized materials; how they know they are already used. Or do we give them a "menu" of kinds of materials and let them react.
• What subjects? What do audiences want? What do you use now in online archives that works
• Here are kinds of materials – classes of materials, graphic, recorded materials. What kinds of things within these classes will audience find attractive to use?
• Tickle them between meetings with specific prompts (look at this list, make comments)

 

Best way to create structure for them to put in opinions?

 

How about audience types and within that kinds of materials would be useful? Or vice versa?

 

For SouthComb  they had them assemble a list of the major archives. Second list was prioritization of subjects and, within them, specific collections. They then concentrated on the places where those interests converge.

 

They used grad students spend a summer working to survey the terrain to see what are the best collections/URLs. They call it the Southern Conspectus Database http://southconspectus.library.emory.edu/. The panel then looked at and analyzed the data. [From Katherine's email: At Emory, it's being used to help us make decisions about which of our own collections should be prioritized for digitization (based on what's missing from the big picture that Molly canvased in the conspectus).

 

In the SouthComb project  (our Mellon-funded portal project), we've used this to establish what collections are out there, who to contact to see if they have OAI providers and want to participate in our service, and what collections we might want to havest via web-crawl (collections w/o OAI providers). We've also used it with our Advisory Board to help them get an idea of what (broadly) is available in the digital world so that they could point out to us what big collections and big subject areas are missing. From there, we've started approaching institutions with those collections to see if they have an interest in pursuing a digitization grant.]

 

We might want to cover CONTENTdm.

 

What about a questionnaire to institutions?

 

 

This project builds on work underway. Tom could look at Historic Pittsburgh and the State Library sites to get us thinking about Pennsylvania. Also Lancaster County Historical. Also, what is available commercially – and big worry about the ones who buy up and then embargo. Give a better idea of what parts of the market are being served by commercial products already.

 

Ask about sources they use and whether they meet their needs.

 

Send them the list of 20 or some subject areas

 

Next steps: Planning group produces meeting minutes, shapes outline

 

A Panelist workspace? New resource called "commentpress" – look at it – also basecamp

 

 

Send out materials to panel by 10/8.

 

Bob will have sidebar with Tom C. about questionnaire.