8/29/11

Staff Development Committee Notes August 25

Staff Development Committee Conference Call Notes on August 25, 2011

1. Welcome to our new committee member, Chris Casey from Denison!

2. Review of Summer Institute 2011
  • Overall positive feedback!
  • Some things to keep in mind for the next event, add moderator for panels etc
3. Review of DRC Admin Training
  • Funded by Staff Development Committee but organized by TIC, great training
4. Technical Services Fall Workshop
  • Came out from directors' meeting
  • Possible date/time Denison on October 17th- will confirm next week
  • Kenyon and Denison are sharing technical service. Schools will take this opportunity to look at more ways to work collaboratively, learn new trends, have conversation and share best practice in cataloging; As several OWU technical service people have retried, they might be able to work with other schools and figure out ways to collaborate; Technical service staff from all schools are encouraged to attend.
  • OWU folks like the format of "Reorganize staff and work" of Summer Institute ( open discussion )
  • Planning will continue after committee members have spoken to Tech Services staff about what they want to see and what will be useful
5. Advanced Digital Imaging workshop for TIC
  • color correction, preservation etc
  • staff dev will fund the workshop
6. Assessment
  • start thinking about how we will do this
  • remind staff that there is a survey set up for students to take
  • faculty input
  • we have good assessment evidence ( staff dev events feedback etc), will help other folks to put together the assessment.
7. Faculty Workshops
  • start thinking about it
  • do we fund them to go to external outlets or internal ones?
  • Food for thoughts: bring IT folks to talk about pedagogical tools, workshop + lunch bag
  • Identify local needs, set aside money for each school to meet the needs of faculty
  • Carol suggests Ray to come to talk about OA at OWU.
  • Denison will possibly hold faculty workshop that shows off thier digitization tools and talks about digital projects
  • Will start with OWU and Denison, then evaulate before having workshops at the other campuses

8. Other webinars, conferences, etc we should know about?
GLCA

TIC meeting notes August 18th

Technical Infrastructure Committee meeting at Oberlin August 18th, 2011

Project updates
Members need to update our project info sheets - images are in there, if we need to update them.
Denison: Costume Collection- coming along nicely, it's almost ready to go; Looking Back Looking Forward- cleaning up metadata; Writing our Story- waiting on transcripts for; Herbarium- is in test and will be harvested into Production; have some journal projects coming.
Kenyon: Things are moving along - the test instance slowness issues have caused some delays, so we're a little behind.
Oberlin: King-Crane- in ContentDM; Geological Images- currently have photo cds, and are using software to extract the tifs; Shansi- coming along really well; Paleantology is having work done by a student over the summer; Borges- faculty member is working on rights; Music for Children- faculty is studying clips; Artist Books- going to happen in the fall once they get a book scanner; Anthropology- lot of work done this summer taking a relational database in MySQL and mapped it to ContentDM.; Musical Iconography- thinking of using the book scanner for this, in the fall; They're waiting on IIP; They have also been working on Web of Science export to DSpace for faculty publications.
Ohio Wesleyan - Media Law- done except OCLC record; History of the book- done except OCLC record; Chinese movie database- working on metadata; Real Estate Atlases- outsourced scanning, slightly stalled over summer; Herbarium- specimens needs to be selected and repaired, taking some time, but student has been working; Japanese skill builder program- working with IS rep for things in Blackboard.
Wooster Farmer's Oral History collection- up and ready to go!

Omeka
At this point, we have four schools using Omeka - OWU and Oberlin are hosting it locally; Wooster and Denison are using the hosted service. Built by the Zotero folks and Omeka is well supported. Should we looking at this consortially?
Quick best idea was - if someone can work with local IT and it's not too hard to get a server going, we could distribute support (admin functions) among several folks.
Or there are funds in the grant to pay for hosting or a server? A one-off application hosting in the cloud would be reasonably priced enough so as to be sustainable.
In the end, consensus seemed to be that a cloud-hosted solution (i.e. GoDaddy.com) may be the best way to go.

Matt's agenda
IR interface for everyone to use. Basically a cleaner version of the Oberlin scholarship theme; delayed to sometime this week; deliverable is a theme document.
Agreed upon the priority list as stated on the website.

Training
Digital Imaging nuts and bolts, will start working on this with Staff Development.
Newspaper Digitization
At the information gathering stage at this point, what state are our newspapers currently in?
Catalina will be putting together a consortial proposal on the "why?"
Developing a request for bids based on the content we find, in terms of outsourcing
METS ALTO - the standard for newspaper digitization; standard in ContentDM
Mark pointed out that we should make sure that the resulting image will work in multiple platforms

Portal site
Things we're hoping to provide - grant generated documentation, links to collections, perhaps a harvested collection or combination harvested collection
start to develop a document which could be a portal content draft
perhaps a blog? Suggestions?

Reminders
Update hardware list on TIC page with any equipment that was purchase with grant funds; Denison is cataloging equipment
Update project info sheets
Administer Student surveys

Promulgating results
Poster sessions- What does a presentation look like?

Next grant possible activities

Internet Archive digitization
Newspaper digitization
instructional technology integration
preserving data sets?

Steering Committee Minutes August 4th

Notes Ohio 5 Leadership Committee meeting at Ohio Wesleyan University August 4th 2011

Summon
Michael reports that Implementation is going fine. Denison has their load done, others should follow within days.

Publicity/Marketing Plans- A few staff members went to the summon training at BGSU. Kenyon asked Summon for Swag and got pens to hand out. The Summon community wiki has lots of stuff, if you are not doing individual branding. Location of Summon on the library web page is an issue at schools. Suggested we can copy and (give credit to) the BGSU LibGuide on Summon.

Suggestions for publicizing- letter to faculty and QR codes to promote mobile

CONStor
One issue is finding home for LPs- no one seems to want them and some covers are moldy

We are still considering if we can get items to the Internet Archive in California, who is taking books no one else wants. While this is being researched, the work schedule has been changed so recycling will be done last to give us the most time to make a deal to get stuff to them.

Gov Docs Consolidation
Ellen sent out a report recently.

For Agency docs we need to follow a different plan than with hearings. The Gov Docs Group ranked agencies and are want schools to be a center for those records, but doesn't expect a full agency collection or even transferring docs between schools. Instead, schools will wait until weeding takes place, then the institution with that agency as a focus can take what would have been weeded. Schools will review what they collect based on this strategy.

Sub-Committees
A year ago, sub-committees were abandoned for affinity groups. But that didn't work- only science and serials met. Committees have not met, the idea was that groups would meet when there was a need, but that hasn't happened much.

Plans going forward to create these committees:
Collection Development
Reference & Instructions
Gov Docs
Serials/Electronic Resources

Committees will meet for a day once a year where each committee would get together with planned activities, instruction, and time for discussion of current topics. From this meeting they could decide if they need to meet again because there is stuff to do. Committees will be Co-Chaired by the director and another staff member, ideally staff from the director's library.

Shared technical/collection services
OWU lost 3 staff members recently, 2 related to Tech Services. They are thinking about restructuring staff instead of filling those positions as they existed. The library is now much more open to being "nimble & quick" and radical ideas.

We can start by taking a good look at what we are doing now. Don't just talk to people but really look into what Kenyon and & Denison are doing and how that can be expanded. And look at what Wooster and OWU are doing to think about that. Talk to Acquisition People to find Best Practices to see what they are doing.

Propose having a day where it is just tech services where they get together and talk about what they are doing, so they hear what others are up to and there is less fear of change.

This is a place for efficiencies and cost savings. The presidents really want people to look at saving money so Susan encourages us to look into this.

NGL
Letter to Eugene Tobin reporting on the NGL grant budget, looks good.
We have $40,000 of this grant set aside for phase 1 of the newspaper digitization grant.

Ideas for the next grant:
Maybe include money to negotiate with publishers for rights to put Ohio 5 articles into our IRs
Internet Archives- Develop a plan where IA provides equipment and we provide students and stuff gets scanned
Archive it a service where copies of the school's webpage are saved- ideally you track certain parts of the website and see its change over time. We could add external websites for scholarly study.
Deeper Classroom activities- better interfaces, allowing easy student input,
CLIR or other postdoc- to work on getting digital collections into the classroom -need to work with instructional technologists

Staff Development

Faculty workshops need to be held. One idea Maybe give funds to buy journals or to use for professional development. Or have traveling exhibits, and open houses at archives or other places related to the digital projects. Get video presentations from faculty that have done projects.

Also now being planned Tech Services Day
Omeka
4 of the 5 schools are using Omeka, maybe we should host it for everyone at one location or buy the hosted service. Interest in purchasing the $1,000 hosted service. We can use grant money for the first year.

8/25/11

NGL Steering Committee Call Note Aug. 19, 2011

Technical Infrastructure Committee
  • Meeting 8/19/11 at Oberlin
  • Working on project updates
  • Looking into an Omeka shared server
  • Writing documentation and procedures
  • Investigating the outsourcing of the newspaper project
  • Setting goals for the last portion of the grant
Staff Development Committee
  • Planning a Technical Services Day as a staff development opportunity
  • Working on ideas for faculty workshops
  • Thinking about assessment for projects
  • Collecting statistics on how the projects got used in the curriculum from the faculty reports
  • Would like to gather info on how the projects have affected undergraduate research (ex. Anderson project OWU; undergraduate scholarly journals DEN)
Ray reported that OhioLINK wants to develop capacity for Open Access journals on a statewide central server

Mark reported that a group interested in developing a Latin American Journal will be meeting at DEN. The journal is called ISTMO (http://collaborations.denison.edu/istmo/ ) The journal covers Central American literature/cultural studies. It began in 2001 and is currently in its 22nd issue. Faculty at Wooster are very involved and the journal is hosted at Denison.

Campus Updates
  • OBE on the verge of launching the King-Crane Commission with a media blitz
  • WOO podcasts with regional dairy farmers (oral histories) are completed. Four potential new projects are in the works
  • OWU developing two new project ideas. Two existing projects are completed (media law and medieval manuscript projects)
  • DEN trying to complete all the current projects
  • KEN has nothing new started but are working on numerous existing projects
Grant update
  • Susan stated that there is enough money left in the grant to do about 5 more projects per campus.
  • We need to be 95% committed by the June 2012 Mellon board meeting.
  • Mellon wants a second proposal by March 2012

Collaborative newspaper project
  • Campuses need to post information about their “runs” on the summary web page or send them to Catalina
  • Technical Infrastructure committee is talking about the technical end of the project
  • Many faculty are interested
  • There is about $40K available for the project
Preliminary Grant extension conversation with Gene Tobin
  • Missionary project (proposed) is a large-scale digitization project and may send up “red flags” because Mellon has another large-scale digitization project and Mellon has very specific criteria on how they evaluate these kinds of projects. We would have to have clear and explicit assessment criteria.
  • The Internet Archive idea would go out three years and might cost $17K a year for 1 shift of student assistants to scan. We should explore what collections we might have that would fit the research component for the IA. A proposal for this would be much stronger if there is curriculum integration
Summon
  • Alan, Michael, and Gwen Evans(BGSU) and the Summon rep are having a meeting to work on issues relating to OL INN_Reach

Oberlin College Archives King-Crane Commission Digital Archival Collection

The Oberlin College Archives is pleased to announce the availability of The King-Crane Commission Digital Collection. Oberlin College President Henry Churchill King (1902-1927) led President Woodrow Wilson’s American Section of the Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey, known as the King-Crane Commission, following the end of World War I (June –August 1919).

As the fate of the territories of the Ottoman Empire was being negotiated at the Paris Peace Conference, the Commission was tasked with “acquainting itself as intimately as possible with the sentiments of the people of these regions with regard to the future administration of their affairs.” Although their report was suppressed at the Paris Peace Conference and subsequent treaties ultimately supported British and French colonial aspirations, this effort is nevertheless an important moment in US history--indeed in Oberlin's history.

In order to increase the study of the King-Crane Commission—within Oberlin’s classrooms and beyond, Maren Milligan, Visiting Assistant Professor of Middle East North African Studies in the Oberlin College Politics Department, and Oberlin College Archivist Ken Grossi applied for and received an Ohio Five Next Generation Library Mellon Grant to bring together in a single online digital collection materials relating to the work of the King-Crane Commission. The creation of this digital collection was a collaborative effort between Milligan and staff members of the Oberlin College Archives and the Oberlin College Library. Theodore Waddelow ’11 served as the Research Associate for the project.

The core materials of the collection consist of the King-Crane Commission Records filed in the Henry Churchill King Presidential Papers at the Oberlin College Archives. Other institutions provided materials to expand the research potential of the collection, including the Hoover Institute Archives at Stanford University – The Donald Brodie Papers, and The University of Illinois Archives – The Albert Lybyer Papers. The King-Crane Commission project team continues to work with other institutions, including the University of New Hampshire – William Yale Papers, and the Library of Congress – George Montgomery Papers, to locate materials to add to the digital collection.

However, perhaps more important than the papers of the Commission members are the petitions submitted by people of the region. The project team has sought to locate and curate the petitions submitted by various peoples of the region, thus restoring these lost voices.

The online digital collection includes an interactive map, tracing the route of the Commission’s work in the Middle East, and detailed instructions to assist researchers in navigating the collection of over 600 items. For further information about the King-Crane Commission and to view the collection (correspondence, reports, maps, photographs, petitions) please see the following url address -- http://www.oberlin.edu/library/digital/king-crane/.

Tools To Know About: Open Access Map


TakingITGlobal recently released an Open Access Map. This resource provides a searchable map and list that lets users locate Open Access Resources including repositories, policies, and journals.

If you look under Policies you'll see Oberlin's Open Access Policy listed and users can submit links so we can add our future Institutional Repositories to the list soon.

8/19/11

Ohio Wesleyan University Enhanced Podcast Project

The enhanced podcast project was designed as a value-added technology component to JOUR 370 Media Law. In the fall 2010 Media Law students created multimedia that explain a case to their peers, involved significant peer review and was searchable on the open web. The projects are a resource to other Media Law students seeking deeper understanding of complex topics. Students were encouraged to seek out plaintiffs, defendants, witnesses and experts to contribute to the podcast, as well as implement other digital storytelling techniques. Students in the class completed 10 podcasts on topics ranging from fleeting expletives to net neutrality. Four of the podcasts are included in the Ohio Wesleyan University Digital Repository. The project will continue with future student work added to the repository based on quality and significance.

8/18/11

College of Wooster Libraries publishes oral histories of local farmers


With the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Next Generation Libraries Grant, students taking Innovations in Agroecology taught by Dr. Matthew Mariola from the College of Wooster travelled throughout Wayne County, Ohio with digital audio recorders to interview local farmers, learning about their daily lives, their agricultural processes and their thoughts on hot issues in farming such as organic food, genetically modified crops, and government subsidies. A partnership with the College of Wooster Library's Digital Resource Commons (DRC) will ensure the long term digital preservation of these oral histories. We hope you find the work these students did as interesting as we did.

Link to Farmer Oral History Collection - http://drc.wooster.edu/handle/2374.COLLW/9

8/11/11

Tools To Know About: Video Converters

We have a couple NGL projects that include videos, and this week's tools are aimed at them. Currently the only player we have for the DRC requires flash files to stream them, and these tools are a few options to help convert video files into flash.

Adapter Mac & PC
This popular download is easy to use and has an impressive list of formats it opens and saves to, probably the best bet for simply converting your movie to the file type you want.

MediaCoder Mac & PC
For anyone who wants additional settings with converting, MediaCoder provides more control over transcoding parameters than the other freeware

iMove Mac Only
This popular and easy video editor that comes pre-installed on all new macs, can also be used to convert files. Just select Export using QuickTime from the Share menu and you'll be given a list of formats to save as.

Free Video Convertor- PC Only
If you need to edit your video on a PC, this tool combines basic editing function with a video converter

8/10/11

DRC Admin Training


Last week we held an advanced DRC training workshop for each school's DRC Admins. For anyone else that is interested, here's what we covered and links to the resources we used.
  • Files you use in config
    • Input-forms- for the field in the single item submission process
    • Item-submission- for the steps in the single item submission process
    • news-xmlui.xml- for static text on the landing page
    • xmlui.conf- for connecting themes to collections
    • dspace.cfg- for harvesting and authentication settings
  • Files in a theme
    • css- for the style of the collection
    • images- for any static images used in the collection
    • sitemap- for selecting the xsl and css files for each theme
    • messages.xml- for consistent text across all collections in your instance
    • xslt- for controlling the display of metadata and files
  • CSS for the DRC
    • For the Basics of CSS read Eric Meyer's CSS: The Definitive Guide
    • Look at the CSS your current theme is using or the DRC default CSS
    • Look at the very basic CSS for DSpace
    • Basics of web design
    • Create a new theme using the basic CSS
    • Edit the basic CSS to change the design of your theme. For design suggestions see Fresh styles for Web Designers by Curt Cloninger
  • Basics of XSLT
    • For an introduction read chapters 1 and 2 of XSLT and XPATH: A Guide to XML Transformations by James Robert Gardner and Zarella L. Rendon.
    • Start with the batch DSpace XML and build an XSLT stylesheet to display the information. Open the XML in your editor to view the elements, and in your browser to see the results of your transformation. Start with the blank XSLT and try to write accomplish each of the transformations in the final XSLT. Use the W3Schools XSLT Tutorial for help.
    • XML, Blank XSLT, Final XSLT
  • XSLT in action
    • The arrangement of DRC XSL stylesheets
    • Find the correct template and change the date displayed in the list view
    • Add a new metadata element to the simple view
    • Add an audio player to a theme, by copying the template from the mp3_embed theme