Steering Committee Update--August 3

• Staff development committee will meet this week to discuss the next event.
  
• Technical Infrastructure Committee is looking into project sharing venues or tools.
• Denison has a one additional proposal for a potential grant.
• We discussed posting the grant proposals on campus websites as well as on our NGL website. All agreed this was reasonable.
  
• We are working on interim reports for the Mellon Grant reviewing the time line and the activities over the first 8 months of the grant. These reports are due Sept 15 and should be sent to Mark and Susan.
  
• Catalina is preparing to send out the all staff survey. She would like all emails from each institution to track results.
• Constor update. The project is underway. Both Denison and Oberlin have made progress with decisions and boxing up materials for recycle or return to home institution.

July Update

Hard to believe, it's already been a month since I joined the Five Colleges! I want to thank everyone for making me feel welcome and helping me get rolling on the many projects going on. I've settled in at Oberlin now and have had successful day trips to visit Kenyon and Denison, and I hope to see Wooster and Wesleyan soon. A lot of my time in July was spent just learning how everything works here and familiarizing myself with past projects and new technology. But also have been working on three projects in particular.

The first is Denison's digitization of government documents about WWII Japanese American internment camps. This project began some time ago, and digital scans of 30 documents were created and saved, unfortunately, the project was never completed and the digital documents aren't publicly available. I'm currently sorting out what has been scanned, checking or creating a new OCR scan for full text searching, and setting up a home for them, probably in the DRC.

Another Denison project I'm working on is "Writing Our Story: An Analysis of Black Student Protest as Denison University." This NGL proposal already has scanning of documents underway, so I've focused on selecting metadata elements and setting up a process to easily record metadata.

At Oberlin I've been working on the institutional repository, the Oberlin Scholarship collection. This collection has been set up on the DRC and has had a number of test items added successfully, what I'm working on is finding a workflow for batch uploads and making improvements to the web design.

These projects received my attention in July as it was easy to join in what had already been started, and they are giving me a chance to become more familiar with the DRC and other tools I'll be using frequently. If anyone else has project they'd like me to get going on now, please let me know- I can be reached by email at caoyler@gmail.com or phone 440-775-6490.

Steering Committee Update -- July 15, 2010

a. Technical Infrastructure
Catalina is studying DSpace, local projects underway, the basic OhioLINK DRC metadata scheme, and project management and calendaring software. She visited Kenyon this week, and Denison is next week. Alan noted that Oberlin (and others in OhioLINK) have been testing DSpace 1.6, which has new batch editing for metadata capabilities, etc.

b. Staff Development
Catalina will create a draft the staff survey Surveymonkey; she’ll incorporate some related questions from a recent Web Junction survey. She and Amy will discuss this soon.

c. Denison has another grant application from the Geosciences and it is out for review.

d. Oberlin reported that ContentDM has a new module with loader flexibility for METS/ALTO newspaper uploads. METS/ALTO is the standard for national newspaper digitization projects which allows keyword and article level access. Kenyon is scanning their current issues of the student newspaper.

e. Mark asked whether we want to have 6-month interim reports, so preparing future reports won’t be so difficult. Susan agreed to do one for the budget. Each institution will prepare one for their activities. Committee chairs will prepare one. A bulleted list is sufficient and we’ll coordinate this with project tracking records that Catalina will keep. Mellon needs the next report from us in March, 2011.

Steering Committee Update: July 7, 2010

• We welcomed Catalina to her first Steering Committee conf. call. Alan reported that Catalina was reviewing project documentation and local project proposals, looking into project management software, and reviewing a lot of saved emails Alan passed on relating to services and ideas for the project that have come to his attention over the past 6 months. Kenyon and Denison have given some guidance on dates for Catalina's orientation to those campuses; Alan has encouraged the other campuses to suggest dates too and said there might be opportunities early on for her to visit other OhioLINK institutions' digitization setups.
  
• We're unsure who will be the interim OWU steering committee representative
  
• Oberlin is considering 3 local projects; others are in the works for a later round of committee deliberations
• Wooster has used local projects funding to hire Deardra Fuzzel as a 1/2 time Digitization services associate
• Denison has approved a 3rd local project; Kenyon has approved 4 projects; Ron will send the project proposals to Catalina for background; when all projects are formally accepted (see next item) we will post the proposals at the project's major documents site
• Drafts of a Project Approval letter to send to faculty and a Project Grant Acceptance for faculty to sign were discussed. Alan and Catalina will come up with revised wording about intellectual property.
  

Steering Committee Update: June 30, 2010

• The Steering Committee approved the budget outline developed by Susan Palmer and Alan Boyd.
• The Steering Committee made further plans to ensure that paperwork and other basic necessities are worked out when Catalina Oyler begins in July.
• The Steering Committee reviewed the campus grant review committee progress to date. We reminded ourselves that faculty stipends are to be paid 50% at the time of the award and 50% when the final report is complete.
• Susan Palmer discussed the issue of intellectual property and rights for materials developed through the Mellon grant. Susan noted that, as part of the Mellon grant, the materials should at some point be made public.
  

Steering Committee Update: June 21, 2010

Present: Badertscher, Boyd, Christel, Cochrane, English, Palmer, Upfold

2. Follow up to June 18 workshop

• Need link to the workshop on the NGL Staff Development Web pages.
• Jessica C. shot digital video of speakers. She and Amy are working on putting it up on web site, if quality allows.
  

3. Updates from committees

• Tech. Infrastructure will coordinate orientation for Catalina; she will start July 6^th. Alan is looking for orientation options for her at the campuses
• Need suggested questions for staff survey that’s in development; Amy will have Staff Dev. Committee look at it; we would like to have a draft for Ron when he returns from vacation.
  

4. Catalina's early schedule/projects

• Tech. Infrastructure Committee suggests a videoconference soon to local projects when all current digital projects have been approved to see where synergies & collaborations are possible and what’s needed immediately to support them
• Scottie suggested that maybe Catalina’s 2^nd week she can visit each of the campuses to meet all the staff, get a briefing on the projects approved so far for that campus, decide where she’ll want to stay when she’s there, find her way around, etc. The idea is to get the lay of the land without starting project work during this first visit.
• what project management approach/software/etc. will we want to use? One basic suggestion to start is that Catalina keep an accessible Google calendar.
• Mark and Alan will send draft orientation schedule to Steering cttee
  

5. Local budget/reimbursement categories

• Campuses can bill the OH5 office quarterly, but if someone has a big expense, Susan can send $$ in advance to cover that. Susan is working with the financial offices to get the procedures and accounts set up.
• Alan & Susan will do a mock-up of categories like this for our suggestions & approval.

Steering Committee Update: June 14, 2010

• June 18 workshop (Jessica Clemons joining in for this part of our conversation)
  -- light breakfast will be available since 8:30 arrival time is important
  -- CONSTOR decommissioning representatives to meet over lunch with Ellen Conrad
  -- 3:15-4pm-- optional meeting time for committees, new affinity groups, other breakout groups (this will be self-organizing more or less)
  -- Staff Dev. Cttee will send out reminder this week, incl. parking info
  

• New developments/questions about campus grants
  -- we'll post copies of project proposals at the NGL website
  -- faculty stipends are ranging from $0 to $500-$1000
  -- stipends for librarians are not part of the grant; release time possible, but could be problematic -- should be perceived as equitably set up
  -- Wooster using a large portion of the local project $$ to fund a digital assistant position
  

• Tech. Infr. Cttee recommends postponing hiring the part time Interface Dev. Technician position until we have a better grasp on specific assignments and skills we'll need in the position

• Alan asked for ideas for Catalina's orientation; she'll visit each campus, get an overview of projects in the works; one idea: have a video conference to summarize/discuss all campus projects

Next Steering Cttee conf. call times: 6/21 and 6/30 @ 1 pm