Faculty Preview Oberlin's Shansi Project

Oberlin College recently hosted An Introduction to the “Shansi: Oberlin and Asia” Digitization Project, an event for faculty to learn more about the OC Archives' Shansi Collection and the NGL project that is putting a significant sampling of the collection online.

OC Faculty members Bonnie Cheng and Ann Sherif 

OC Archivist Ken Grossi

The event included

• An overview of the archives of Oberlin Shansi and associated personal papers, documenting the activities of Oberlin Shansi and the Ming Hsien School in early twentieth-century East Asia.
• Examples of selected photographs, films, texts, correspondence, maps, objects and ephemera available electronically for the first time.
• Discussion of the ways the collection, both online and in the College Archives, will be useful in your teaching and research.
• Presentations by Eric Estes, Carl Jacobson, Ken Grossi, Anne Salsich, Ann Sherif, and Bonnie Cheng of the new digital collection, and objects from the Archives on display.

The Shansi project is creating a collection of digital objects that document Oberlin's early contact with Asia. The project is expected to be completed for use by students and researchers in January 2012.

Omeka server administrators continue planning

Notes from today's conference call are posted on the Technical Infrastructure Committee site.

NITLE Digital Scholarship webinar

Sign up for the free 11/11/11 1 hour NITLE digital scholarship webinar (or view the recorded version later).  Some of us heard webinar participants speak the Hope College workshop last month and they are quite good.

Steering Committee Minutes October 13

1) Technical Infrastructure Committee update

• There is a newspaper document prepared for the newspaper project proposal.
• Omeka server is up, the Omeka committee are testing it out now.
• The team is looking at the Cleveland history project from Cleveland State and Mark Tebeau to see if we can replicate the idea with our local information--in Oberlin, Granville, Gambier, etc. A project like this will bring. Some public exposure and possible ways to share student research.
• Matt is working on map interface and an IR-setting up the technical side for each school.

2) Staff Development Committee update
Technical service workshop will be on Monday, October 17 at Denison. About 30 people expected to attend.

3) Campus updates

• Oberlin--nothing new
• Kenyon -- 2 potential projects/proposals in the works. We are reviewing our budget as well.
• OWU--2 projects completed the 12 steps. 2 others still in the works.
• Denison-- working on existing projects and expanding student journals
• Wooster - waiting for several new proposals. One new project in the works. YouTube political commercial project.

4) Any other business
Presidents meeting: We think it is important to underscore the value of OhioLINK to education and higher Ed. Talk about what we, Ohio Five, have contributed to OhioLINK as a group over time and in recent years. Talk about the importance of long term sustainability of OhioLINK as an asset to Ohio and the education Ohio institutions offer.

Steering Committee Minutes -- Oct. 27, 2011

Steering Committee Conference Call Minutes October 27, 2011

  --note taker: Alan Boyd

Technical Infrastructure Committee update
• Report from Alan – Omeka server is set up; local project administrators are being given access to experiment.  There will be a conference call in a week or so to discuss setting up the site and using it for real exhibits.
• Newspaper project details are in; Alan and Catalina will work it up as a draft request for information to send to vendors.

Staff Development Committee update
• Report from Amy - Technical Services workshop was well attended and useful (see earlier blog entry for agenda); afternoon small discussion groups for Serials, Cataloging, and Acquisitions were particularly well commented on.  Catalina reported that the feedback frequently mentioned getting the OH5 committees functioning again in these areas.

• This discussion broadened into the area of III's Sierra "early implementers" offer, and their Electronic Resources Module (ERM).  Michael and Alan will pursue an additional deal with III and we'll consider using OH5 CONSORT reserve $$ to fund on the CONSORT side.  Oberlin is close to having the go ahead from their VP/Finance too.  ERM, which is otherwise a quite expensive module, would be relatively inexpensive under the "appreciation points" deal III is offering right now along with a Sierra commitment. 

Campus updates
• OWU – 4 recently approved projects have been formally accepted by faculty and listed on our projects page.
• Other institutions--- nothing new, but continuing project work

OhioLINK update

• Ray reported that the OL Library Advisory Coord. Ctte is leaning toward their "model #2" option which trims several packages to come up with the $4 million shortfall.  The option to cut one big package is still on the table though.

OH5 Academic Officers meeting

• Mark reported that the deans and provosts are all solid in their support of OhioLINK.  All library directors will be meeting with their deans/provosts and presidents to update them on the urgency of the OhioLINK situation prior to the presidents' meeting with Chancellor, Jim Petro, the second week of Nov.  Ray will attend this meeting to supply any detailed information on the OhioLINK situation that the presidents or chancellor may ask for.

Getting started in Digital Humanities projects

Here's a link summarizing many of the resources several of us heard about recently at the GLCA digital humanities workshop at Hope College.

Omeka Server Support--Conference Call

See the TIC blog posting for a summary of todays call.