Steering Committee Minutes August 7th

• Technical Infrastructure Committee update
  • Alan--update schuduled for a call on Aug. 20. Confirming a time Talk about the portal. The current portal is not sustainable. Look at a web interface or wordpress.
  • Tech will develop their own problems and answers
• Staff Development Committee update
  • Omeka training--Training will be on August 20th at Denison
  • Anyone using Omeka for collections should attend. The training will be a mix of broad ideas and specific technical help
• Campus updates
  • Newspaper project tests are up on test for Kenyon, Oberlin and Wooster.
  • The tests look good. Wooster has all of Microfilm reels ready to go.
  • Wooster working on faculty IR-2500 citiations in but are still working on the project.
  • Oberlin has some some IR data up as well.
  • OWU is moving forward on final major projects.
  • Final reports are on the assessment document in the Wiki. Actually need the final report to Catalina if you haven't already. And create OCLC records.
  • Kenyon is working on last grants and final reports.
  • Denison is working on some grant payments to student issues.
• Comments/feedback on the precis? Susan is working on a cover letter and this will probably go out tomorrow.
• Any discussion of the OL survey on the discovery layer? This is a one page survey databases, link resolver and expenses. OhioLINK--migration from Sierra will be a smooth transition. Relates back to the Millennium staff mode that they are used to using.

Ohio5 Omeka Workshop

The Five Colleges of Ohio will offer a workshop about using Omeka on Monday August 20th from 10-3 in the computer lab at Denison University's William Howard Doane library presented by Mark Tebeau and Erin Bell of the Center For Public History. The workshop will cover broad strategic goals for using Omeka as well as answer technical questions. All library staff and faculty are welcome to attend, if there is space available student works may also be able to attend, please contact Catalina at caoyler@gmail.com for more information.

If you would like to attend this workshop and have not used Omeka before, please contact Catalina or your Technical Infrastructure Committee representative to get an account in the Ohio5 Omeka instance. Documentation and additional information about Omeka is available on the NGL Wiki.

Register for the Omeka workshop before August 15th at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/oh5omeka

Steering Committee Minutes 7/26/12

Technical Infrastructure Committee

• Alan reports no activity-- he'll be trying to set up an August meeting

Staff Development Committee

• Catalina trying to get more promotional videos in the pipeline-- contact her with your possibilities!
• An Omeka workshop is being planned for Aug. 16th; the Steering committee approved bringing in a presenter from Cleveland State. Update: the Omeka Workshop will be August 20th

Campus updates

• Each campus is "plugging away" at current projects
• Oberlin is almost ready to load 1500+ citations to faculty publications, reviews, and presentations for the time period 2007-2011 in its Oberlin SHARES repository
• Oberlin has digitized (with Art Museum grant funding) the complete 60-year run of the Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin.  It will be loaded soon using the DSPACE IP zoom interface that will also be used for our newspaper project

Draft of precis for new grant

• A new draft of a precis for another grant to expand our work into "digital scholarship" support was reviewed; Mark C. will work up another version

Update on OhioLINK LAC meeting

• 4 most supported strategic priorities: 1) Next generation purchasing arrangements, 2) Discovery Layer implementation, 3) ebook strategies, 4) strategic vision for OL budget
• 4 most supported operational goals: 1) IT support financing structure, 2) assessment, 3) communication strategy, 4) DRC direction forward

NGL Summer Institute

A group of library staff members discusses Lessons Learned in during the NGL grant

Attendees enjoy cupcakes as a thank you for all their work on grant projects

Thanks to everyone who came to Wooster last week for the Summer Institute. A video of the lightning talk presentations is now up thanks to Steve Flynn. 
More photos from the day are on the NGL Flickr page.

NGL Summer Institute 2012

This year's Summer Institute will reflect on everything we have accomplished with Next Generation Library grant at The Five Colleges of Ohio.  Our program will include lightening talks on the digital projects undertaken as part of the NGL grant and focus groups to assess how this grant went, how to sustain our projects and what to include in our next grant.  The day will conclude with a celebration of everyone who has helped make this grant so successful.  All library staff and faculty are invited to attend as well as students who worked on NGL projects.

Thursday June 14th, 10am-3pm The College of Wooster

10-10:15 Welcome (Scheide Music Center)
10:15-11:15 NGL Projects Lightning Talk Presentations
11:30-12:30 Presentations Continued
12:30-1:45 Lunch (Andrews Library)
1:45-2:30 Focus Groups (Andrews Library)
2:30-3 Cupcakes and closing remarks

If you plan to attend please register at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2012nglsummer

Promoting the DRC through Digital I.S. submission at the College of Wooster

2012 was the first year that Independent Study (IS) submission by College of Wooster seniors turned digital. How did we get the entire graduating class to digitally submit their thesis to the DRC?

The Course Catalog had already required students to submit a digital copy of their IS to the Libraries since 2005, but typically less than half of seniors would comply, and even if they did, digital preservation was an afterthought. Two developments, (1) the launch of our DSpace DRC instance, and (2) the construction of the Collaborative Research Environment (CoRE) this year, a renovated space in the first floor of Andrews Library, provided the political and technological impetus needed to move IS into the digital age.

We created a Senior Independent Study Thesis collection in the DRC. In close collaboration with faculty and administration, we designed an input form that was as easy as possible for seniors to use, while also meeting the metadata standards of the College. For example, the administration’s desire for all students to submit a digital abstract led us to make the abstract field required. Student ease of use was another concern. Without Shibboleth and LDAP authentication, technologies that would allow students to login using their existing email credentials, we created a single login and password account that all seniors would use. Despite shortening the input form over many design iterations, we created a concise PDF handout and screencast that walked the student through the process. We even created a giant “Submit your IS” tootsie roll graphic for the DRC front page, inspired by the College’s tradition of handing tootie rolls to every senior who turns in their IS.

On the policy front, Mark Christel, Director of the College of Wooster Libraries, worked closely with the faculty’s Educational Policy Committee (EPC) to craft a submission, access and copyright policy and license agreement that delicately balanced the desire to make student work open access and discoverable, with the need to protect privacy, ownership and prepublication rights. The following emerged:

I represent that the Independent Study (I.S.) project is my own original work, and does not, to the best of my knowledge, infringe upon anyone else's copyright.

I grant The College of Wooster and its designated employees a non-exclusive, perpetual, and royalty-free license to archive and provide unrestricted access to my I.S. project, in whole or in part, in any medium, to The College of Wooster community. I also authorize the Provost the right to distribute copies of my I.S. project to other individuals. I understand that I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of my I.S. project.

In addition, exceptions to the policy were proposed for students needing to embargo access to their IS due to pending publication. The faculty unanimously approved the policy in their March 5 meeting.

To enforce the above policy, the Libraries’ Digital Scholarship and Services department worked closely with the Registrar’s office. We created a private Google Docs spreadsheet that dynamically updated the list of seniors who had turned in their digital IS. If a student tried to turn in their bound copy to the registrar, they first checked their name against the Google Doc. A negative match would have them prompt the student to make a digital submission first. This way, no student would slip through IS submission cracks. In addition, all library staff and Research Help Desk students were provided with IS submission training, ensuring that anyone could answer a senior's basic questions about the process.

To engage the campus community, we installed an IS countdown page on the TVs in the CoRE.

As a result of the Libraries strong collaboration with the faculty, administration and the Registrar’s office, not only did all seniors submit a digital copy of their IS to the DRC, now anyone on campus can access a digital copy of Senior ISs from 2012 going forward. Students and faculty can browse and read past ISs to gather ideas for gaps in research, outside researchers could possibly cite them, and the Libraries strengthens its role as the center for the digital preservation and dissemination of original undergraduate research.


-Stephen X. Flynn
Emerging Technologies Librarian
The College of Wooster

Digital Frontiers Conference

The University of N. Texas has announced a Digital Frontiers Conference and THATcamp.