Steering Committee Minutes March 29th

Technical infrastructure committee.
• Meeting April 12 -- to take stock and plan.
• Newspaper samples back in the next couple of days. May be able to move fairly soon on that.

Campus updates:
• Kenyon. Two new grants. Class utilizing oral history interviews. Student poetry publication.
• Wooster. Political science project to produce political commercials. Now collecting almost all IS papers digitally.
• OWU. Plugging along on projects. 19th century Latin scholarship project. Looking for texts not digitized. Pulling together materials already digitized.
• Oberlin. Book scanner brought in for testing. Software still needs work.

ERM task force.
• Mary proposed postponing until after the CONSTOR project is finished. Agreement to pick this up in the fall.

Interim report.
• Coming along, due tomorrow. Susan suggests reviewing budget status of all projects.; will be needed for financial pat of the interim report.

Digital humanities workshop.
• Date: April 26th in morning.
• Mark has talked with Lisa Spiro about models for the workshop. He will forward plans to everyone.

Info Lit workshop with Char Booth
• Date: Monday, May 7th
• There will be preliminary registration and more info soon.

LOEX sponsorship.
• We will sponsor the program instead of the give away. Will work on a color insert.

Steering Committee Minutes March 15th

Two OH5 librarians named Library Journal’s Movers & Shakers

• Stephen Flynn (Wooster)
• Joshua Finnell (Denison)

Technical Infrastructure Committee update

• DRC In A Box is progressing. Still needs lots of work but is moving forward.

Staff Development Committee update

• Instead of having faculty travel to a daylong workshop in May, we are proposing that we create short 3-5 minutes videos of faculty who’ve participated in the NGL grants at the various institutions. Videos could then be shared on the different campuses or even via the library/institution web sites. Events could also be held on individual campuses to promote projects.

Campus updates

• Oberlin: Getting more into Omeka work. Student projects upcoming. Also moving toward hosted Content DM. Shuffling content on hosted server to keep content under 50,000 items and costs down.
• OWU: Catalina is stepping in as the library liaison for a couple of our projects (Potters for Peace & Metal Work)
• Denison: Working on the Homestead project (photos, letters, etc.)
• Wooster: Shot video with faculty to use for promotion. Now in editing stage. Looks like it will be really helpful.
• Kenyon: Finalizing last dollars, funding for last projects. Other projects are nearing completion.

Status of Mellon grant funds

• Work on spending equipment funds. Need to get those spent.
• Campuses with remaining funds should get them committed by May.
• Susan is talking to the provost at Kenyon about GIS. Starting the conversation. May be more complex than initially thought.
• Keep Susan up to date with budgets if you haven’t done so already.

Other

• ERM Task Force: Move forward? Yes. Should be mix of public & technical services people. Perhaps each institution doesn’t need two reps. Send possible names to Amy to get things started.

Shansi: Oberlin and Asia -- A digital collection documenting the sharing of the ideals of learning and labor

The Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association, the Oberlin College East Asian Studies Program, and the Oberlin College Archives and Library proudly announce the availability of the online digital collection Shansi: Oberlin and Asia.

Documenting the activity of Oberlinians in Asia from the 1880s to the 1950s, this teaching and research collection contains correspondence, newsletters, maps, reports, journal entries, photographs and other materials from the Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association Records and personal paper collections in the Oberlin College Archives. Featured in the collection is a short clip of silent film footage of activities in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China in the 1948. Other Shansi motion picture films are available for viewing at the Oberlin College Archives.

The digital collection represents a small percentage of the total amount of materials in the Oberlin College Archives that relate to the work of missionaries and Shansi Representatives in China as well as other countries.

The collection can be accessed from the Oberlin College Archives web site or the Oberlin College Library web site. For further information please contact the Oberlin College Archives by email (archive@oberlin.edu) or by phone (440-775-8014).

The project to create this digital collection was funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the Five Colleges of Ohio (Next Steps in the Next Generation Library: Integrating Digital Collections into the Liberal Arts Curriculum, 2010)

Steering Committee Minutes March 1st

Technical Infrastructure Committee update

• a sample newspaper microfilm reel has been sent to iArchives for digitization
• Catalina has restructured the public portal as suggested

Staff Development

• need to pick a day (May 22nd?) for faculty workshop
• search for a new committee member to help out

Grant Update

• Susan, Mark, and Alan will be discussing current budget outlook soon

Campus updates

• Wooster- will distribute draft of policy on comprehensive senior independent study loading to DRC; continued planning for Lisa Spiro coming to campus in late April; Mark will ask her to meet with others from OH5 on digital humanities on Thursday (4/26) before her Friday presentation for Wooster staff
• Kenyon – continuing work on various projects
• OWU – some discussion of digital humanities option for next grant has occurred
• Denison – continuing work on various projects
• Oberlin - Shansi project about to go live; they have created a staff workgroup to learn and create procedures for student Omeka projects

Other

• the outcome of the staff's electronic resources gathering the week before were reviewed; directors will discuss a further charge to the group (possibly on ERM) at their meeting next week; Amy Fry at BGSU was suggested as a good resource person who knows a lot about III ERM

Steering Committee Minutes February 16th

TIC

• Have received quotes from newspaper vendors. A test reel is being sent to one vendor before a final decision is made

Staff Development

• Working on a potential faculty workshop at the end of May
• Will record any sessions to share out

Campus Updates

• Oberlin- projects moving along, Shansi will soon be public
• OWU- participating in the internet archive books lending projects

Steering Committee Minutes February 2nd

Technical Infrastructure Committee update

• Newspaper group met to go over proposals
• Have follow-up questions for two vendors
• Preference for on-shore vs off-shore digitizing

Grant Update

• Update on next Mellon proposal - response from Gene Tobin
• Interim report due to Mellon in March
• Discussion of current spending – allocating is not a problem, but timely spending may be discussion of digital humanities and whether to pursue or not

Campus updates

• Wooster- decision to put all senior IS projects on DRC (perhaps all available info available locally and somewhat less beyond campus) and Lisa Spiro coming to campus in late April
• Kenyon – no news
• OWU – all money allocated, but probably only ½ spent
• Denison – no news
• Oberlin- no news

Other

• New Ohio5 position – procurement specialist – to look at potential consortial fiscal cooperation
• HR departments are looking into potential cooperation
• Collection development sub-committee to look at possible end-of-year projects soon
• OhioLINK capital budget seems to be on-track
  Board of Regents very supportive of OhioLINK

Capturing Classroom Metadata with the DRC

The GIS-Based Photographic Archive at the College of Wooster has recently reconfigured its input process to allow students to add objects directly into the collection. Students in Professor Greg Wiles geology class have been capturing photographs of environmental change near Wooster, Ohio, and recording metadata about the location. While the project has been active for a few months, previous data was entered by a trained student worker. Now all students in the class are able to upload their images and metadata directly into the DRC.

The GIS-Based Photographic Archive is not the only NGL project to capture objects and metadata from the classroom, but it is the first to have students enter objects directly into the DRC. The student input process uses a simplified input form for adding images and metadata, and has students agree to a license that lets the college display and archive the images. Objects are reviewed by library staff before being made publicly available.

Having students add items directly to a collection is a great way to capture classroom work and ensure the growth of a collection beyond the NGL grant. If you are interested in setting up direct student input for your collection please let me know.