What Improvements are Coming?

Now that we have Matt working on our interface designs, expect to see some great enhancements to the face of our collections (and see some collections that right now don't have a home). We have a backlog of requests to start with, and Matt's going to be busy getting everything up to NGL standards. To keep track of all the coming improvements the Technical Infrastructure Committee has created a new page on the NGL site to track requested features.

If you're working on a digital collection that could use some interface help, contact you TIC rep and ask that it be added to the list.

Tools To Know About: Macros

This is the first in a series of posts that will highlight tools The Five Colleges are using with digital collections. The tool to start this series off is the little-know but very powerful Macro.

Macros allow users to record a series of steps in a program, then automatically play back those step at any time. Frequently macros are used in Microsoft Office and Excel to reformat text or data, run repetitive find and replace searches, merge information, apply functions, or transform data into another format.

We're using a few macros now with digital collections. OhioLINK has a fantastic macro that takes an Excel spreadsheet and transforms the data into XML ready to be loaded into the DRC -so much easier than typing XML tags by hand! We also have a macro at Kenyon that builds on the one from OhioLINK but lets users start with a student worker safe document (lots of locked down fields and lengthy explanations). And I'm just finishing one for Oberlin that can take an listing in Refworks and pull out the metadata for inclusion in the DRC.

My favorite use of macros is to prevent retyping of data. I started working on the Oberlin macro after watching a staff member copy information she looked up in the EJC (Electronic Journal Center) into the Oberlin DRC input form one field at a time. Now she can just export the EJC entry and run the macro. She still has to check the information and a bad export results in bad data, but it can save a lot of time.

If you work with digital collections and find that you spend time retyping information or are constantly doing the same few steps in Word or Excel let me know, and we can see about building a macro for you.

Steering Committee Minutes

Steering Committee Conference Call February 17, 2011

Committee Reports
TIC is organizing a meeting with Matt and has a list of priorities for him going forward.
Staff Developement has a call this afternoon to start a discussion about this summer’s event.

Campus Updates
Oberlin- Sent out award letters on most recent round and projects are starting. The Oberlin Open Access website will be unveiled shortly.
OWU- Moving full steam ahead on new projects. Catalina is coming to do a metadata workshop. Matt has started at OWU.
Wooster- Award letters are out on the two newest projects

Catalog records and Acknowledgments
Carol has shared OWU’s catalog record for a digital collection and the funding statement. Staff at the other schools are looking at the catalog record to see if they want to use this template or something else at their own school. The acknowledgment statement everyone likes.

State of the Budget
We are currently one year into the grant, but there is still a lot of money remaining particularly in Staff Development and Shared Hardware, Software, and Outsourcing.
It is decided that we divide the shared Software, Hardware, and Outsourcing funds evenly between the schools, but that we hold some back for shared projects and software development. Each school has $7,000 to spend on local equipment, though purchases must be approved by the Technical Infrastructure Committee.

Continuing the grant or seeking a second grant
Currently we have an extension from Mellon so the NGL grant is set to run three calendar years, we’ve just entered year two. The committee brainstorms potential ways to continue the grant and ways to promote what we’ve done as part of the grant. It is decided that when our progress report is submitted in March, Susan and Mark will put out feelers to see about the chances of getting a second grant from Mellon.

Institutional Repository Updates
Oberlin’s IR is just about to launch. Denison, OWU, and Kenyon are looking at next year. Wooster has started planning but needs their DRC instance set up before they can move forward.

Summon
Oberlin has access to the pilot version, looking good especially public domain stuff but everything needs to be explored more. There are issues with OhioLINK electronic resources showing up when they shouldn't. An in-depth discussion is shelved until the next call.

Ohio5 Academic Affairs group meeting at OWU
It went well. People thought the library is running well on its own, but are willing to help with purchasing if that would be beneficial.

Full notes are at the NGL site.

Staff Development Committee Notes

Notes from the Staff Development Committee Call February 17, 2011

• Catalina is going to start sending out e-mails as way to keep everyone updated


• This committee will fund some staff to go to local ThatCamps- Next week we will have information to send out about this


• Discussion about a summer workshop. We need to have one, and the grant says somewhere we need to talk about restructuring and the changing nature of libraries so this might be a good place for it. There are lot of suggestions and we have money for a good event. The committee will continue to think about and plan this


• Basic metadata training continues, a more advanced metadata and DRC training will be put together. We will look at other local training staff might be able to attend


• The grant mentions faculty workshops. We thought of some good ways to do this and will keep working on it.

Full notes are at the NGL site.

Tired of Reading this Blog?

I'm now going to be sending out weekly e-mail updates which will summarize updates from the blog and elsewhere. If you didn't get the first e-mail and want to be added to the list just send me a note at caoyler@gmail.com.

Tracking Progress

We've introduced a new tool on the Local Projects page, a visual display that tracks the progress of projects. Most projects follow a similar path to completion, and we've divided this path into 12 steps that can be easily recorded.

• Proposal accepted by the committee


• Completion of all paper work associated with the project


• Identifying and acquiring any needed technology


• Addressing potential intellectual property concerns


• Setting digitization standards (file size, type, etc)


• Selecting a metadata schema and a content management system


• Selecting controlled vocabularies


• Creating digital objects


• Recording metadata


• Surveying participants for the project assessment


• Creating and publishing a web interface


• Linking to the collection, including a link from OCLC

As each step is completed we can update the tracking image, providing a quick visual way to see where projects are at. We've also added Project Info Sheets which record decisions made in each of the steps.

Five Colleges of Ohio staff can see these updates at Local Project Proposals
and members of the public can see them at Public Accepted Projects.

Steering Committee Update—Feb. 3, 2011

Present on call: Badertscher (KEN), Christel (WOO), Prophet (DEN), English (OBE), Boyd (OBE), Peoples (OWU), Holliger (OWU) (scribe), Upfold (OH5), Oyler (OH5), Palmer (OH5).
Absent: Griggs (KEN)
 Recorder – Holliger

Corrections to last call minutes

·         Amy’s name left off the list of attendees

·         OWU update – Catalina will be coming to lead a metadata workshop on February 18^th, not March 18^th. The Krygier/Walker proposal involves the overlaying of historic maps of Columbus neighborhoods with current maps in order to analyze how they have changed. 

 Committee updates

a.       Technical Infrastructure –

·         Kenyon decided to change its purchase request for a slide scanner. Committee approved the modified purchase request.

·         Paperwork is being finalized for Matt. Agreement has been reached regarding remote guidelines (working from home). He will meet with Catalina soon. Plan is for him to work ½ day every other week at OWU (home base). Committee will meet with Matt once he has worked about a month. Catalina will coordinate his time and efforts. Alan, Mark and Catalina will meet with Matt every other week.

·         Catalina received a positive employment review. Now that Matt is onboard, she will spend more time “communicating best practices.” Thanks to Alan for spearheading the review. 

b.      Staff development –

·         Committee will be meeting soon.

·         First ALCTS webinar held on January 26^th at Oberlin with five in attendance. Topic was copyright (very basic). Catalina sent link for archived webinar to those who requested it.

·         Host for next ALCTS webinar (April 13^th) has not been selected.

·         Probably does not make sense for us to travel to other schools for a one hour webinar – will proceed with current plan of schools taking turns “hosting” and Catalina sending out link to archived version. 

  Stipends for faculty – Receive full amount or are taxes and benefits taken out of the stipend?

·         Consistency among our schools is not possible. Our accounting practices differ. We will all follow past practice with regard to stipend payment.

 Best Practices -- Catalina

a.       Shall we add statement on “landing page” of each collection that the project was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation? Statement on “landing page” about authors/creators of collection? (faculty/librarian/student, etc.) Committee agreed that some consistency might be good. Carol will send e-mail with OWU prototype for discussion on next call.

b.      Creation of collection level cataloging record for each project? Again, consistency might be considered. Carol will send e-mail with prototype of cataloging record from OWU to discuss on next call. Michael will add this as an agenda item for the Summon meeting that will be held on February 10^th.

c.       Standard assessment of projects? Alan proposes that we get feedback from student assistants/workers who are employed under the grants. Ray, Alan, and Catalina will work on two or three standard questions we might use for assessment purposes and send them via e-mail to the group.

d.      Better communication while proposals are being conceptualized, internally on each campus and between schools – Agreed to communicate with Catalina earlier about possible proposals so that she can catch any institutional overlap. On the local level, suggestion that there be ample communication between librarian liaisons during the development stage of each proposal in order to catch institutional knowledge and avoid duplication.

Campus updates

a.       Oberlin

·         Four new projects have been approved – 1) Hispanic and Latin American Studies --  audio recordings and interview transcripts  2) Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association materials in Archives 3) Geology project -- digitization of invertebrate fossils. Camera equipment being purchased. Will be on loan to Geology Department for project and then return to library. 4) Second phase of King-Crane Commission digitization project, concentrating on materials external to Oberlin.

·         $31,000 of their $50,000 allotment has been committed.

·         New project proposal coming up – Oberlin history as American history (will involve digitization of portions of student newspaper).

b.      Kenyon – Nothing new to report.

c.       OWU – Carol approved request of faculty member to realign budget lines without going over total amount of grant. Consensus that this is a decision to be made between chair of local steering committee and individual faculty member.

d.      Denison – Two possible grant proposals on the way.

e.      Wooster – Awarded geology project that was discussed in earlier call. February 14 is the deadline for new proposals.

 Develop new proposal or request grant extension from Mellon? Will discuss on next call. Susan will contact campuses individually to get spending information and monies already committed to projects.

 Report to Mellon Foundation – Susan sent a list of our projects to the Mellon Foundation – Received positive response.

Welcome to Matt Rolf

I'm pleased to announce that Matt Rolf has begun work as the Interface Specialist for The Five Colleges of Ohio! Matt will be working part time on the display and technical side of our digital collections.

Matt has over 14 years of web development and design experience, including interface design and enterprise application administration. Over the last 5 years Matt has worked primarily in higher education with a focus on content management. In his free time Matt enjoys soccer, writing, music, art, and spending time with his family. As the year progresses, he will visit each campus, but you can e-mail him at rolfm@denison.edu at any time.

Oberlin Institutional Repository

We've got an initial version of the Oberlin Scholarly Article repository up at: http://drc.oberlin.edu/handle/2374.OBE/1450

The content here is retrospective input of articles from the CVs of selected faculty.  Many thanks to Catalina for working through the changes on our test instance and helping get them transferred to the production system.  We hope to announce this to our faculty later in the month.

NSF Data Management Plans and the DRC

The National Science Foundation is now requiring proposals include a section on data management. This section describes how research results will be made available based on the NSF policy on dissemination and sharing. More information about this requirement is in the NSF Grant Proposal Guide.

Lucky for us, the OhioLINK Digital Resource Commons can meet all the NSF requirements. Jessica Clemons, Science Librarian at The College of Wooster, has created a great sample document that describes how the DRC complies with each NSF requirement. This document can be attached to NSF proposals from The Five Colleges of Ohio, or any school using the DRC. Take a look, DRC NSF Data Management Plan.