Ohio Five staff present at Case Western Reserve University

Mark Christel, Kabria Baumgartner, Emily Gattozzi, and Alan Boyd shared experiences on our grant at the Freedman Center Colloquium,"Exploring Collaboration in Digital Scholarship" held on April 8, 2013 at Case Western Reserve University
 

Steering Committee Minutes 11/13/12

New grant proposal

• Ron Griggs will review assessment documentation with a Kenyon institutional research assistant and have some preliminary results to incorporate in new grant proposal
• Steering committee call scheduled for 11/20; only topic: discussion of proposal; Mark will send sections prior
• first full draft of proposal done by 11/26
• goal to send to Mellon at end of November     

Technical Infrastructure Committee update

• Alan keeping in touch with Matt Rolf re: CONTENTdm ---> DRC transfers (OBE and DEN) and some filemaker scripting work for WOO    

Staff Development Committee update

• Staff survey still underway 

Campus updates

• OWU - newspaper files back within a week - good condition; worried about getting some final reports
• WOO - getting ready to send print newspaper to iArchives; search starting soon to replace Marsha Bansberg
• KEN  - digital services librarian starting in dec

ALAO Presentations

Researcher Revolt panel

There were two presentations at this year's Academic Library Association of Ohio meeting (Oct. 25-26 in Wilmington, OH) in which Ohio Five staff participated.  Alan Boyd (Oberlin) moderated a panel discussion at the "Researcher Revolt" preconference which was organized by Meghan Frazer, recently departed from the staff at Kenyon.   During the conference itself, Meghan, Emily Gattozzi (OWU) and Alan gave a well-attended presentation on "The Next Generation Library: Integrating Digital Collections into the Liberal Arts Curriculum".  Alan provided a general background on the grant while Meghan and Emily showcased individual collections.  The presentation then turned into a lively question and answer session including "lessons learned" and "take aways" for the audience who commented favorably on the level of inter-institutional collaboration and faculty engagement we've worked to create.

Steering Committee Minutes 9/25/12

Technical Infrastructure Committee.  Catalina’s last day of work will be October 12.  Discussion focused on both what we need to do before she leaves and how we will cope afterward.  The newspaper loading is coming along well—with three schools that now have at least some issues that are public.  Catalina has been working with library staff on the loading process.  Kenyon in particular will need some help in that regard.  Since Omeka isn’t that great as a portal, Catalina is working on establishing a WordPress presence on Bluehost that will function as a portal for the project.  We will need to decide what we want Matt to accomplish and who will supervise him.  He’s just recently finished some DRC work for Oberlin.  Catalina plans to make final campus visits next week. 

The portal should be able to handle the organization of information related to the grant report.  Mark noted that we needed to get as many reports on faculty projects submitted as soon as possible.  Catalina will send a list of the reports that have been completed so far. We will have some extra money in the current grant from the lines for both Catalina and Matt and also surpluses in individual projects.  We have until March to do the final report.  We can work on spending out project funds until then.  For projects involving classes that have not yet been taught, we can ask faculty to describe how the collection will be used in teaching. Our basic goal will be to have all projects completed except for final reports and the final stipends by the end of 2012.

Staff Development Committee.  The faculty videos are the one remaining project.  An Oberlin student is editing them.  Three videos are finished, two are in final stages, and three more are in the pipeline.  All schools are represented except for Kenyon.

Campus Updates.  Oberlin has recently hired a catalog department student assistant to assist with one project.  Mary just met with the Denison liaison librarians to review the status of projects and a timetable for reports from faculty and librarians.  Wooster is working to recruit two projects—one from the art department and one from the museum.

Deans’ letter of support for the next grant.  The deans will be meeting at Ohio Wesleyan on October 24 and will need to put together background information related to the letter of support for discussion with them at that meeting.  Ray summarized the points that need to be addressed in the deans’ letter.  We need to have an overall summary of how the current grant has changed campus climates.  It was agreed that each school will prepare summaries with specific examples and quotes from participating faculty.  The summaries, which can be based on project reports, videos, and contact with faculty, should be sent to Ray by October 12.  He can then develop a summary for the deans’ letter.

We also need to define the digital scholarship position carefully and we will want the deans to express support for the position, as we define it, in their letter.  Cathi mentioned an example of a digital humanities position at Yale that she will circulate.  She and Mark will draw on it to create a first draft of the position description.  We will share discuss the description with the deans at the October 24 meeting.

The background we provide the deans for the meeting will also need to get them thinking about the question of the grants’ impact on the faculty reward system and about strategies for sustainability.

New grant proposal discussions with staff.  Alan will trim down the précis of the grant that we sent earlier to Mellon—and we can use the shortened version in conversations with library staff to both inform them about and engage them with the new grant proposal.

Steering Committee Minutes August 21

Technical Infrastructure Committee update

• Needed to reschedule the TIC conference call meeting since they were scheduled for yesterday and the Omeka workshop precluded. Omeka and the Project portal will be one topic of discussion at the TIC conf. call
• The Omeka Workshop was a success -- about 20 people attended so more people now know what they are talking about with Omeka. They got a good overview of pedagogical uses by Mark Tebeau as well as better options for certain uses (e.g. WordPress). Erin Bell was there and gave more technical details for 1/2 the group
• Newspaper content is arriving steadily on or ahead of schedule—there are some bottlenecks in loading due to temporary upload file space at OL and upload speeds at some institutions. Catalina is babysitting all this.

Staff Development Committee update

• Catalina is continuing to work on the reflection videos with faculty and students talking about projects. The two completed reflections are at http://ohio5.org/omeka/videos

Campus updates

• All campuses are working on wrapping up NGL grants for December and the newspaper project.

Mellon proposal status & process going forward

• Mellon is looking for full proposal by Thanksgiving and, after reading the most recent précis, is willing to fund $775,000. The full OH5 proposal will be on the docket for March meeting. Will need to demonstrate sustainability and provide evidence of support in the form of a letter from CAOs. We will need to ask provosts and deans to think about how digital initiatives have been incorporated into tenure and promotion. Have digital projects been included as part of tenure review? Must demonstrate that digital projects have had impact on campus culture. Professional development for library staff is important.
• Basic one-page outline to share with staff and get their opinions on proposal. Their feedback would be helpful when we are drafting the full proposal.
• Use précis as outline for the full proposal and add detail where needed. Also add information about assessment, sustainability, etc. to flesh out proposal.
• Need to get a letter from Provosts in support of additional grant. Celebrate what has already been accomplished and imagine what will be accomplished.

OhioLINK

• Gwen Evans was named interim executive director of OhioLINK. Looks like things at OhioLINK could be heading in a good direction but not sure what future steps will be.

Other

• OH5 Board Meeting 12/12/12 (Same day as Independent Directors at OhioLINK). Full board meeting around 5:00, with reports.
• Kenyon’s president announced that this will be her last year.
• OWU will be getting a new CFO and new Provost in the near future. Searches are underway.
• Funding for ERM: Susan and Amy are in the process of writing up report/request to operating committee, telling them why we want to do this. Will tie the request to Sierra implementation. Cathi will work with Amy Fry on a potential ERM workshop.

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.

April TIC meeting

Notes have been posted on the TIC blog

Steering Committee Minutes April 12th

1) We've rescheduled the April 26th call to the 19th

2) Technical Infrastructure Committee update
•Meeting today at Wooster
•Have received a newspaper sample back and will hopefully make a final choice about scanning soon

3) Staff Development Committee update
•Planning a Summer Institute for June
•Working on the best way to create faculty videos

4) Campus updates
•Wooster
Has a new grant proposal to digitize images of women participating in sports, recreation, and physical education at throughout the history of the College.
Looking forward to the visit by Lisa Spiro and her workshop for Ohio5 staff for more information see the Events Page

•Kenyon
Approved a new proposal for a student poetry journal

•OWU
Working on the Virgil project as well as other projects.
Planning the Char Booth workshop

•Denison
Had a piece on the local news about the library's special collections

•Oberlin
Nothing to report

5) OhioLINK
•Talking about patron initiated recall with Innovative, technically this is hard. OhioLINK is working on coming up with a detailed spec of what they want to give to Innovative to decide if this is doable or not.
•Independent colleges are meeting with 2 year colleges to finalize report on reformatting of the task force
•Denison and others are having trouble with pick-ups and deliveries. Until the new service starts drivers are quitting and delivery maybe skipped at some schools- but the new service is starting soon.


6) CONStor
•Thanks to Ellen for her most recent report and her excellent work on this project. The project is going well though shelving still needs to be disposed of.

7) Summon
•Michael sent the full OhioLINK central catalog to Summon, not sure how long processing will take but hopefully it will be ingested soon.

8) CONSort
•Still have a conflict with batch loading records stopping the system. Mary and Michael will set up a way to run a test to quantify this problem then begin looking for solution.

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