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.

Steering Committee Update—Jan. 18, 2011

Present on call: Alan Boyd, Mark Christel, Ray English, Carol Holliger, Catalina Oyler, Susan Palmer, Mary Prophet, Deb Peoples, and Michael Upfold 

Notes by Ray English

1.  Technical Infrastructure Committee.  Alan reported that the agreement with Matt Rolf for the Interface Specialist position is being finalized.  He will have an initial appointment through the end of June, which can be renewed after that.  He will have a home base at Ohio Wesleyan and will also telecommute.  His schedule will be shared as soon as it’s established.  Catalina, Alan, and Susan are also working on guidelines for his work.

2.  Staff Development Committee.  The Staff Development Committee has been looking at various web-based training options.  They have paid for a series of ALCTS webcasts related to managing institutional repositories.  The webcasts can be viewed live on the origination date and will also be available online afterwards.  The first webcast – on on January 26 – will be at Oberlin and it will focus on copyright for non-textual materials in IRs. 

Catalina will also be doing metadata workshops at the individual schools.  These will be similar to the ones she did at Wooster.

3.  Collaborative Projects.  The group discussed what constitutes a collaborative project.  We agreed they would, ideally, begin with principals (i.e. the faculty) from two or more schools coming together to plan a project in advance.  But it was also recognized that collaborative projects will develop in different ways.  We will work to anticipate collaborative areas in advance.  The theater project from Wooster was approved.  It was also agreed that we would try to bring faculty from Wooster and Dennison together for a conference call, along with other faculty in theater at other schools who may be interested.  Catalina will develop a list – from her campus visits – of possible areas for more positive collaboration.

4.  Campus Updates. 

Wooster is receiving a proposal for a geology image database that illustrates geological change over time.  It will be reviewed next week.  They also have a February 14 deadline for new proposals.

Oberlin is expecting several proposals at the end of this week (January 21).  Catalina and Alan have worked on the format for scholarly articles in the DRC.  This should prove useful to other schools who want to load local faculty scholarly articles into their campus instances of the DRC.  Catalina has also worked on a methodology for batch transfer of citations from databases such as Web of Science into RefWorks and then into the DRC.  This may allow a much more efficient process of identifying both current and retrospective faculty publications.

Ohio Wesleyan.  A project – on the history of maps of Columbus – is close to approval.  Two more projects are in the works, one involving medieval manuscript leaves and another involving podcasts from a journalism class.  Catalina will be doing her metadata workshop there on March 18.

Kenyon.  Not much is new at this point.  A new round of proposals is expected sometime in February.

Denison.  Denison also has a call for new proposals in the works.

5.  Summon Discovery Layer.  Michael reported that all is going well with the implementation.  The Summon staff person who is coordinating the implementation has first contacted Oberlin, Ohio Wesleyan, and Wooster, since all three have A to Z lists.  Contact with Kenyon and Denison will follow.  Michael will be arranging a meeting of CONSORT staff to discuss the implementation.  The six-week timeline for the implementation started on January 5.

6.  Next Grant.  There was a brief discussion of whether we would want to start the process of applying for a next NGL grant.  It was agreed that we should first take a look at spending for the current grant.  We can then see if we want to do a one-year extension or apply for new funding.

Digital Collections and Metadata Webinars!

Interested in copyright and digital collections? Come learn more at the ALCTS webinar Copyright and Contracts: Moving Beyond Text in IRs hosted at Oberlin College. This webinar will allow attendees a chance to navigate the legal landscape of IRs with creative content, and intends to include time for audience Q&A. Find out more at http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alcts/confevents/upcoming/webinar/irs/012611.cfm

The Copyright and Contracts webinar is on Wednesday January 26th from 2-3pm and will be offered at the Oberlin College library. If you can't make it on the 26th a recording of the webinar will be made available.

To increase staff familiarity and knowledge with digital collections and metadata, the NGL Staff Development Committee is sponsoring webinars for Ohio Five staff. To find out about more upcoming webinars see https://sites.google.com/site/oh5nextgenerationlibrary/events.