Present:
Susan Graham (Chair)
Lynda Aldana
Tom Beck
Joe Clark
Michelle Flinchbaugh
Steve Jones
Lindsey Loeper
Vicki Sipe

Steve Jones has replaced May Change as the LITS representative; Janet Hack is on vacation and Gergana Kostova will be joining the DCT upon her return from maternity leave.

Charge language, from an e-mail from May Chang, 6/2/2009:

As noted in my second email to all staff: "The group will help develop and expand the Library's digital collections and promote greater faculty and student use of this resource."

This is the basic charge for the group. It is meant to be broad so that there is room for production level (metadata, scanning, etc) to PR activities to new ways of looking at digital collections, national developments, etc. The group will help decide and implement priority projects taking into consideration campus needs and budget/staff constraints. All the items listed in the wiki fits the charge and still have room to have a broad range of activities related to digital collections. With any of the projects, it would be useful to inform LEC and have feedback especially where it impacts campus or have potential implications that the group may not be aware of (the LEC members in the group can be the conduit).

May discuss developing, expanding, or revising the language of this charge as necessary; group agrees it is not a priority and that MC's language is fine.

Project Updates and Demos

1. Photography collections and interface of CONTENTdm
http://contentdm.ad.umbc.edu/
Janet Hack, Web Services Librarian, and Gordon Potter, Special Collections student assistant, customized the interface.  Kenny Huether added a PowerPoint plug-in that allows direct import of images to PowerPoint.  A feedback button is available that sends an email form directly to speccoll@umbc.edu.  Gordon also added a bookmark and share plug-in that connects to an email, browser bookmarks, facebook, twitter, delicios, google, and over 50 more applications.  There are 5 photo collections all of which consist of jpegs that were scanned several years ago before CONTENTdm; hope to rescan at least Hine to capture the information on the backs which is unique to our holdings.  Currently scanning the Hughes Collection, 8x10 in. glass plate negatives of scenes of Baltimore.  Students are scanning, including 2 students from BMS; they scan and enter basic metadata information from the Hughes housing.

Question: Is Digital Collections title too braod?  Would this be confusing to users because of other digital items offered by Library and UMBC at large (example: e-books).  We should also specifically identify as being from the Library to distinguish from New Media, maybe by adding name to banner.  Need to consider our termonology.  Susan will set up a place on the wiki to collect examples of language used by other colleges and institutions.  

2. Metadata
Working on the structure of the Hughes metadata; currently setting up production for copy catalogers. Reviewing the Hine metadata; currently title is caption and as display - caption to be moved to note and a brief title will be provided if not available. Will upgrade and standardize metadata for collections as developed or rescanned. Developing a genre listing for photographs.
Data dictionaries would be a good project to standardize across the collections, such as which fields should be searchable or displayed to the public. There is a draft data dictionary made by Michael Johnson and Linda Seguin (available here: I:\Committees\Contentdm\Metadata\Data Dictionary draft.doc).

Question: Is CONTENTdm training available? Specifically for administration and infrastructure.

3. Slide library
Contains 100k slides, 83k records in database (and digitized slides). Run log in through USMAI, advanced search is available with drop downs for standardized terms. The jpegs are .5MB. May be at a point where all the highly used slides are included, scanning is slowing down; prioritized scanning according to class requests. The only progress would be updating the metadata. Before updating or adding to CONTENTdm we need to evaluate the use (example: statistics?). Adjuncts are the highest users, about 6 per semester. ARTStor is an alternative but it is not supported by the Administration.

Question: Should the slides be added to CONTENTdm? Would need class level permissions for access (should be possible). Rights are very important when working with the digitized slides.

English has requested streaming Shakespeare productions and the department found funds to purchase; productions will be linked through USMAI and Blackboard. This may lead to more digital a/v requests.

4. Digital Repository
There are many format options, for example NCSU (yearly citations, faculty can submit files). Suggested format in 2008 by May Chang and June Yang is more like a bibliography, citations with links to database or faculty can provide pdf. Should we expand this to research materials that are available in archival formats? Research materials would include informally published items, non-standard formats, raw data, 3D presentations, new media formats, reader commentary (peer reviewed) - need to consider how or if we would be archiving and preserving these formats or just providing temporary access. Can solicit from departments and select several departments to serve as a test project. The test projects would inform which platform we would use, if we need combo link or full service archiving, can we put articles in CONTENTdm. Suggestion to speak with Terry Owens at DRUM (Digital Repository @ UMD). What resources would the Library provide for this project? What do the departments and faculty even require or what would they accept?

5. PastPerfect Online
18-20 Special Collections databases combined into 1 search interface. Example is the Jewish Museum of Maryland. We can customize the interface to some extent, including which fields will be displayed and searchable. The records will link to images/files in CONTENTdm (if available). May consider a federated search (combining PastPerfect, CONTENTdm, USMAI, Slide Library, etc).

6. Omeka
Web exhibit templates. Requires Linux so DoIT will not support it, maybe in the future. If not, then we should consider designing templates.

We will need to have another meeting soon to discuss goals and charge, move the 2nd part of agenda to next meeting. Scheduled for June 17th.