Minutes, June 12, 2009

Maryland History and Culture Collaborative (MHCC)
Thurmont Regional Library, Frederick County, Maryland
June 12, 2009

Attendees:

Aiden Faust (AF), UB
Alison Foley (AFO), St. Mary's Seminary and University
Bill Cady (BC), EPFL/SLRC, Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage
Barbara O'Brien (BO), McDaniel College
Doug McElrath (DM), UMCP
Elizabeth Howe (EH), Washington County Free Library
Jan Danek (JDA), MDHS
Jill Craig (JC), Western MD Regional Library
Jennie Levine (JLV), UMCP
Jennifer Neumyer (JN), UMES
Kelly Spring (KS), JHU
Lauren Alexander (LA), Montgomery County Historical Society
Lindsey Loeper (LL), UMBC
MaryJo Price (MJP), Frostburg State University
Mary Mannix (MM), Frederick County Public Library
Nadia Nasr (NN), Towson University
Nancy Perlman (NP), Loyola Notre Dame Library
Rich Behles (RB), UMB HS/HSL
Robin Emrich (RE), Columbia Archives
Rob Jenson (RJ), Montgomery County Historical Society
Rob Schoeberlein (RS), MD State Archives
Rob Shindle (RSH), UB
Tim Baker (TB), MD State Archives

I. Brief Introductions

II. Wiki Update (Lindsey Loeper)

The wiki is a collaborative space and a centralized website for the group.  It includes new user instructions.  The software is hosted by UMBC.  The idea is that each participating repository designs its own content to be added to the Repositories section of the wiki.  The original goal was to have each institution create their repository page by the January 2009 meeting.  To date, 17 organizational pages (some with multiple department listings) have been created. 

Since the group had talked about replacing the MHCC blog hosted by UMCP with the wiki, there was a question about creating RSS feeds.  To clarify, RSS feeds are possible to set up. 

Jennie has created a listing of everyone on the MHCC listserv as a resource within the wiki.  This list includes the full name, email address, and institution for each person. In order to access this listing, you must be logged in to the wiki (it is not available to the public).

The digital projects group has a web area on the wiki.  It is a space for building resources.  As a reminder, group pages can be limited to non-public in the settings.

A "vendor page" has been set up using lists of resources developed at UMBC and through the MHCC list serv.  The purpose is to share "hidden lists." Members of the group are encouraged to add contacts they have positive experience working with.  Currently, the list includes contacts for AV digitization, offsite storage, and shredding companies.  RJ offered to add a list of conservators to the vendors' page.

LL suggested a wiki page for grant opportunities to put up links to funding agencies' websites and to specify deadlines.  She encouraged feedback and suggestions for the wiki as a shared space. 

JL praised work on the wiki so far and noted that the level of participation has been good. She wanted to know if the group was prepared to discontinue the blog as previously discussed.  RJ asked if the front page of the wiki publically accessible, to which members of the group responded in the affirmative.  It was agreed that JL could take down the group's previous blog.  LL reminded everyone that the wiki has a "news" section that can act like a blog, which allows linking and tagging of entries.  Step-by-step instructions on how to post are included. 

LL reported that there have been some questions about listing "formats" within the repository pages.  LL reminded the group that very few institutions have every format type in their collections.  The format listing on the repository template is meant to highlight what places DO have.            

RJ asked how many user IDs have been created for the wiki.  LL said approximately 25. College Park and Johns Hopkins members can log in through the Common Login, which allows institutional logins.  JC had not been able to get the RSS feed to work through Outlook.  LL offered to contact UMBC's IT department.

III. Advocacy (Doug McElrath)

DM reported on the MHCC's history as an advocacy group, citing instances where the group wrote editorials to the Baltimore Sun and made calls to the Maryland Historical Society during a time of layoffs and budget cuts. The MHCC has also been following recent news reports on the disposition of the Baltimore City Archives, and received a report at their summer 2008 meeting by AF, a University of Maryland student who wrote a paper detailing the history and current status of that institution.

DM reported that there have been additional layoffs at the Maryland Historical Society and that the Library's staff is much diminished.  He suggested that the MHCC might form a subgroup to speak to the MDHS for clarity on the situation.

RS reported that he has been appointed to the MDHS Library Committee, the role of which is to advise accessions and de-accessions and to help find funding for the library.  The MDHS is currently searching for a new Library director.

DM asked for clarification about the relationship between the MSA and the MDHS based on language in the Strategic Plan posted on the MDHS website.  He suggested that people interested in working on the MHCC Advocacy Group contact him and over the summer they can indentify places for advocacy across the state.

RS reported that a small portion of Baltimore City Archives materials have been transferred to the MSA, including the mayor's papers, city council reports, etc. Its collection MSA SC 5511 and it's described in the catalog online.  It is freely accessible, with no restrictions.

The Baltimore City Archives itself has moved to a new location at 2615 Matthews Street in Baltimore City.

IV. Information Sharing

MM reminded the group that Saturday is Barnstormers day.  The Frederick County Landmarks Foundation had trained docents there, as well as artists painting pictures of barns.  Frederick County Landmarks Foundation also runs Schifferstadt [Architectural Museum], so they need support. 

AF [note taker] deferred to RSH for the update from UB.

BO announced McDaniel received an IMLS grant for the James Thomas Ward diaries.  Ward was the first president and cofounder of McDaniel. They will conserve seven diaries by disbinding and keeping the casings.  There is a possibility of digitizing in the future.  The diaries cover issues from his domestic life as well as his professional life, particularly about starting a college.  

RSH highlighted a few staff updates.  Siobhan Hagan is an IMLS intern from NYU.  She lives in Frederick County and will be working at UB this summer on an inventory for the WJZ film collection.  They also have an AmeriCorps volunteer from MICA working on the Baltimore Neighborhood Heritage Project.  These digitized and transcribed tapes will be added to the materials already online.  And AF is moving into a full time state position doing metadata. 

JC detailed a recent PNC Foundation Legacy Project grant for research on the economic and social development associated with the C&O Canal. Half of the canal is in Washington County.  There are also events in the library.  At Williamsport and Ferry Hill there will be experts giving presentations on archeology and cultural tourism related to the canal.  They are working with the National Park Service on the project and have Park Service oral histories on the website.  This is the 150^th anniversary of John Brown's stay at a hotel in Hagerstown, where he signed in under the name Isaac Smith. They are having an event about his stay in Hagerstown. 

MJP reminded the group that JC recently received a Maryland Preservation Award from the Board of Trustees of the Maryland Historical Trust.

BC reported that the Maryland Capital Improvement Program collection went online a month ago. It is a three-volume set with 259 reports and photos. The collection has great photos that really show the city.  DM inquired about the dates associated with the collection and BC said 1954-1955. 

BC added that MDCH is moving ahead with more posters from WWI and WWII.  The Enoch Pratt digital collections on Edgar Allen Poe are also expanding.  297 photos from the Great Fire are in process.  They were never published and only a few were exhibited.  In the near future, they'll be working with with Flickr Commons to digitize and display the WPA photos online.

RB announced two anniversaries coming up at UMB HS/HSL.  The school of social work turns 50 in 2011 and the library turns 200 in 2013.  He is working on a database for genealogy research to compile data from old college catalogs from all of the health sciences schools.  The centralized Access database will eventually allow for online public searching.

RJ wanted to know if the database will point to records in collections.  RB said there could be notations for cross-referencing.  Right now the entries are brief statements with biographical facts about each student.  Although it is not online yet, it is a great resource even now for searching.

DM announced that UMCP's 1869 Sachse's Bird's Eye View of Baltimore color lithograph will be on display very soon.  It had been in North Carolina for the last twelve months being conserved.  It should arrive at College Park next week.  It will be displayed on the wall of Hornbake's reading room in a museum-quality frame.  It is good timing, since they have a Civil War exhibit coming up in 2011, and it is a Civil War-era picture.  It had been rolled and varnished.  The conservators needed to wash it and piece it together.  It was a massive project that took over their lab.

KS reported that JHU Homewood has a new collection hopefully on the way.  They already have the papers of Laurence Hall Fowler, but are in the process of getting the records of the Roland Park Company.  At the Evergreen House, they have the Garrett papers.  John's papers are processed and Alice's papers are being processed this summer. As far as staffing, Margaret Burri was promoted.  She is the Head of Research Services now.  They have a new rare books curator, Earle Havens.  The rare books assistant, Heidi Herr, is going to UVA's rare books school this summer and to library school at College Park in the fall.

RS reported that Special Collections at the MSA is digitizing the Maryland Writers Project collection.  They are also working on a WPA photo negative collection by Malcolm Wolter, which is in the catalog but not publically accessible yet.  They're also interested in digitizing forestry collections.  They have a new Department of Natural Resources collection, 25 boxes from Fred Besley, the first forester of the state. They also got more Schaefer albums to compliment their existing collection, and 12 to 15 boxes of auxiliary material from Rosewood Hospital.  RS also reminded the group that Charter of Maryland Day is June 20^th in St. Mary's City. The state charter will be displayed in the Old State House and guarded by Maryland State Police.

TB reported that the MSA is working on a facilities master plan to build a new facility.  The current facility was full in 2000 and they've been using adjunct warehouses to deal with the situation.  They are also currently scanning their microfilm collection and conserving the art in the State House.  The State Archives is the custodian on the state's fine art collection. Ed Papenfuse is the secretary of the State House Trust.  The Old Senate Chamber is being deconstructed to return it to its style from 1783. The Maryland Historical Trust and the Department of General Services are hunting for images for this preservation effort. The Old House of Delegates Chamber is being rebuilt in its style from 1878.  This Sunday at 2pm is the Flag Day celebration at the State House.  The governor will unveil the revised version of the John Shaw flag.  The DAR and other groups helped fund the commissioning of the new flag and the new podium for the governor made from the Wye Oak. 

TB reported that in terms of IT, they are working on disaster recovery and business continuity planning.  They want to purchase a new enterprise content management system that will operate 24/7 and do automatic OCR and convert to web-ready formats.  TB also reported on last year's SNAP grants and announced that anyone interested in digitization grants, there will be more information to follow.

 [Break for Lunch]

MJP was looking to speak with other lone arrangers in the group.  Frostburg is working on a Maryland coal mine mapping project.  They have partnered with the mining companies and community. There will be a book in conjunction with the project on underground Western Maryland mining companies.  MJP asked the group questions regarding: weeding/de-accessioning policies, dealing with unlabelled and undated materials, storing framed artwork, and microfilm for the Cumberland evening and morning Times.

DM reported that only the evening edition of Cumberland's paper was microfilmed as part of the Maryland newspaper project, completed in the 1980s.  TB says the MSA is making a commitment to scan everything from that project over the next five to ten years. 
MJP also reported having an intern processing two collections.  In anticipation of the 200^th anniversary of National Road, they have a project working with GPS mapping of Braddock Road West. 

LL reported that UMBC has two projects going public this summer: ContentDM and PastPerfect.  In ContentDM, there are 11 collections and 8,000 images and PDFs.  In April, they began to partner with the Library's web librarian, Janet Hack.  They're also using PastPerfect for all of the non-cataloged material that previously existed in multiple Access databases. They will use PastPerfect and PastPerfect online for a centralized search tool to make photos, maps, university publications, comics, and pop culture material more accessible.  They are also finishing a finding aid for the Baltimore Sun financial records (1837-1986) and selected labor records (1930s -1950s).  It includes some correspondence between Mencken and the Writers' Guild.  UMBC is also getting a vault.  They will have a poster collection on exhibit this fall.  They also had a recent gift of Peggy Fox photographs from the Patapsco Valley and Heritage Greenway, Inc.  A book signing for Ali Kahn and Peggy Fox's new book, Patapsco: Life Along Maryland's Historic River Valley, is being planned for the fall of 2009 at UMBC.  In addition, they received an extension of funding for their part time project archivist for another year, through 2010.

DM inquired about the Baltimore Sun and who might acquire large amounts of additional material that might be available soon.  LL cited a large collection of Sun materials already at UMBC.  There was a discussion of copyright and permissions to exhibit photographs online.

NP reported working on a ContentDM image database and discussed item level description.  They are watermarking 1,000 images right now and she asked the group about batch cataloging.  She said Notre Dame was the first Catholic women's college to provide a four-year degree and its unique history ought to be more widely known.  They also have a collection of 400 fore-edge paintings from the 17^th and 18^th centuries given by Henry J. Knott.  NP discussed issues related to online public access to information from private religious archives. 

EH said that the Western Maryland Room of the Washington County Free Library is hoping to renovate soon.  She distributed brought fliers and cards. They are working on the Doleman African American museum collection in Hagerstown.  Mary Beth Corrigan is their contractor in Kensington.  This project means spending a lot of time at the Doleman residence.  The African American history it documents focuses on Washington County but also goes beyond, to a national scope. 

JN announced working on the Thomas Wiles photo negative collection of over 14,000 negatives. Wiles was the campus photographer from 1951 to 1989.  Work on the project includes cleaning, re-housing, and loading the images into PastPerfect.  They want to scan photo prints as well.  There are three staff members on the project.  JN also announced an exhibit, UMES in the Pros, with football photographs and memorabilia that were collected from former athletes. 

LA introduced herself as the part time temporary archives assistant working with RJ on the Montgomery County Gazette digitization project. 

RJ updated the group on the digitization of the Gazette using prison labor.  He reported the process is slow and they have reduced the sample set because there was too much redundancy.  The current rate of scanning is only 200-300 pages per day.  Since operator time is the biggest factor, they are being more selective in which materials are chosen for scanning.  Inmate turnover and lock-downs in the prison have hampered the project's timetable.  So far they have a database with 1996 in it and they are working backwards.  The Gazette has been referring their public reference inquiries to MCHS. Reference requests to the stored loose newspapers is extremely labor intensive, so there is a proposed $50 per newspaper fee for pulling papers from storage.  They also discovered their software was not generating files in uncompressed TIFF format as previously thought and are currently waiting for a response from the software developer.

TB recommended a company MSA works with and offers to provide their contact information.  It is the iScan division of Humanim, Inc., out of Columbia.  They are opening a location in Baltimore, in the renovated American Brewery.  NP inquired about the scope of their services. TB reported they have good capabilities and technical staff.  The company will work with you on the scope of the work. 

RJ discussed their method of transferring data out of the prison and their budget for the project. MM asked how they choose what to scan. RJ explained that originally they scanned everything - all 18 editions.  Now they are doing the front 40-60 pages of each edition, up to the "Our Town" section.  They are looking for the unique content that is not duplicated across all editions. It is possible to isolate the unique information per edition.  They scan one edition per date all the way through - the Gaithersburg edition, which is the flagship paper, when they have it complete.  Then they scan bits and pieces of others. 

RJ also reported that the Montgomery County Archives will need to move in October or November to a temporary location while repair work is done.  The County has also been developing requirements for a renovation of the spaces within the building. The renovation, if funded, will require a second complete move of the Archives and return.

JDA is in her first semester of the archives program at UMCP and is doing a practicum at St. Mary's Seminary archives.  She asked the group if the Baltimore County Historical Society has an archivist. After some discussion, the group cannot reach an answer to the question.

AFO reported processing across the board and a lot of researchers.  She is also a docent at the Mother Seton House where the Sulpicians are building an official spiritual center on Paca Street.  It will be a new building with exhibits, opening in September. 

NN said she had one new full time library associate and a renovation underway at Towson.  The renovation and expansion will include a dedicated research room, dedicated processing space, and updated storage with a separate climate-controlled HVAC system.  An 80,000-volume library and rare books collection from Baltimore Hebrew University will move to Towson.  They are working on a few collections right now, including the records of the Center for Excellence on the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, Human Rights, and Tolerance, and the papers of Paul Hawkins Grant, 1946-49. These are war tribunal records from twelve U.S. trials - transcripts and correspondence that document the trial process. Volumes previously digitized in 2004 will be moved into ContentDM. 

RE reported that the GGP, which bought the Rouse Company, is in bankruptcy.  They are currently redeveloping Columbia and the preservation of a Frank Gehry building is in question.  Maps, photos, and other records in the building are also in danger of being lost.  The ninth annual BikeAbout happened in May.  There were close to 200 attendees, even in the rain.  There is a book signing tomorrow for Oh, You Must Live in Columbia! We are busy before the Columbia Festival of the Arts.  For this year's History Day, Howard County sent several students for a project on Rouse, which won a special award.  As far as digitizing, they will look into Humanim.  She also asked the group a question about using dpi versus ppi for scanning.  JL and BC recommend ppi.

RE also mentioned a new blog for their newsletter.  There was a question of whether or not to allow comments.  RJ recommended screening them, since the only reason not to allow comments is spam.  NN explained that the software should notify you to log in to either approve or not approve any comments.  TB agreed that screening is worth the effort.  NN suggested thinking of the blog as a pilot project or requiring users to register instead of anonymous commenting.  JL asked who is currently using a blog at their institution.  Only LL answered in the affirmative.  She reported it does not get many comments.

RE said 2017 is the 50^th birthday of Columbia.  They want to build-up to the anniversary and are considering re-creating the major steps the Rouse Company and Jim Rouse were took to make Columbia be a reality, starting around 1961 through to the opening in June of 1967.  They would like to reenact the 1963 Rouse speech, "It Can Happen Here".

JL said UMCP is continuing to update the  online version of the Maryland History and Culture Bibliography.  The version received from the Maryland Humanities Council stopped in 2002.  Anne Turkos has updated the online version to 2003. This summer, two assistants will bring it up to the current date.  They may consider adding links to full-text documents cited in the bibliography at a future date.  Jason Speck started a new blog called Archival Attractions at UMD.  It has mostly football-related entries.  They are also involved in a collaborative mass-digitization project with PALINET, now Lyrasis, through the support of a Sloan Foundation grant.  On their digital collections website there is a link to our "Internet Archive Portal."  From there you can access selection from our yearbooks, 1897-1970 and course catalogs, 1859-1945.  Out of the 1300 total pledged books, they have 650 to go. They are also available by going directly to the Internet Archive and are searchable by volume.

JL reminded the lone arrangers to send messages to the reflector if they had projects that required assistance.  MHCC has done projects in the past, including clearing newspapers from the prison.  TB noted that conservators have set up a similar worldwide network for emergency situations.

JL said there was no more time in the meeting to split into our subgroups.  AF asked everyone to review the draft of the meeting minutes that he would distribute to the listserv.  NN suggested each member submit their contribution to the information session in advance of the meetings to make taking the minutes simpler.