Coordinating Committees
Minutes, Digital Initiatives Coordinating Committee (DICC)
October 17, 2007 teleconference
Present - Joshua Ranger, Chair UW-Oshkosh; Paul Beck UW-La Crosse; Michael Doylen UW-Milwaukee; Michael Edmonds Wisconsin Historical Society; Peter Gorman UW-Madison; Carol Hagness UW-Stout; Mark Rozmarynowski UW-Baraboo; Vicki Tobias UW-Madison; Patrick Wilkinson CUWL; Paul Moriarty UWSA
Guest – Dorothea Salo
Call to Order: Chair Ranger began the teleconference at 10:00 a.m. Minutes of the Aug. 23, 2007 meeting of the DICC were approved.
DICC Action Items for 2007/2008: Ranger began discussion with observation that at this meeting we hope to finalize the action items that he will present as part of the DICC report to CUWL at their October meeting. CULW has no set range for the number of action items it expects from the four coordinating committees but 4-6 action items are a reasonable amount. Ranger had presented the DICC with four recommendations for action items in Handout #2 for today’s meeting and the committee began discussing those.
1. Develop a Comprehensive Digital Plan and deliver to CUWL, October 2008.
This is our top priority as it will help fulfill Priority #1 of the DICC Charge from CUWL: “Develop a comprehensive digital plan.” We need to identify the whole universe of activities going on in UW System. We will also need to inform CUWL of our assessment efforts in determining what UW faculty, staff, and students want. Originally, the date for reporting was July 2008 but after discussion in was changed to October.
2. Develop user focused assessment and research and development program for the UWDC, deliver to CUWL, July 2008.
This will be an ongoing project. A question was raised about shifting resources in UWDCC to work on this recommendation. UWDCC has enough projects for the next 18-24 months to keep them busy. If this recommendation is adopted, perhaps some of the anticipated assessment work could be outsourced. UWDCC does outsource some formats, such as EAD and microfilm. UWDCC could also push back some projects they’ve already adopted and not be as aggressive taking on new project s, possibly even skipping this fall’s call for new proposals. UWDCC can look at the workload and strike a balance between system and local-funded projects.
New proposals may not be considered in next production cycle. We want to maximize the input of collections into UWDC to please our users. As this is part of our strategic direction, no one should object. This year should be devoted to planning; get data by middle of next year.
Question was raised about including MINDS@UW in this assessment project due to their limited staffing. It was decided to strike the phrase, “and the Digital Repository staff,” from the first sentence of the description.
3. Develop a multi-part strategy for the enhancement of the MINDS@UW program to be delivered to CUWL, October, 2008. We want to develop this multi-part plan to enhance MINDS@UW. In the end, we want a set of suggestive services. We could organize a meeting later with all the campus representatives. Establish a Digital Repository Working Group with Dorothea Salo as chair as outlined in the Action Item. We will also add a line that the working group will contribute content to the comprehensive plan.
Discussion about the meaning of the CUWL Strategic Direction, Objective 1.3, “Determine the role of the institutional repository.” Don’t we first need to determine the role before formulating these action items? Instead of the verb “develop”, should it be define or determine? What are the ambiguities of the word “role”? Are we passive acceptors or active collectors? Yet, we don’t want to lose track of determining the role. To give us more time to ponder and for assessment, we will change the reporting date for Action Item #1 from July to October 2008.
4. Develop best practices guidelines for the digitization and preservation of “off-lined” digital content delivered to CUWL, April 2008.
These best practices guidelines would be for materials that are not good candidates for on-line digitization efforts. This could be for born digital items or older media that are candidates for digitization in an off-line environment. Developing such guidelines could jump start a discussion on 20th century material conservation, which is a UWSAC concern as well. We could ask people from outside UW-Libraries or UW System to join this group. The main audience for these guidelines is ourselves.
Volunteers responsibilities:
1. Develop a Comprehensive Digital Plan and deliver to CUWL, October 2008. Josh Ranger, Michael Edmonds, Peter Gorman, Pat Wilkinson (advisory role), and the Repository Working group created in #3.
2. Develop user focused assessment and research and development program for the UWDC, deliver to CUWL, July 2008.
Vicki Tobias
3. Develop a multi-part strategy for the enhancement of the MINDS@UW program to be delivered to CUWL, October, 2008.
Dorothea Salo (chair), Patrick Wilkinson, Michael Doylen, Carol Hagness, Mark Rozmarynowski
4. Develop best practices guidelines for the digitization and preservation of “off-lined” digital content delivered to CUWL, April 2008.
Josh Ranger, Paul Beck, Michael Doylen
Status on UWDCC projects approved in August
Vicki Tobias reported that the microfilm from Tony Gulig project has been sent off to OCLC for digitization and they expect to go live in January. The UW-M EAD project is up and going. UW-M has hired a former student to work on it. They expect to begin work on the Gay Peoples project in November. The next intake of UWDCC proposal would be in January and the DICC would appraise those in April.
December meeting: The next meeting of the DICC will be in-person and is set for Wednesday, Dec. 5, beginning at 9:30 a.m. and will be held at UW-Baraboo.
Meeting adjourned: 11:00 a.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Paul Beck