Minutes

Update on progress of collection information:
As of 5/13/04, we have heard back from all but five institutions. Our list of collections that fit our five possible projects is quite long!

Gathering information about collections:
The task force brainstormed a list of questions about the collections in order to gather more specific information about those collections that are going to be included in the recommendation to the Board. Our task force may ask these questions if we have time, otherwise we will recommend that the next task force do so.

Five project topics:
The task force looked at the five project topics and the collections identified so far for each one, and brainstormed the pros and cons of each project.

• Women and Women's Issues:
  • Pros: Very strong, many interesting collections, could start small and get bigger, could separate into many different subsets, overlaps with Social Action, could link up with Harvard's "Women Working" project
  • Cons: copyright issues, very broad, possibly not very original - we would need a new slant on the topic, overlaps with Social Action, Harvard may have already carved out this niche, so the BLC should do something else
• Social Action/Movements:
  • Pros: Very strong, many interesting collections, could start small and get bigger, could separate into many different subsets, incorporates many different groups (not just women) and time periods, overlaps with Women and Women's Issues, an area of historic regional strength
  • Cons: copyright issues, very broad, overlaps with Women and Women's Issues
• New England Environment:
  • Pros: More contemporary, possibility of corporate sponsorship, important for K-12 audience, adds a non-humanities topic to our set of projects, plays to regional strength & interest in the sciences
  • Cons: Not as broad, legal issues, copyright
• Campus Newspapers
  • Pros: solid and important, all academic libraries have them and want to see them digitized, no-brainer, scope is easily defined = the project has a beginning and an end
  • Cons: Non-academic libraries could not participate, question of microfilming along with digitizing?
• Children's Literature
  • Pros: Nice niche idea, appealing to K-12 audience, possibility to partner with publishers, probably more collections out there that we don't know about yet
  • Cons: Not as strong or coherent as other ideas

All of the projects seem to be useful to a wide audience. Based on this discussion, the task force made a preliminary ranking of the project ideas. The group decided that Wednesday, May 19th will be the deadline for receiving collection ideas from other institutions: ideas received after this date may not be included in the final report. Eileen will be responsible for keeping the master list of projects and collections.

Other topics: standards, technology, funding:
Sarah Tudesco will gather information about standards and send it out to the group. The task force had a discussion about technology and infrastructure options. In general, the task force felt that it could identify various options, but that the final decision would rest with the BLC Board and office based on existing BLC models. The task force had a question about funding: how far are we expected to go with this topic? Eileen will touch base with Barbara Preece about this.

Barbara Preece talked about an opportunity to speak to Mark Sandler (who prepared a short digitization proposal for the BLC). He will be speaking to the collections group and Barbara offered to try and coordinate a lunch meeting for the digitization committee. Everyone agreed that this would be valuable.

Barbara also spoke about the ARL proposal to digitize federal government documents. She has proposed that the BLC be a partner in this endeavor. This may affect our project choices; the committee may want to de-emphasize document collections since these may be identified for a different project. Heidi mentioned that UConn was currently in discussions with the ARL to provide documents for this project.

We also discussed the MODeL conference many of us attended on Tuesday, April 27 in Falmouth. We were especially interested in the discussion of sustainability and growth.

The group participated in a brainstorming session to identify themes we can present to other BLC members.

• EAD Finding Aids - High priority
• Alternative Press Collection - A collection that has high demand
• Phyllis Hirsch Collection of Children's Literature
• Environmental collections?

• Institutional Publications (student newspapers, songbooks, catalogs, etc.)
• Ann Whitney (Sculptor, 1821-1915) unfinished biography and related correspondence.
• Government documents (specifically documents related to the Women's Bureau).
• Documents related to the House Un-American Activities committee
• Census tract maps
• Create pre-1990 data sets from government publications
• Elbert Collection of books and documents related to slavery (special collections)
• Paintshop Pond Clean-up. Although it includes papers related to current litigation, some earlier documents may be eligible for digitization.
• Kindergarten movement books

• Rare books and manuscripts from 14th-15th century
• Institutional records & faculty papers
• History of computing
• History of radar
• Architecture & Urban Planning collections (some related to Boston Harbor)
• Architecture Journals (Pre-1900) - Many of these are brittle and have already been microfilmed. But students prefer digitized journals to microfilm.
• Environmental issues (government documents, manuscript collections)
• New England Mills
• Civil engineering collections related to New England waterways
• Linguistics collections (have a significant collection of audiotape that would be an excellent candidate for digital preservation)
• Railroads
• Sports
• 1st Women's architecture firm in Boston (2nd in the United States)

• Clara Barton's correspondence (pre-Civil War), working with the Clara Barton Birthplace Museum in Oxford, MA.
• Small collection of rare books
• Worcester District Library including materials related to the Worcester District Medical Society, founded in 1794.

• Urban Harbors - Judge Mazzone's papers related to the Boston Harbor cleanup case.
• Papers related to the Boston Female Asylum / Boston Children's Aid Society (records from 1800).
• Institutional records - Mass Media (student newspaper)
• Vietnam war materials

• Amy Beach (Composer) manuscripts - Published first symphony written by a woman.
• Government documents
• Clamshell Alliance (Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant materials)
• Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests
• Fly-fishing collection
• NH Contra dance records
• Naval shipyard
• Hockey collections

The group divided up the remaining institutions. We will contact them and ask them if they have any digitization candidates that may fit in with the themes we've centered on (Women & Women's Issues, Environmental Issues, Social Action in New England, Institutional Documents (Student Newspapers), and Children's Literature.

We will attempt to contact these institutions and flesh out our project ideas by next Friday (5/7/2004).