Reports

1. Meetings held (virtually and/ or face-to-face)

   The Digitization Task Force held its first meeting at the Boston Public Library on November 19, 2003. The team discussed the charge and brainstormed ways to complete the action items. The first order of business seemed to be the identification of collections at BLC institutions that would be a good fit for a collaborative project. To do this, the team felt it was necessary to meet face to face with representatives from those institutions. To plan such a meeting, the team held a conference call meeting on January 5th, 2004. The team decided that meeting with representatives from each institution directly after the Annual Celebration would be the best way to get a large number of attendees.

   Due to the postponement of the BLC Annual Celebration, the team rescheduled the meeting for February 10th, 2004 at the Boston Public Library. We also had a teleconference on February 4th, 2004 to discuss the report. Barbara Preece indicated that we could send her information we gathered at the meeting; she will present the information to the Management Council meeting on February 12th, 2004 and the Board meeting on February 28th, 2004.

2. Activities/Accomplishments to date (list or summarize): Action Item #1
   1. Scope of pilot project determined - the team decided that initially, content discussions would focus on identifying collections falling within the topic of the U.S. Gilded Age (1877-1914). This topic was chosen because it is broad enough that most, if not all, of the BLC institutions will have collections relating to it, and because it is of interest to possible funding agencies.
   2. Meeting with representatives from BLC institutions - the team contacted the BLC Board of Directors and asked each director for the names of archives, special collections, and digital projects staff members at each library. The team also asked directors if their libraries had collections that may fit within the Gilded Age theme. The team received responses from 15 institutions and compiled a list of 49 contact names and at least 34 possible collections. The team sent email to all the contacts inviting them to a meeting following the Annual Celebration, and created an agenda for that meeting. Originally scheduled for January 28th, the Celebration was cancelled due to inclement weather. The task force has rescheduled their portion of the meeting for Tuesday, February 10th, at the BPL.
   3. Agenda for the February 10th meeting:
      
      i) Welcome and introductions - Jennifer Varney
      ii) Background -- Heidi Abbey
      (1) The BLC Digitization Task Force Parts I & II
      (2) Charge of BLC DTF Pt. III
      iii) Introduction to proposed PILOT project - Greg Colati & William Ross
      (1) Gilded Age (why chosen)
      (2) Consortial nature
      (3) Funding
      (4) Timeline
      

      (a) January-April 2004: Task Force develops proposal, holds workshop
      (b) Late Spring-Fall 2004: grant writing by BLC Grant Writing group
      (c) Spring 2005: grant proposals submitted
      (d) Summer-Fall 2005: win grant!
      (e) 2006-2007: carry out project
      

      (5) Look forward: The final product
      iv) Discussion
      (1) Gilded Age - are we going in a good direction? Do you have collections that fit this theme? - Greg Colati & William Ross
      (2) Technology / Infrastructure - centralized content host vs. distributed model - Susan Pyzynski & Sarah Tudesco
      (3) Funding - possible funding agencies - Susan Pyzynski
      v) Workshop - What do you need? - Jennifer Varney
      
      
3. List of COI's with which you communicate

   To date our communication has been email via the BLC office to the Board of Directors, or directly to the contacts identified by the directors. In the future, particularly to promote our one-day workshop, we will communicate with several COIs including Digital Library and Staff Development.

4. Requests
   1. Funding
      Nothing at this time; however, the team expects to have a request soon for a small amount of money for our one-day workshop.
   2. Resources
      The task force expects to continue using BLC resources for conference calls and other logistical support.
   3. Board/ MC queries
      The task force may develop some questions after the February 10th meeting.
   
   
5. Next Steps
   After the meeting on February 10th, the team will hold a short meeting to begin working on Action Items 2-5.

1. The Digitization Task Force held the meeting with Special Collections/Archives and Digitization representatives from each institution on February 10th, 2004 at the Boston Public Library. (See attached list for attendees.) The meeting was to discuss the charge of the DTF III and to brainstorm for specific project proposals.

   The results of the meeting were illuminating and eye-opening. Representatives at the meeting had strong feelings and concerns about the charge, particularly the order of the action items. While all the representatives are interested in a collaborative effort through the BLC (and commended the BLC for taking the initiative), there is a strong feeling that the infrastructure and standards must be built first. To achieve this, representatives recommended that the first BLC digitization initiative be a collaborative EAD (Encoded Archival Description) catalog, thus integrating and providing access to a vast number of "hidden" collections in BLC institutions.

   EAD is a descriptive metadata standard sponsored and supported jointly by the Society of American Archivists and Library of Congress. It has been widely accepted nationally and internationally as the de facto standard for archival description. Moreover, it is employed as the metadata standard for many collaborative digitization and access projects, as with California Online Archive (http://www.oac.cdlib.org/). It is a particularly valuable metadata standard in that links to digital facsimiles can be embedded directly into the EAD-encoded finding aids.

   Models for collaborative projects in EAD catalogs already exist; a notable local example is the Five Colleges Finding Aid Database (http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/index.html). Grant funding for such projects is available. Mellon, NEH, and the IMLS are three examples of funding agencies that are interested in EAD-based access projects. This project would also provide a foundation for future grant-funded digitization projects.

   An EAD catalog would provide a standardized descriptive framework that all BLC institutions could use and contribute to. The catalog would establish a standard metadata system that all the participating BLC institutions would use, with the BLC setting the best practices and standards in EAD creation, thus ensuring interoperability, integration and access to BLC collections. For example, the BLC community could discover all archival materials relating to Boston architecture that are held in BLC libraries using just one search. An EAD online catalog would enhance access to the BLC's special collections in the same way the Virtual Catalog has enhanced access to the BLC's regular collections. In many ways this project would take advantage of current strengths of the BLC, creating a unified catalog of BLC materials, while positioning the BLC with the infrastructure and standards in place to move forward with new initiatives.

2. List of COI's with which you communicate

   To date our communication has been email via the BLC office to the Board of Directors, or directly to the contacts identified by the directors. In the future, particularly to promote our one-day workshop, we will communicate with several COIs including Digital Library and Staff Development.

3. Requests
   1. Funding
      Nothing at this time; however, the team expects to have a request soon for a small amount of money for our one-day workshop.
   2. Resources
      The task force expects to continue using BLC resources for conference calls and other logistical support.
   3. Board/ MC queries
      The task force looks forward to a response to the proposal for building an EAD Online catalog.
   
   
   
4. Next Steps
   
   Action Item #1
   • The DFT III recommends that the first BLC digitization initiative be a collaborative EAD (Encoded Archival Description) catalog.
   
   
   Action Item #2
   • Standards - The DTF III would next need to determine the standards used for EAD finding aids. There are several guides to EAD "best practices" use as models, including RLG's "EAD Best Practice Guidelines". A template to help BLC libraries create EAD finding guides easily and to the agreed-upon standards would also need to be created. Also needed is the ability for automatic creation of MARC collection-level records from EAD finding guides, loaded into the appropriate BLC library's OPAC and thus creating a link between the BLC Virtual Catalog and the BLC EAD Online catalog.
   
   
   Action Item #3
   • Technology - The major technology components needed are for this proposal are: a EAD search engine (proprietary or open source) for display and indexing, a centralized server to host the search engine software on and possibly the EAD finding guides, a converter tool to convert older finding guides into EAD format, and possibly a harvester to automate EAD retrieval from BLC library servers. This technology could be funded, at least partly, from a grant.
   
   
   Action Item #4
   • There are several granting agencies interested in supporting collaborative EAD projects, including Mellon, NEH and IMLS.
   
   
   Action Item #5
   • The workshop is to be a moderated discussion about the proposed EAD online catalog and what steps the BLC and its members would next take and create a specific plan and timeline on what this would entail and what the grant should include. We would bring in an outside expert to moderate the discussion. Fro this workshop we would develop a specific "business plan" to be the foundation of a grant proposal. A tentative date of April 2004 is proposed for the workshop.