Minutes- SUS Libraries Digitization Discussion Group

Actions Taken

SUS Digitization Discussion Group Charge

Reviewed charge of Committee as developed by Technical Services Committee. Group discussed the limited nature of the term 'digitization' to infer scanning of archival materials, and proposed an amendment to this term to also include electronic publishing project and course reserves. Members unanimously agreed to propose the following revised charge (additional content is marked between * asterisks *):

The SUS Digitization Discussion Group, serving as an instrument of the S.U.S. Technical Services Planning Committee, is a discussion and planning group of S.U.S. library staff who are engaged in or are considering digitizing projects *relating to preservation, access, and publication, in addition to electronic course reserve projects.* The Discussion Group discusses S.U.S. strategies for coordinated/cooperative projects, shared experiences, technical standards implementation, and archival storage specifications.

Group leadership

Group elected Erich Kesse as Chair and Gail Clement as Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect. Terms of office are to begin immediately and remain effective until October 1, 1998.

Group Home Page

Discussed status of Group home page which Erich has graciously developed and mounted temporarily at his own site (http://karamelik.eastlib.ufl.edu/SUSDigit/). Group requested that FCLA develop a permanent site for the home page on their server.

Discussion of current Digital Library efforts across the SUS.

FAU: Potential collections for digitization include their Judaica collection with brittle Yiddish material; the Livingstone personal papers; and the Davis (music) collection.

FIU: Already online is the Everglades Digital Library, funded by the National Park Service and the FIU Libraries. The associated database, Everglades Online, is up and running on FCLA, and FIU has submitted various grants for additional funding to expand the EDL with archival materials.

Also presented was a brief description of the FIU IBM Digital Library project now under development, a cooperative project of University Computer Services, the Libraries, and Instructional Media.

FSU: Potential collections for digitization include local plantation collections; special exhibits; newspapers; and selected books from McGregor Collection. The new Claude Pepper special library and research center is exploring sources for funding a web site project to develop an electronic finding aid with selected multimedia materials.

USF: Floridiana special collections; boys and girls books; Tampa area newspapers; recently received $100K grant from GTE for K-12

UNF: no digital projects underway at this time; expect to work on course reserves and courseware; history department materials; dissertations; and various other special collections at the Library, such as oral histories from Jax black community, Jax philanthropic community, '40s era photos, Sen. Matthews' papers, Jax black newspapers.

UF: currently involved in the Mellon-funded U.S newspaper project (serving as project coordinator), and have already scanned 1 terabyte of Caribbean newspapers. May do Florida Star from UNF or Florida Sentinel from USF next. Also doing Florida Geological Survey publications.

For future projects, will focus on areas of strength, e.g., juvenile collection; Judaica; Florida agriculture; Caribbean/Latin America.

Areas of concern for UF are cost-recovery and the possibility of selling CD's; copyright; and the status of unprocessed materials, such as the Floridiana collection.

Participants also reviewed the Internet II/FloridaNet proposal provided to the Group by Fred Koch at FIU.

Presented and discussed major digital library issues, standards, and resources:

Authentication
File formats, both open standard and proprietary
Metadata standards
SGML and TEI
Z39.50 and other information retrieval issues Burt Altman and Elaine Henjum to research useful Z39.50 sites to place on the SUS Digitization Discussion Group's web page.
Naming
Copyright issues:
Gail will distribute to each Group member by courier the a relevant handout from "School for Scanning". In addition, each institution is to consult with its university counsel as to copyright permission for placing digitized materials on the world wide web.
Privacy issues
Partnering with other institutions (see UF's web page on this at http://karamelik.eastlib.ufl.edu/repro/imaging/ebooks/partners.html) Workflow/production process

Topics not covered in detail, and deferred for a future meeting, include:

Dealing with vendors
Cost Models
Quality control and review-this will also be covered in future training provided or sponsored by members of the Digitization Discussion Group

Drafted a proposal and timeline for the Florida Millennium Project, a joint SUS Digitization Project.

The group will finalize the draft via e-mail, and the Chair will send a final copy to SUS Directors and members of Technical Services Planning Committee by October 31 (in advance of the Board of Directors Meeting in November.)

FCLA:

Elaine described the new "Electronic Reserved Client" which is an interface for getting materials on reserve.

Actions To Do

FCLA will provide a general description of the IBM DL software being installed.
FCLA will purse setting up a homepage for the SUS Digitization Group under the Tech Services Committee page; would provide access to Chair and Vice-Chair for editing and work in progress.
Vice Chair will investigate possibility of bringing in an outside expert in Digital Libraries to provide staff development opportunities for SUS Libraries.
FCLA will provide a report on their current capabilities and future needs to serve as a digital archive/repository. Will investigate requirements for refreshing; migration, backup; security; authentication.
Each representative will provided an estimate of total volume in bytes their institution expects to store at FCLA within 0-3 months; by 12 months; and by 36 months from the present. This will help FCLA determine statewide storage needs min the immediate and near-term. As an aid in calculating these figures, Erich agreed to post to the listserv a reference which translates number of pages into bytes for storage.

Respectfully submitted,
Gail Clement
Vice-Chair, SUS Libraries Digitization Discussion Group