NDSA:Content WG November 5, 2010 Meeting Minutes

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NDSA Content Meeting Minutes

Friday, November 5, 2010

Attendees (24):

Alaska State Library - Daniel Cornwall - daniel.cornwall@ALASKA.GOV
Alaska State Library - Glenn Cook - glenn.cook@ALASKA.GOV
California State Library - Kris Ogilvie - kogilvie@LIBRARY.CA.GOV
Division of Libraries and Information Services, Florida Department of State – Katrina Harkness (for Jody Norman - jnorman@DOS.STATE.FL.US)
Harvard University - Micah Altman - micah_altman@HARVARD.EDU
Internet Archive - Kristine Hanna - kristine@ARCHIVE.ORG
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives – Glen McAninch - Glen.McAninch@ky.gov
Library of Congress - Abbey Potter - abpo@LOC.GOV
Library of Congress - Abbie Grotke - abgr@LOC.GOV
Library of Congress/NDIIPP – Abby Smith Rumsey – abby@arumsey.com
Minnesota Historical Society - Robert Horton - robert.horton@MNHS.ORG

Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes - Michele Timmons - michele.timmons@REVISOR.MN.GOV
New York University - Michael Stoller - Michael.stoller@NYU.EDU
SCOLA - Deborah Rossum - drossum@SCOLA.ORG and her colleagues Rebecca and Brian
University of Louisville - Rachel Howard - rachel.howard@LOUISVILLE.EDU
University of Maryland - Jennie Knies levjen@UMD.EDU
University of Maryland - Mike Smorul toaster@umiacs.umd.edu
University of Michigan – Data-PASS - Amy Pienta (apienta@umich.edu) and John Weise - jweise@UMICH.EDU
University of North Carolina - Johnathan Crabtree - jonathan_crabtree@UNC.EDU
University of North Texas - Cathy Hartman - cathy.hartman@UNT.EDU
Wisconsin Department of Administration - Curtis Pulford - curtis.pulford@WISCONSIN.GOV

Minutes:

First order of business of was brief introductions by all participants. The group was then asked to review the list of Content Working Group (CWG) members distributed prior to the meeting to be sure that everyone from their institution that should be on the list is accounted for, and is subscribed to the listserv. Any changes should be sent to Abbie and Cathy.

Abbie gave a quick summary of the citizen journalism and community news meeting that had been held at LC the previous few days. Minutes from the meeting will be distributed to the Content Working Group once they are finalized.

Cathy referred to the Scope Statement document distributed prior to the meeting, which needs to be completed by our group before the December 15-16 NDSA constitutional convention. Discussion was opened up on the Statement of Purpose (what we will focus on).Although it was ultimately decided that we should determine our scope of work first, then come up with our statement of purpose, some of the ideas discussed were:

What are the challenges that we have, near term steps we can take, and low hanging fruit?
Do we need standards, tools? Best practices document – may be the closest we can get to standards.
Identify sources, see for any content what is the best resource for that.
How do we define culturally significant?
- One model for selection could be to use the criteria LC uses to pick out historically significant movies for collecting and preserving
- Academic libraries – culturally significant is what we define in our collection policies. It is usually fairly defined in what we collect. Natural to extend to digital realm.
- Difficult to define on a broad level when we all have very different collection strategies, policies.
Low hanging fruit – depends on our budget situations, re: what are we able to do. What are tangible outcomes, something where results can be shown.

Cathy and Abbie will work on a Statement of Purpose and distribute to the group for comment/feedback.

The discussion moved to the Scope of Work. We talked about the IdealScale ideas that had been submitted and voted on. (http://ndsa.ideascale.com/a/ideafactory.do?id=4760&mode=recent&discussionFilter=byids&discussionID=5347)

The top ideas were:

Identify At-Risk Content http://ndsa.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Identify-At-Risk-Content/26985-4760

Identify at-risk content or collections for preservation.

What specific types of content or collections are at risk?

If no one is currently preserving, how can NDSA work to ensure preservation?

Clearinghouse for information about potential collections http://ndsa.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Clearinghouse-for-infromation-about-potential-collections/27081-4760

Match orphan collections with appropriate trusted partner for access and preservation. Happens informally in present, could formalize as part of the role of the Alliance.

The group held a discussion on these two similar ideas. There are so many collections out there that we don’t know about, we must rely on others to tell us what is at risk. Some may know of at-risk collections, but not of organizations that can take care of them. Can we help pair at-risk content with curators/organizations as a part of our scope of work?

With born digital content, it is difficult to define what is at risk. There was a suggestion to compile what we are doing – a registry/directory of what we are preserving already (Post-Meeting Note From Abbie: This registry idea has recently come up again in NDIIPP and there may be some activity/project that we can work on to help build this registry). Some thought it might be easier to say what we are doing then fill in the gaps rather than to identify what we are not preserving.

The group discussed the resources/time it would take to identify collections at risk if we don’t have a systematic way of approaching the problem

The film preservation board and sound preservation boards were brought up as examples/models that we could look at and learn from. These came up with significant categories – historical significance, whether something was orphaned, and identified things that were about to disappear. They continued to solicit ideas for what to preserve from the “man on the street,” with board approval, which provided a consciousness-raising activity. The film board came up with hard and fast criteria – broad, but choices had to be justified.

We would need to come up with what we mean by justification. How do we select projects that are culturally significant? Maybe we think about it as how do we “select high priority projects to preserve” and talk about importance, value, and fragility as factors that go into prioritization – this approach is possibly less politically sensitive.

Cathy mentioned the nomination tool (developed at UNT for collaborative web harvesting projects) and thought that it might be adapted to meet our needs by allowing anyone to nominate at-risk content. Requirements could be determined by this group.

We talked about some of the other IdeaScale ideas.

The National collection (http://ndsa.ideascale.com/a/dtd/National-Digital-Collection/26986-4760) - what would be the scope, what are the categories? Examples include from the first areas of focus by NDIIPP: coverage geospatial, news, and public policy. There is a list of other topic areas to focus efforts on that Abbie will post to the wiki (once it is up and running).

A suggestion was made to have a phased approach to how we approach things. The group agreed that in order to build the national collection, it would make sense to work on identifying the at-risk content first and what’s being preserved already. Identify what’s out there, what’s being archived, what’s not, pull those together resources and coverage of topics to get the big picture.

So, start with one bit and then that will lead to other areas (including the national collection).

Abbie and Cathy will work on a scope of work statement for the group to review and approve.

Next up we talked about communications. It was agreed that the listerv, regular meetings, and a wiki would be useful tools. The wiki will be useful during conference calls, and to post documents, meeting notes, list of members, etc. Abbie will work on getting this set up.

Meetings – it was agreed that monthly would be fine for now, maybe later we will move to less frequent as work evolves.

Cathy and Abbie will poll everyone about a standing meeting time. 11am seemed to be a good time for all, including our Alaskan participants. We will plan to have full webexes for monthly phone calls so we can share documents, report out more easily.

-End-