Management Council Minutes - November 7, 2007

Present: Jim Aagaard, Lori Arp, Stu Baker, Beth Clausen, Frank Cervone, Russ Clement, Charlotte Cubbage, Scott Devine, Stacey Devine (for Catherine Grove), Peter Devlin, David Easterbrook, Jeffrey Garrett, Kay Geary (for Roberto Sarmiento), Alex Hernandez-Herrera, D. J. Hoek, Scott Krafft, Harriet Lightman, Lucy Lyons, Katie Melody, Bob Michaelson, Laurel Minott, Sarah Pritchard, Patrick Quinn, Suzette Radford, Clare Roccaforte, Denise Shorey, Andrea Stamm, Claire Stewart, Robert Trautvetter.

Introductions

Frank Cervone welcomed Bob Trautvetter in his new position of Coordinator of Desktop and Lab Support. He will now be a member of Management Council. Roxanne Sellberg introduced several visitors.

Announcements

Clare Roccaforte made the following announcement:

The Library Web Services Group announces the following speakers as they explore the next generation of library resource discovery tools. This series of speakers to address the advancements in library tools such as AquaBrowser, Primo and Encore. We welcome the participation of all interested staff and strongly encourage your participation. Please come and take part in the discussions about the future of our library’s electronic delivery systems.
November 13, 2007 | 2-3 pm | Forum Room

Elisabeth Long, Co-Director of the Digital Library Development Center at University of Chicago, will speak about U.of C.’s decision to acquire AquaBrowser, and the methods they used to initiate major technological changes from the public services point of view. November 27, 2007 | details TBA

Marshall Breeding, Director for Innovative Technologies and Research at Vanderbilt University Library, will speak broadly about the technological changes facing academic libraries today.

Jeff Garrett made the following announcement:

The Festival of Maps began at Northwestern this week with three significant and complementary exhibits. First, our principal contribution to the Festival of Maps is the online version of "16th - Early 20th Century Maps of Africa" at www.library.northwestern.edu/govinfo/collections/mapsofafrica , which has been available and internationally very successful since early 2007. Second, Chieko Maene, Beth Clausen, and Clare Roccaforte are principally responsible for a splendid new exhibit in the corridor of Main Library, putting on display the original historical maps used in the digitization. And finally, in the 2East Digital Projects Gallery, we have on display framed prints created from the digital files, showing how perfectly the digitized maps recreate the historical originals, but also how these digital files can be returned to a paper format with virtually no loss or degradation in detail, texture, and color.

Numerous individuals and departments have contributed to the success of Northwestern's contribution to the Festival of Maps. In addition to Chieko, Beth, and Clare, Scott Devine, Kitz Richart, and the staff of the Conservation Lab helped install the maps on the main floor and make sure everything has been exhibited responsibly. Scott Krafft and Special Collections staff have made available several important items from Deering. And Claire Stewart prepared a stunning 3-minute film loop on the digitization project itself, now being shown at the AT plasma screen in the Informations Commons. The work on the 2East Gallery exhibit was done primarily by AT staff: Jon Fernandez, Chris Wallace, and Harlan Wallach, with labels created and installed by Kim Specht, the new administrative assistant in Special Libraries.

David Easterbrook made the following announcements:

When an exhibition goes up in the University Library and the content is Africana everyone assumes we in The Herskovits Library are responsible for it. We have received congratulatory comments from students and faculty about the exhibit as well as email inquiries from local residents who became aware of its existence in the Festival of Maps articles in last week‚s Tribune. I also should add that we have already this week talked in Africana with visitors to the exhibit making use of the őFestival of Maps‚ brochures and insignia, who come to us for more. We in Africana are grateful to all involved in mounting this exhibition for presenting this aspect of NU‚s Africana collections in such a spectacular manner. We are telling everyone who congratulates us we are not the responsible parties. This exhibit also is giving us the opportunity to publicize the current exhibit in the 2E gallery and distribute the brochure.

Yesterday Africana hosted the visit of two librarians from East Africa who have been in the U.S. for a month under the sponsorship of the Mortensen Center for International Library Programs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Frederick Lugya of Makerere University Library in Uganda and Faraja Dnumbaro of the University of Dar es Salaam Library were accompanied by Tiger Swan of the Mortensen Center. A highlight of the visit was the handing over of a copy of an important manuscript document in Ugandan history of Mr. Lugya. The 300 page typed copy of the Buganda Lukiiko archives, 1894-1918, was copied with a typewriter in the 1960s with permission of Makerere Univeristy by NU professor of history John Rowe (now retired). During the looting of libraries and archives at the time of the Idi Amin regime, this document was lost. Prof. Rowe‚s copy was microfilmed by the Cooperative Africana Microfrom Project at CRL and the manuscript was prepared for handing over to Mr. Lugya by our Conservation Lab. Mr. Lugya is taking back to Uganda not only Prof. Rowe‚s copy but also a copy of the microfilm. Northwestern and CRL hold copies in the U.S. I am very pleased that Sarah Pritchard was able to join with us in the handing over as was anthropology Professor Kearsley Stewart who is a Uganda specialist.

Stu Baker made the following announcement:

I am pleased to announce that as of November 1, 2007 Steve DiDomenico has been transferred into one of the two new full-time Senior Information System Architecture Engineer positions (Repository Programmer) in Library IT. As our Senior Web Developer, Steve has a solid background with FEDORA and the other pieces we need to build our digital infrastructure.

Steve has worked in the library for 5 years and cumulatively for 7 years at Northwestern. He has worked on many of our digital library initiatives including the Curtis Images site, Archival Collections (EAD), African Maps and Transportation Menus sites. Steve has also played key roles in the Library web site redesign, Metalib/SFX and Web Single-Sign-on systems. While he was a Web Developer in NUIT's TSS (Technology Support Services) department, he was the lead developer working on projects such Plan-It Purple, the Server Status web page, and VPN deployment.

While Steve will continue to wear his "Webmaster" hat for a little while we anticipate posting and filling his former position very quickly. This is a great opportunity for the library and for Steve. Please join me in congratulating Steve.

Minutes

The minutes of the October 17 meeting were approved with Sarah Pritchard’s corrections.

Administrative Committee Report

Jeff Garrett previously distributed the minutes of October 15 and 29. They were corrected to read that Lori Arp and John Blosser did not attend the October 22 ARL meeting on “New Ways of Measuring Collections.” Bob Michaelson asked two questions on the October 29 meeting. He questioned the concept that we had loss of library fine revenue. Sarah replied that the statement came from a boilerplate of University questions, and that the Library’s revenue is in fact a wash, since we received a windfall of money coming to NUL due to the NUIT costing model switching to the enterprise model. Bob also asked about last year’s enhanced funding request for chemistry. Sarah replied that last year, the University gave the Library a block of money, and that we chose not to put the money into chemistry. Other areas had a higher priority, e.g., East Asian collection. This year, we will not resume the chemistry initiative. Our targeting is somewhat focused: the need must be tied to “front burner” academic priorities from University administration. We are targeting Middle Eastern studies, environmental studies, and international economics/management/marketing. Theses are more areas of “need” than of “excellence.”

Departmental, Committee and Task Force Reports—CIC Google Project Update (Suzette Radford and Google Planning Team)

The Google Planning Group recently completed a Google Readiness Survey where NUL was asked to provide information such as number of barcoded items, number of cataloged items, as well as to identify collections of distinction and unique holdings. They identified Africana, Transportation, dissertations and theses, and some law materials.

We expect our most distinctive collections will include a high enough percentage of unique titles that it will prove most cost effective to pull and digitize the entire collection. The CIC Google Collections Team, with NUL representative Lucy Lyons, is looking at uniqueness within CIC WorldCat collections that have been named on the Readiness Survey. We have sent a sample set of 100 records to Google and we are now preparing the full file to send to Google so they can conduct a collection analysis of the collective CIC holdings. We believe that they will also compare holdings across other Google partner libraries. The assumption is that the CIC library that goes first (that will not be us) will have the most number of books to pull for scanning. Serials and multi-volume sets will be included in this project.

Google will digitally scan and make searchable both public domain and in-copyright materials in a manner consistent with copyright law. In addition there will be a shared digital repository run by the CIC of public domain books scanned by Google and perhaps other CIC-scanned and shareable materials.

Time line: the CIC project is probably 6 months away from when the first library sends their books out to Google. When we find out where we are in the sequence of CIC Libraries we will gear up to hire at least 3 temporary workers and probably purchase a forklift.

See the SharePoint Site, Google Planning Team for more information, documents and meeting minutes. Stay tuned for an all staff information session early next year, e-mail updates, and Management Council progress reports.

Sarah added that she received two new relevant documents at the CIC Directors meeting she attended last week. They are a timeline and communication plan, and are at a high level of generality. They will be posted at our committee’s SharePoint site. We will transmit our full database with the exclusion of some locations (to be determined). Google may now be interested in adding music to this project. The irony here is that NUL’s distinctive music collection is largely under copyright. The physical format (size) may also be an issue for Google.

Quiet Areas in Library (Laurel Minott)

Laurel reported that Public Service department heads determined we need four types of space for library users: social areas, quiet study, library service areas, and group study. Examples were given for each category. She asks departments to think about which designation(s) is/are appropriate in your area, and let her know how many “quiet study” signs you will need. It was agreed that we need to create a map of group study spaces. Laurel noted that group study spaces can be reserved for timeslots after 5pm. David Easterbrook noted some areas have no available group study space at any time.

University Librarian’s report

The Board of Governors meeting occurred about two weeks ago. Sarah mentioned the successful presentation of “a day in the life” of the Library. The still images may be made into a Podcast with a yet-to-be written narration. It will go up on the Sharepoint site.

Sarah also created a “Digital library at Northwestern University” handout for the BoG. This is meant for external constituencies, as a way to show people our broad range of digital activities: collections, services, operations, technical infrastructure, etc. Please forward corrections and feedback to Frank Cervone.

The BoG endorsed the list of purchases presented to them in priority order. The list will be distributed soon. It includes print, e-resources, and for the first time, two digitization projects.

Sarah reported on the CIC Directors meeting of October 30-31. See above for the Google project report. They also discussed the shared digital repository, and agreed upon a governing structure and memorandum of understanding. These two documents will now go to CIC counsel for review, then to individual university counsels. Michigan and Indiana will develop the server architecture and offer the repository for digital archiving. CIC participants will also sign an agreement about the repository contents (separate from the server architecture). This dual level structure means that if at a future date we wish to go to another vendor with our contents, we will have the right to do this while still continuing to agree on the nature of the shared content. Since the initial repository costs are less than under the earlier governance model, the CIC will be investigating using this to invest in the creation of access and user tools, which will not be part of the basic repository offered by Michigan and Indiana. They also began discussion of additional non-Google content to the shared digital repository, to try to develop rules for inclusion.

Concerning the status of CIC initiatives, they discussed licensing issues and the impact on staffing at the CIC headquarters; the nature of a scholarly communication program; what should we build as a consortium? what should we build locally? what are the costs for both?
The next CIC conference for librarians will take place May 12-13, 2008 at Ohio State University. The topic will be e-science and the role of the research library.

The Qatar contract has been signed. NU admissions and student services will be first priority to get set up and begin operations. Library space does not need to happen until winter/spring quarter. The IT work will be difficult because of the geo-political environment.
Jay Walsh has been appointed Vice President for Research. He comes from the McCormick School of Engineering. Sarah will develop a list of topics that may represent collaborative opportunities with the Library, for example faculty education to address open access and copyright questions.

Strategic Planning Discussion

Sarah is pleased with the feedback she has received thus far on the draft strategic plan. She has given the draft version of the document to the Board of Governors and former provost Larry Dumas. She has a meeting scheduled with Jean Shedd, Associate Provost, to discuss the document. The version we have seen is intended as the “medium size” of 3 possible versions. (Clare Roccaforte will work on a shorter version for donors; the longer versions will be internal documents for library department-level planning.) When the final version of the document is submitted to campus authorities, it will also include the following appendices: a new organization chart; statistics; acronym and definitions list; a short discussion of the process; and the proposed outline of space planning. We should discuss this document within departments now. Can we use it as a framework to hang our internal department goals? Please send comments or suggestions to planning@northwestern.edu, or to Lori Arp. What is missing? Redundant? Confusing? Too verbose? Does it convey a greater emphasis on collaboration across campus? Does it help with decision-making and prioritizing as well as conveying the modern library? Frank asked if it should make mention of greening (environmental issues)? Sarah will talk about the strategic plan at the all-library meeting on November 19. She would like to receive comments by Thanksgiving. Everyone who works in the Library should have at least two ways of shaping the strategic planning goals (e.g., NULSA, Assembly, Management Council, division meetings, department meetings, etc.) We can expect a revised document in mid-December. It will be updated annually thereafter.
New Business

Roxanne Sellberg announced that the topic of retrieval of table of contents keywords from linking fields in the Voyager database will be on the next MC agenda.