Digital Library Working Group

Minutes: July 2, 1998 [DRAFT]

Present:

Gail Clement, Chairperson; Dr. Miller, Sherry Carrillo, Mayra Nemeth, Vicki Grahame, Jennifer Fu, David Goldsmith, and Heidi Lowry.

Old Business:

David Goldsmith reported on his progress with electronic/paper reserves. For now the electronic reserves will be stored on University Computing Services SOLIX machine. Sherry Carrillo, Mayra Nemeth, Beverly Paden, Olga Figueredo, and David Goldsmith met in early June to revise the paper reserve process. The decision to use unlinked item records and the consolidation of the reserves request form will facilitate the processing of electronic reserves. David Goldsmith will come up with a list of admini strative questions that need to be resolved for implementing the electronic reserves. David Goldsmith will work with Sherry Carrillo about staffing electronic reserve machines. It was reemphasized that there is no relationship between the IBM Digital Li brary and the electronic reserves.

New Business:

Gail Clement informed the DLWG members of her meeting with Gabriel Yanni and Tim Walker of the IBM Digital Library group. Through the meeting they tried to determine what procedures it would take to put materials through the IBM process, the library p rocess, and to come up with a new cataloging process. They determined the cataloging process works well with a hierarchical structure. The Environmental Studies collection will be used to test the new cataloging model.

Gail Clement provided the group with 3 handouts. "DLWG Agenda: Where are we now?," "Provenance of Electronic Resources," and "Proposed Digital Library Process."

The agenda included a possible vision statement, the purpose of the DL (to improve what we do and introduce new services,) how we proceed, who does the work, and when we can expect results. All of the issues need to be answered on a project to project basis. The Provenance handout listed different ways that the library may obtain the material (or access to the material) and how it may affect the processing work flow.

Gail Clement took the DLWG through her proposed 10 step digital library process:
1. Intake/Analysis
2. Development Acquisition/Disposition Plan
3. Digital Conversion Plan
4. Conversion Process
5. Storage
6. Develop or Enhance Access Aids
7. Assemble Collection
8. Test & Refine
9. Release to Public
10. Update
Gail's proposal is meant to be a "birds eye" view of how the process takes place. Each step of the process contains different issues that need to be addressed. Mayra Nemeth was interested in using a similar process for dealing with additions to the Libr ary Web page. During the discussion on digital conversion, Gail mentioned that outsourcing may be the most cost effective way to digitize materials. David Goldsmith and Vicki Grahame were interested in coming up with a work form that will track all elec tronic resources from collection development-- acquisitions-- processing-- cataloging-- access-- updating. David and Vicki will investigate other universities who use work forms for electronic processing. The metadata captured from the work form could b e placed in a database that the library could use to keep track of all aspects of a electronic collection. Other issues brought up during the process discussion were-- bibliographic instruction, statistics, and general responsibilities.

The DLWG tried to come up the "perfect" tracking solution. Some of the elements were:
1. Integrates with NOTIS
2. Minimal number of fields which are easy to classify
3. Handles Web sites and other resources to be cataloged
4. A notification feature to automatically alert when action is necessary
5. Different workrooms dependent on the "level" of the item
Gail mentioned that it would be possible to expand on the tracking database existing for the Everglades Digital Library. During the next meeting the DLWG will think about and decide a more formal way to track the process.

Mayra Nemeth brought up the cataloging of architecture slides for the IBM DL. The slides are already digitized on CD-ROMs. The images need to be mounted on the DL server and records need to be created in both the DL Blue Angel database and the library N OTIS database. Gail Clement mentioned that the IBM DL require records to be formatted in the DL's own metadata model developed by Kass Evans. Tim Walker and Gabriel Yanni said they cannot merge different records into the IBM DL database, but can link to them through Z39.50 standards. Also cataloging for the IBM DL can not be done remotely. Dr. Miller and other members of the DLWG were concerned about the existence of multiple databases for the digital libraries. Gail Clement indicated that there may be some differences between Kass Evan's current model for the IBM DL and the possible model for the FIU Libraries. She suggested that the DLWG members meet with Kass directly to discuss the model in detail, and offered to contact Gabe Yanni asap to schedule such a meeting. Dr. Miller stressed the point that we need to have any of the databases compatible with each other. Sherry Carrillo said that this is a technical issue that will be resolved.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:00 p.m. The next meeting will be held on 7/29/98. The DLWG will try to meet with Gabriel at the IBM DL if possible.