BC Digitization Coalition
June 22, 2011
3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
SFU Harbour Centre
| Present: Allan Bell (UBC Library), Courtney Mumma (AABC), Lynn Copeland (Canadiana), Anita Cocchia (BC ELN), Simon Neame (IKBLC), Kate Russell (VPL), Mimi Lam (IKBLC), Brian Owen (SFU Library), Alissa Cherry (UBCIC) | ||
| Telephone: Brenda Smith (BC Historical Federation) | ||
| Apologies: Heather Daly (BCTLA), Erica Hernandez (UNBC) | ||
| Agenda Item | Summary | Action |
| 1. Welcome and introductions | The Coalition welcomed Courtney Mumma to the group as the new Archives Association of BC representative. | |
| 2. Chair’s report
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Since it has been a while since the last meeting, Simon updated the group on events and activities that have taken place since March. Simon and Mimi did a presentation at BC Library Association Conference titled “Best of Digital BC: Digitization Around the Province”. There was a really good turn out at the session and there were lot of interesting questions. Simon has taken on the new role of Director of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. He gave some background about his new portfolio as Director. Since his portfolio is extensive, he will step down from his current role as Chair of the Coalition sometime later this year. We will add an agenda item for the next meeting will be discussing the process for electing a new chair. | Mimi will ask the Portal Working Group about their process of evaluating options for the search portal and share with the group. Discussion on process for electing new chair on the agenda for the next meeting. |
| 3. Coordinator’s report
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Mimi provided a report on her activities since taking on the role of Coordinator for the Coalition. She shared some statistics collection about the website since its launch. There has been a steady increase in the number of visitors, and average time spent on the site. It is also interesting that the majority of traffic is coming from Google and the second source of traffic is direct use of the URL. The most popular pages are the homepage, About the Coalition, Digitization Resources and the WBTW web portal page. Mimi has also been involved in promoting the Coalition through community engagement activities. She co-presented with Simon at the 2011 BC Library Association Conference and co-presented with Marc Saunders at the 2011 Beyond Hope Library Conference. In addition, Mimi has worked closely with Jessica Bushey at Artefactual to develop and design the DCB workshop/demo. She is hopeful that she will have the opportunity to give DCB workshops in the near future. Recently, Mimi has drafted the funding proposal and implementation plan to begin carrying out the recommendations of the Portal Working Group’s Final Report. Since acting as the Coordinator of the BC Digitization Coalition is only one aspect of Mimi’s position as Community Digitization Librarian at the IKBLC, she updated the group on other projects that she is currently working on: BC History Digitization Program, Indigitization Project (Collaborative project with BC First Nations) and Chinese Canadian Stories Project (Community Historical Recognition Program). | In the future, minutes will be electronically approved immediately following the meeting. |
| 4. Funding proposal (draft)
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Mimi gave a brief overview of the funding proposal and then opened up the discussion to everyone to provide feedback and comments. Several Coalition members noted that the annual hosting fee was not included in the proposal. This was done deliberately to simplify the proposal to reflect only one-time costs. A suggestion was made to eliminate the cost ranges and simply present one amount since funders are usually just interested in the bottom line. Also, if there are extra funds remaining, it could become a contingency fund for unexpected expenses. It was also noted that HST is not included in the price quotes and a proviso should be added to the document. A suggestion was made to rename the ‘Potential Partners’ section to ‘Current Partners’. The potential use of this document as a communications tool and its public relations value should be considered. The intention of the document is to be a targeted proposal which will then be accompanied by a letter from the Chair of the Coalition. The proposal needs to be inclusive enough to attract enough funders to hit the targeted amount ($35,000). Another suggestion was made to create different levels of funding to attract more funders, perhaps as a next phase of a funding strategy. |
Coalition members should send feedback and comments to Mimi ASAP to expedite the process Mimi will remove “potential partners” and rename to “current partners” The funding proposal will be accompanied with a letter from the Chair of the Coalition Initial funding recruitment will start with a select group which will be broadened as needed |
| 5. Implementation plan (draft)
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Mimi gave a brief overview of the draft implementation plan and then opened up the discussion for feedback and comments. There was a suggestion that the Letter of Understanding with Canadian should be moved up in the timeline. However, Canadiana has expressed a willingness and interest in working with the Coalition so the Letter of Understanding should not be difficult to attain. Also the timeline should be extended until March 2012 to stay consistent with the 6 month time frame for the two contract positions. A section on reporting should be added to the document to clarify reporting procedure for the contract staff. There was discussion about which organization could potentially host the contract staff. The group will discuss this issue at a future meeting. | Coalition members should send all feedback and comments to Mimi ASAP Mimi will revise and send back out to group for approval Courtney is interested in joining the Technical Sub-Committee |
| 6. Canadiana Update
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Lynn gave an update on Canadiana. There are currently 65 million image records (metadata) in the database and there will be more from Eastern Canada (BANQ). Canadiana is also running an Early Canadiana Online (ECO) digitization project (CRKN). In terms of subscriptions to ECO, Canadiana is looking forward to negotiating with a regional group that would subscribe for a consortium of smaller groups. Recently, Canadiana.org is rated as one of the top 150 family genealogy websites. | |
| Next Meeting: Late September or early October | ||