Minutes 11.7.03

CDC Digital Collections TF

Our special guest this week was Meg Bellinger.

We introduced the group and she talked about things she is interested in pursuing ie. digital collections and selectors roles in them.

In the Integrated Access Council she hopes there will be a group to look at partnerships, such as when we license material for Proquest or other companies to scan or microfilm, are we getting a good benefit from this material? She is also interested in looking at how we charge for digital images across units at Yale.

She thought our committee should look at how we can develop content resources that cross format and resource lines, how we can add value to digital collections so its not just essentially a microfilm project. What are the advantages to digital resources? What do users want? How can we best navigate content and provide good learning/scholarship experiences with our digital collections.

In addition, our group could also monitor how Yale should be interacting with the rest of the digital library world. She talked about an initiative from the DLF that would involve collection development policies for digital libraries that would work with standards the DLF is developing on Deep Web Access (Sandy’s project is kind of Deep Web, because its getting down to the cell level). She saw us as looking for logical partnerships and monitoring developments in the digital library and scholarship worlds to position Yale to our best advantage.

We discussed how we shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel, that we can get a lot from other libraries.

Again reiterated that we should be looking toward a program not a project.

Perhaps some things should be centralized.

After Meg left we discussed some logistical issues, such as other units on campus we should invite to our meetings. We also discussed a few issues about selectors and their involvement with digital projects in general. Perhaps they need more information to participate in ELI projects, such as how much work is involved, what are the roles and expectations of selectors.

Next week (11/14) we will discuss what we’ve learned thus far from our guests. We can also continue to look at other digital projects and focus on what sorts of things we might want to concentrate on for our recommendations.