RE: diglib: DCC Minutes - Nov. 20, 2006

["Mark Watson" <mrwatson@uoregon.edu>]

Corey:

Thank you for the excellent minutes.  Obviously, there was a good discussion
of the issues.  The conclusions reached by the group are very similar to
those that surfaced in the analysis of the small group discussions.

 * We need better coordination
  * We need a group to perform the selection function
  * If the DCC is to fill these roles, it needs to change
  * We would need an Admin. representative, at least in the beginning

We need to tackle each of the points above as we move forward.  For my part,
I believe the DCC is valuable and necessary.

Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-diglib@lists.uoregon.edu
[mailto:owner-diglib@lists.uoregon.edu]On Behalf Of Corey A Harper
Sent: Monday, November 20, 2006 5:45 PM
To: Diglib
Subject: diglib: DCC Minutes - Nov. 20, 2006


I didn't manage to catch everything, and had trouble writing when I was
talking.  If anyone has any additions or corrections, please post them
to the list.
-corey

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

DCC Meeting Nov. 20, 2006
Minutes:

Attending: Corey, Faye, Kate, James, Julia, Lori, Sara, Bob, Mary,
Lesli, Eliz, Nathan, Normandy

Updates:

Corey: Last week, Corey, Kate, Erin, Heather, Lesli & Ron met to discuss
needs for storage and management of born-digital resources such as
electronic records and stock photography.  The group discussed long-term
infrastructure needs for this kind of content, but also identified
short-term solutions for a subset of these resources.  Heather has
requested Ambrosia space for getting these resources off of optical
media when they are brought to her.  While concerns regarding storage
space were brought up, the group agreed to setting up an Ambrosia
project for these materials and monitoring the impact on MSU capacity.

Agenda -

There was only one agenda item: The role, charge and future of the DCC.

The remainder of the meeting was spent on this discussion.  The need to
re-evaluate the function and charge of the DCC has become clear based on
the outcome of the MDLS / Digital Library Program discussion groups that
took place in October.  Prior to the meeting, Mark's summary of those
discussions was circulated off-list to diglib subscribers.  Many
comments in those forums addressed DCC directly, and many of the other
recurring themes addressed DCC roles as outlined in the group's formal
charge.

To start the conversation, Corey identified 3 themes that may or should
(or should not) be part of the DCC role in supporting the Digital
Library Program (DLP):
  * Coordination, guidance and selection for the DLP
  * Communication and dissemination of information related to the DLP
  * Detail-focused DLP implementation issues

In the past 6 months to a year, the DCC has become overly focused on the
third, to the exclusion of the other two very important roles.  Notes
from the ensuing discussion follow.

**************

In all of the MDLS Focus Group meetings, a surprising number of people
had never heard of the DCC.  Of those who knew of the group, most didn't
know it's function or purpose.

There was discussion of how this relates to the earlier e-resources
group that was established a decade ago to discuss issues related to the
new area of acquiring electronic resources.  Anyone could attend this
group, and it engaged in a mix of selection, display issues, and policy
discussions.  Implementation was then dealt with in individual departments.

The selection process was to get things up and running.  The same
transformation of library functionality is happening here.  There is a
need to integrate workflows and ensure consistency.  The work doesn't
need to all happen in one unit, but needs to be coordinated.  There
needs to be more explicit strategic planning related to the overarching
digital library.

The MDLS discussions indicate that there was a desire to set priorities
early, but ad-hoc project development left no time for coordination.  In
the meantime, various units projects and collections were excluded,
resulting in a disservice to our patrons.

There is a need for subject specialists to be involved in the selection
and prioritization process, although the DCC focus on implementation
discourages meeting attendance.

Also, the process is unclear.  The DCC was never advertised as a group
to evaluate digital projects and get them into a queue.  It's been
unclear that this was part of the DCC charge.  If the DCC is going to
take this role on, there has to be a mechanism for ensuring that small
projects with immediate priority don't drop too far down the queue.
Also, subject specialists may not have fully articulated projects, but
still need to be involved in the discussion.

Also, there's a very large issue of publicizing the various roles that
groups play in terms of digital collection development.  Image Services
needs to be more visible to the library as a whole; ISC's availability
to support development of digital library projects that are important to
others has to be publicized.  Is it the DCC's role to help with this?

Do we need two groups?  One for selection and a second for
implementation?  What is the relationship between these groups?  How
much overlap is acceptable?

There was little consensus on this point.  Some thought that strategic
planning and scalable policy and guidelines serve to preclude the need
for an implementation group.  Also, there was a feeling that another
group means more demands on people's time, given the likelyhood of much
overlap in membership.  However, publicity is important, and
implementation needs to be in place in order to have something to offer
for outreach.  The file naming conventions the DCC has been working on
was offered as an example of this need.

There needs to be a process, established workflow for getting a
particular digital collection or project going, and support from
administration to allow the DCC to set priorities if that is to be this
group's role.

One proposal included the idea of continuing to keep both roles
(priority setting / implementation) in the DCC, but set up an alternate
month meeting schedule.  Deal with policy and invite project proposals
on odd months, discuss implementation issues and best practices on even
months.  This would allow potential attendees to know what the scope and
nature of the agenda will be in advance.

There needs to be flexible oversight.  Doing the prioritization and
planning ad-hoc through discussions between one or two departments is
not a tenable solution in the long term.  But, the priority setting role
needs to be flexible enough to allow individual groups to pursue
projects that they can do on their own without waiting for an every
other month priorities meeting.

In many ways, this is no different than traditional library services.
Work is not done in a vacuum in any context.  Is oversight /
coordination even necessary?

We need a cost benefit model for evaluating collections.  Someone needs
to develop that.  Is this part of the DCC role.

Collection Development Policy helps both those proposing and those
developing and implementing projects.  This requires an overarching
view, closely aligned with collection development and library strategic
planning.

How do we set these policies and assess priorities based on them?

There needs to be a formal process.  The DCC should be restructured and
decisions should be made here.

There was a somewhat related discussion of differences between born
digital versus digitized materials.  This distinction influences
assessing digital preservation needs and needs to be considered in
prioritization discussions.  Access is still a separate issue.  There
are a variety of criteria.  Does a project support a particular class?
Is it unique to our collections?  Is it an access priority?  Is it a
preservation priority?  Is it a rush priority for other reasons?

Again, many did not know that this role is addressed by the DCC's
charge.  If it is a DCC role, representatives from departments doing
much of the work need to have permission to speak on their department's
behalf.  Infrastructure development is still key.  Much digitization
work is happening without knowing the final disposition of the output,
such as patron scans.  How does this on-demand content relate to and
contribute to the digital library as a whole?

What policies need to be in place?
  * Preservation
  * Disposition of digital content scanned based on patron requests
  * Digital collection development policies
  * Impact on digital content acquisition procedures

The model of DCC was based on table-setters, but is that level of voting
necessary or even useful?  More closely following the table-setters
model would enable limiting policy / selection discussions to bi-monthly
meetings.  Short-term priorities could be fast-tracked and attended to
via email discussions and electronic voting if they were raised between
policy meetings.

Is the DCC useful at all?  Or should all of this be integrated into the
rest of the libraries' organizational structure?

Short answer - yes, the DCC is necessary.  The group agreed that there
needs to be a central point of coordination and priority setting for the
DLP.  The summary of where there is some consensus:

  * We need better coordination
  * We need a group to perform the selection function
  * If the DCC is to fill these roles, it needs to change
  * We would need an Admin. representative, at least in the beginning

Minority report:  After the meeting, I was approached with the
suggestion that the lack of consensus could merit outside assessment and
evaluation of the Digital Library Program, similar to the consultant
assessments that were done for Special Collections & University Archives
and for the Law Library.

Minutes by cah

--
Corey A Harper
Metadata Librarian - CMET Team Leader
Metadata and Digital Library Services
University of Oregon
541/346.1854
charper@uoregon.edu