diglib: DCC Minutes - Nov. 20, 2006

[Corey A Harper <charper@uoregon.edu>]

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