10:00-11:30am, 303 Doe Library
Attending: Yasemin Agis, Jan Carter, Manuel Erviti, Frank Ferko Sheehan Grant, Mohamed Hamed, Jianye He, Salwa Ismail (guest), Toshie Marra, Steve Mendoza, Jeremy Ott (facilitator), Claude Potts, Abby Scheel, John Shepard (recorder), Virginia Shih, and Susan Xue
Announcements
Jan Carter congratulated Claude Potts on the successful "Languages of Berkeley" event he organized for the evening of 5 February 2020 in the Morrison Library.
Conversation about digital and data initiatives
Salwa Ismail-AUL for Digital Initiatives and Information Technology--introduced the Digital Lifecycle Program (DLP) as one of the Library's strategic priorities. In moving the program forward, she will work not only with Division Heads, but also with individual selectors, so she came to the Arts & Humanities Council to learn of its members' concerns.
Salwa summarized the history of the program. For years there has been the desire to "set our treasures free" by digitizing collections, preserving primary sources, and providing data services. But former efforts were piecemeal, not holistic, with digital assets on different platforms and with metadata created according to different standards; from now on, there will be an effort to bring all these disparate strands together. The TIND platform has been adopted for digital assets management and previously created records are being migrated to the new platform, with some sensitive items (records with issues around copyright or other ethics concerns) being kept in dark archives. The members of the Digital Lifecycle Steering Committee include Jeff MacKie-Mason, all the AULs, Lynne Grigsby, Rachel Samberg, Mary Elings, and Peter Zhou. There was a "soft launch" of the DLP in September, with a public launch slated for around the February/March timeframe. Workflows and policies are being developed and will be socialized, and the steering committee has been and will continue to solicit feedback.
Salwa named other campus entities cooperating/communicating with the DLP: Research Data Management (RDM); D-Lab; the Division of Data Science and Information; Research, Teaching, and Learning; Research Information Technologies; and the Berkeley Research Computing program. Indeed, the RDM team includes Salwa and librarians from each of the subject divisions. RDM offers consulting services, with technical issues sometimes being referred to D-Lab, the Information Security Office, or other units.
Salwa called for questions. Steve Mendoza asked where inquiries could be directed, as he could find no directions at the Library website. Salwa hopes to see the data services page revamped, but for now, she advises clicking on Research Support, then Data/GIS, or emailing researchdata@berkeley.edu. She also noted that several Library Research Guides offer help with different types of data.
Jeremy Ott said that humanities faculty and students want books in print and online; he asked what kind of access could be provided to digitized non-public-domain titles. Salwa described a national initiative called Controlled Digital Lending, which began as a partnership between the Internet Archive and Georgetown University, of which UC Berkeley Library is a supporter and signatory.
Frank Ferko, who is involved in music digital projects at the Hargrove Library, asked how flexible the TIND platform is in managing different levels of access and permission requirements. Salwa said that TIND is not malleable; it has but three permission levels: open access, CalNet ID protected, and dark archive. So she said we will have to decide how complicated we want to get, giving as an example the International Image Interoperability Framework. Salwa suggested that in the future DLP principals may look at open source platforms to replace TIND.
Mohamed Hamed stated that we should be seeking simplicity in all aspects of the DLP; it should be simple for librarians and simple for users. Salwa answered "that is our goal," but noted that faculty behaviors vary (e.g., arts & humanities vs. the sciences), so we must investigate how to reconcile different behaviors in one platform.
Claude Potts asked if there would be a new form for submitting collection digitization requests. Salwa answered that such a form would be unveiled later in February. [Exit Salwa]
Report on the Association of Low Countries Studies conference held in November 2019, University College London
Steve Mendoza reported on his paper "Dutch Gold in California," delivered at the London conference. Highlights included glimpses into the records (Bancroft Library) of City Lights Books, which published Nine Dutch Poets (1982) in English translation; the Irving Stone papers (Bancroft), which include research files about Stone's biographical novel Lust for Life, about Vincent Van Gogh; Rangaku kaitei (1788, East Asian Library), which includes a guide to pronouncing the Dutch language using Japanese phonetic characters; and items from the Engel Sluiter collection (Bancroft) of papers relating to Dutch-Iberian global rivalry. Steve also reported on visits to the Taylor Institute Library in Oxford, the Festival of Italian Literature in London, and the London Library, a private membership library that circulates books printed as early as 1700.
Report on the 2019 Istanbul Book Fair
Mohamed Hamed reported on his trip to Turkey 2-10 November 2019. His goal in attending the Istanbul Book Fair was find ways to acquire books not attainable through the Library's current vendors; at the fair he acquired 200 books for under $3,000 (approx. $13 per book). Mohamed reported on his meetings with the representatives of Libra Books and Zero Books (the latter a relatively new vendor). Mohamed also reported on his trip to Suleyman Demirel University in Isparta, southwest Turkey. He described the Suleymaniye Kutubkhana collection of around 200,000 manuscripts from the period of the Ottoman Empire. In this connection, Mohamed told of plans for the June 2020 unveiling of an 18-library portal for around 500,000 digitized manuscripts. Back in Istanbul, Mohamed also visited ISAM (the Center for Islamic Studies, with collections of Ottoman archival collections and court records) and the Jewish Museum.
[The time being 11:33 am, Jeremy Ott postponed the balance of the agenda-detailed as follows--to online dissemination and discussion as needed.]
Function Council reports
Cataloging & Metadata Council (A. Malik)
Collection Development Leadership Group (A. Scheel)
Collection Services Council (M. Hamed and S. Reardon)
Public Services Council (S. Mendoza)
Roundtable Update (A. Scheel)
Web Advisory Group (M. Erviti)
Assessment Advisory Group (M. Hamed)
Expertise Group reports
Scholarly Communication expertise group (L. Pendse and S. Reardon)
Teaching and Learning expertise group (J. Ott)
Next meeting: April 2, 2020