I like the idea of the additional values of "Undetermined" and "Less than one" if we want to keep the preservation level field as a required one.  We could also consider something like "Assessment needed" or "To be determined" to add more action to the response.

I am still thinking that we might best be able to achieve the goal of "developing or contributing to a registry of content already preserved by NDSA members" if the preservation level field is an optional one.  Completing the level information could then be a second step once collections are identified.  

Is there any way we can take advantage of the partners meeting this summer to gather preservation level information?  Should we consider reaching out to institutions on the NDIIPP collections page for information on their preservation levels? That information could then be added to the content registry. 

Christie


Christie Moffatt
Digital Manuscripts Program
History of Medicine Division
National Library of Medicine
Building 38, Room 1E-21
8600 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, MD 20894
Phone: 301-496-9136
Fax: 301-402-7034



  
  

-----Original Message-----
From: John Weise [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Friday, April 06, 2012 4:47 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [NDSA-CONTENT] Meeting Minutes from today's call

Sorry I was not on the last call. Thanks for the notes.

Regarding levels, and more generally the registry submission process, I have a few thoughts.

It probably *would* help to make the levels field optional. Another approach would be to keep it required, but allow a couple of additional values, "Undetermined", and "Less than 1" or something similar. It's slightly more informative than no value, and slightly more accepting than requiring values of 1-3. If totally optional, it is too easy to not provide an answer out of laziness (looking in the mirrror, here). Just a thought. I also like Abby Rumsey's ideas on this matter.

I think the Subject Matter field is a little daunting, especially for an organization with a lot of collections. It's not horrible, but for Michigan it is the difference between being able to generate a completed spreadsheet with ~175 collections in it using a single database query, and having to manually edit 175 rows in a spreadsheet to map the subjects.

And up until a few years ago, the description would have been the deal breaker for us. Now we have descriptions, which is nice. But does everybody?

Michigan has quite a few collections, so our perspective on what the obstacles are will be a bit different than an organization with just a few collections, where, choosing subjects and even writing descriptions is not much overhead.

You can see what we have, here...

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/lib/colllist/

Perhaps other collection registries would be willing to share data.
Illinois is doing a lot in this realm, including collection level descriptions. OCLC has a collection registry for the OAI harvesting they do. Would this be weird?

Another possible approach would be to reach out to a few big organizations that have a lot of collections to see if they could provide fully populated tabulated data for import into the registry. At the same time, reach out more directly to a couple dozen small organizations and ask that they each make at least one submission.  (Sorry if these approaches have been tried and I'm unaware.)

OK, well, I wrote kind of a lot. I hope it helps a little. :)

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 4:56 PM, Grotke, Abigail <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hello all,
> Many thanks to Rachel Howard for our notetaking this call. The minutes 
> have been posted to the wiki and are below.
>
> http://www.loc.gov/extranet/wiki/osi/ndiip/ndsa/index.php?title=Conten
> t_WG_April_4,_2012_Meeting_Minutes
>
> If I missed anyone who was on the call but not listed on the attendees 
> list, feel free to add yourself. I know some folks called in without 
> the webex so I may have missed some names.
>
> I encourage those of you with thoughts about the levels of 
> preservation to chime in on the list...
> Thanks!
> Abbie
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Attendees (16)
>
>  *   Faundeen, John, Archivist | U.S. Geological Survey |
> [log in to unmask]
>  *   Grotke, Abbie | Web Archiving Team Lead, Library of Congress, and
> Co-Chair of the NDSA Content Working Group | [log in to unmask] | 
> 202-707-2833
> | @agrotke
>  *   Harrison, Anne | Federal Library & Information Center Committee
> (FLICC) | [log in to unmask]
>  *   Hartman, Cathy | Associate Dean of Libraries, University of North
> Texas/ Co-Chair of the NDSA Content Working Group | [log in to unmask]
>  *   Howard, Rachel | Digital Initiatives Librarian, University of
> Louisville | [log in to unmask]
>  *   Kepley, David | NARA | [log in to unmask]
>  *   Maes, Margaret | Legal Information Preservation Alliance |
> [log in to unmask]
>  *   McAninch, Glen | Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives |
> [log in to unmask]
>  *   McGlone, Jonathan | University of Michigan Library |
> [log in to unmask]
>  *   Moffatt, Christie | National Library of Medicine |
> [log in to unmask]
>  *   Muller, Chris | Muller Media Conversions |
> [log in to unmask]
>  *   Rau, Erik | Hagley Museum and Library | [log in to unmask]
>  *   Reib, Linda | Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records |
> [log in to unmask]
>  *   Rumsey, Abby Smith | Library of Congress/NDIIPP | [log in to unmask]
>  *   Seneca, Tracy | California Digital Library | [log in to unmask]
>  *   Stoller, Michael | New York University | [log in to unmask]
>
> Report from the NDSA Leadership Meeting
>
> Abbie and Cathy attended the meeting last Thursday and Friday. It was 
> the first time that working group co-chairs and Coordinating Committee 
> got together in one room for 1 ½ days. Discussion covered how things 
> are going, what working groups are doing, where we could use support 
> from Coordinating Committee. Abbie and Cathy shared the challenges our 
> working group has experienced as we've grown to over 70; we're the 
> largest, but also have fairly good attendance on our calls and with our content teams.
>
> Outcomes of overall meeting include having press kit to guide members 
> in talking about NDSA's purpose, plans, and accomplishments - common 
> topics to address rather than working in silos. The Outreach Team will 
> work on that and make it available to all members. An action list will 
> help drive what work the Coordinating Committee can/should be doing for the organization.
> Watch for more details on NDSA-all listserv.
>
> Report from the Registry Action Team
>
> Daniel sent an update over the list. There's been a bit of concern at 
> low number of submissions to registry, and worry that levels were 
> stumbling block due to uncertainty or embarrassment. We've been 
> talking about having interns help feed info into the registry, and 
> also looking again at levels and at each item listed in the levels and 
> expand upon them so that it becomes an internal assessment tool for 
> deciding where we're at and what resources are needed to get to a 
> higher level . Levels of preservation were also discussed at the NDSA 
> Leadership Meeting last week. The Infrastructure Team was interested 
> in looking at the levels more closely and building something around 
> them that could benefit the membership more widely. We need to figure out where to go with that next.
>
> Margie agreed that expansion/better description of levels will 
> encourage more libraries to participate.
>
> Christie suggested exploring the possibility of not making levels 
> required, just get people to register content and over time, with 
> assistance of interns, fill in the gaps. Levels are a stumbling block 
> because they seem to be all or nothing - you have to meet everything 
> in the level.
>
> Glen reported that he's involved in another survey of state archives 
> in U.S. with regard to preservation activities; it's even more complex 
> in state archives to identify who's doing what, and then to go beyond 
> that and try to figure out a standard entry is even more intensive in terms of staff.
>
> Michael agreed that assigning levels can be a really helpful exercise, 
> but for some institutions it's too big an exercise.
>
> Abby Rumsey suggested identifying activities in each level as being 
> benchmarks of excellence as a way to acknowledge progress, or things 
> that are not relevant/priority for mission. It could just be that 
> libraries and archives look at the set of things in each class/level 
> and pick out the priorities that are highest for their mission and 
> assess themselves against themselves rather than engage in a 
> self-defeating one-size-fits-all exercise.
>
> Tracy questioned the fundamental goal of the registry - is it more 
> about content or about practices across the organization? Abbie 
> explained that the original goal was to identify content, but then we 
> had to grapple with what you mean when you say you've preserved 
> content. Levels maybe should not be part of the registry at all, which 
> is why there's interest in it being elevated to cross-NDSA.
>
> Michael agreed that we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
> How easy can we make the registry so the basic info can get out there 
> without burdening institutions with extensive self-evaluation process?
>
> Abby reiterated that it should be possible to come up with cluster of 
> things that characterize each level and then each institution can 
> identify sets that apply to them at that level.
>
> Glen suggested looking at Charles Dollar's Data Maturity levels 
> because that's what they're using for the latest survey of state 
> archives. It spells out 10 or 11 different categories of preservation 
> and offers levels in each one of those categories, along with a point 
> system. David wondered why we weren't using the TRAC checklist. Rachel 
> pointed out that it's more complicated than the levels as we currently 
> state them. Others said that Dollar's system is more complex than TRAC.
>
> Abbie suggested moving this discussion to the listserv, where Kris and 
> Daniel can provide input.
>
> Report from the Content Teams
>
> John (Geospatial) - Didn't meet last month. Will meet end of this 
> month to further refine scope and areas of focus - they have more than 
> enough input (several pages of comments), now need to figure out what 
> to concentrate on/prioritize.
>
> Glen (Government) - Started at beginning talking about issues with 
> regard to electronic records risk. Seemed to be an emphasis on working 
> with records creators to better refine what we get so that we can 
> preserve it better. The front end was of major concern. Sense that 
> respondents are daunted by all of the things to be concerned about - where do you start?
> Constructed sample document of purpose/objectives/statement but 
> haven't yet received comments. Scheduling next meeting for end of month.
>
> Abbie (News, Media & Journalism) - Met once and came up with 
> categories to pursue; narrowing it down. Citizen journalism, 
> born-digital journalism content case study that came through from UNT. 
> Don't have another meeting set but will be working over email on those topic areas.
>
> Christie (Science, Tech, Medicine, Mathematics ) - Met last week and 
> identified some areas of at-risk content; still in brainstorming mode 
> and plan to meet after using the Wiki to identify different types of 
> data, develop case studies.
>
> Social Sciences: Think they have met at least once but haven't heard 
> anything lately.
>
> Erik Rau volunteered to facilitate History. Jon volunteered to be the 
> catalyst to get meeting going with Arts & Humanities group.
>
> Next Meeting
>
> Next meeting will be June 6 at 11am. There will also be an in-person 
> meeting at NDSA meeting on Wednesday afternoon July 25, for which 
> they're also trying to get a conference call set up. Will send out details.
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Abbie Grotke | Web Archiving Team Lead | Office of Strategic 
> Initiatives National Digital Information and Infrastructure 
> Preservation Program | Library of Congress 
> http://www.loc.gov/webarchiving/ | http://www.digitalpreservation.gov<
> http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/>
> 202-707-2833 | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | @agrotke
>
>
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--
John Weise <http://www.lib.umich.edu/users/jweise> -
DLPS<http://www.lib.umich.edu/digital-library-production-service-dlps>-
MLibrary <http://www.lib.umich.edu/>

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