Agenda

Initial Meeting
November 11, 2005
10:00 a.m.-11:30 a.m.
Goldberg Conference Room, Second level near Special Collections

1. Purpose of the Advisory Board and overview of this meeting (Paul Gherman)--5 minutes).
2. Digital Services and Collections already provided by and through the library (Jody Combs)-30 minutes.
   • Support for the e-classroom
   • Support for e-Research
   • Support for e-Publishing
   • Building local specialized digital collections:
   • Digital Archives and Preservation
3. Digital Initiatives being contemplated -5 minutes:
   • Enhanced online document delivery.
   • Expanded, campus-wide e-publishing support
     • Campus wide e-journal committee
     • Exploration of expanding e-publishing support (to include e-book as well as e-journal).
   • Exploration of meta-search service(s)
   • Development of more coherent and consistent web interfaces across the libraries.
   • Development of OAK-based academic support services portal.
4. Board Discussion and feedback (45 minutes):
   • Which of these things are priorities from your perspective(s).
   • What is MISSING from this list? What things are we not thinking about which could help you in your work?
5. How do you want to hear about digital library initiatives and activities (3 minutes)?
   • Email digest from an RSS feed?
   • OAK course?
   • Separate web page outlining developments?
   • Other?
6. Set next meeting date (approximate)-2 minutes.

Minutes

Introduction given by Paul Gherman

After brief member introductions, Paul gave an overview of the purpose and goals of the Digital Library Advisory Board.

Digital Services and Collections already provided by and through the library, presented by Jody Combs:

Presentation Slides

Board discussion and feedback were incorporated into Jody's presentation.

Support for instruction:

• Electronic course reserves
• Support for research
• Online catalog, electronic journals, e-books, thousands of accessible web pages, Find It @ VU, citation information, Google Scholar, Ask Us service.
• Need for a central location for all these documents.
• Discussion of VU E-Archive

Support for e-publishing:

• VU E-Journals project
• Ameriquests demonstration
• VURJ
• Luso-Hispanic Studies journal
• Creating an E-Journal for staff and the possibility of hosting others’ journals. Policies still need to be developed for this.

Electronic theses and dissertations:

• The benefits of electronic publishing and access issues were discussed.

Building digital collections:

• Demonstrations of ETANA, Global Music Archive and Voices of Vanderbilt.

Digital archives and preservation:

• VU E-Archive - issues regarding copyright with various journals with regard to working papers were discussed.
• LOCKSS Project – access preservation software
• LOCKSS-ETD – currently a pilot project. Migration issues for this project were discussed.
• Projects under consideration - the possibility of having one central place where all these projects are available to users. Certain members agreed that the faculty are not aware of all the library’s digital projects and something needs to be done to get the word out. It was also suggested that this would be an important topic to discuss with prospective faculty members. Informing faculty of the digital projects through a seminar, instead of a brochure would be the most beneficial.

Other topics discussed for library development:

• The possibility and need for archiving faculty data.
• The development of an E-Journal format which would include integrated resources, such as supplemental files linked on a sidebar.
• Metasearching – searching across multiple databases with one simple interface. It was concluded that this topic should be fairly high on our priority list. Factors to take into consideration include the differences in searching habits of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. A search environment will need to be created that users will come to as a starting point for their research.
• An undergraduate portal – this project would hold the full range of bibliographic needs in an integrated resource. The resource would show classes the student was registered for, including what books and readings were required for each class. Materials the student has checked out would also be displayed.

The next hour and a half meeting is proposed for the spring semester.