The Subcommittee's second meeting convened at 10:00 a.m. in the Special Collections Conference Room at Alderman Library. Kay Domine was welcomed and was provided a brief overview of the Subcommittee's place within the VIVA project and a recapitulation of the Subcommittee's activity thus far. Betsy Pittman reported upon the November 9 meeting, saying that the ECC had agreed to forward the SCS's requests for funding to the Steering Committee, had re-emphasized the importance of using a standard mechanism for formatting and tagging, and had echoed the SCS's desire that the Library of Virginia and the Virginia Historical Society be involved in proposal and project planning.
Becky reported to Carol Pfeiffer had phoned after the November 10 Steering Committee meeting to say that the Committee preferred not to approach SCHEV with SCS's proposals for funding wages for the finding aids project or for assistance in preparing a grant proposal. The directors had felt that the doctoral institutions would prefer to use internal resources to move these relatively small and specialized efforts forward. SCS members voided concern that many needs were competing for these internal resources.
With regard to standards for digitizing Special Collections, Ned Berkely reported that UVa had not yet received the tagging guidelines from the University of California at Berkeley but expected to receive them shortly. The developers of Berkeley guidelines are hopeful that their project will provide the standard for tagging finding aids on the Internet.
ACTION ITEM: Ned will share the Berkley guidelines with the Subcommittee at its January meeting if they are received as expected.
As to the ECC's desire that the Virginia Historical Society and the Library of Virginia be included in planning for grant proposals and projects, SCS members were pleased that the parent Committee's sentiment accorded with the feeling of the Subcommittee. In brief discussion of this issue, the SCS decided to invite the participation of these entities in planning for specific projects, rather than to ask them to furnish "permanent" members for the Subcommittee.
During the discussion of technical issues, the question of competing claims on internal resources was raised again, this time in context of the hardware and technical support to be made available to individual institutions through the VIVA project. There was agreement that the SCS should compile a list of hardware, softare, and services to which each participating Special Collections unit should have access. From the ensuing discussion a tentative list emerged, including items about which more detail was needed.
ACTION ITEM: Steve Zietz agreed to prepare a draft version and to put it on e-mail for the Subcommittee's review before submission of a final version to the ECC.
Steve had been thinking about a homepage for Special Collections, and a move to Alderman's Electronic Classroom allowed him to show the Subcommittee some of what he was describing. The trial demonstrated the exciting potential for Special Collections.
ACTION ITEM: Steve will continue work on a sample homepage soliciting other Subcommittee members' suggestions and sharing the results at the January meeting.
Turning from consideration of the structure of the Special Collections homepage to its subject content, the Subcommittee discussed the possibility of using as a basis for its work The Directory of Repositories in Virginia compiled by Dr. Louis Manarin and published by the Virginia State Library and Archives in 1988. It was suggested that VIVA participants could update their collection information and that those responsible for other collections could be invited to provide updated information for entry at the coordinating site for the finding aids project.
ACTION ITEM: Betsy Pittman will check with Dr. Manarin to see whether the printed directory was on disk, whether an update is planned, etc.
The January meeting is tentatively scheduled for January 13 at 10:00 a.m. in Charlottesville, contingent upon the ECC's decision about its own January meeting.
Recorder:
Becky Laine
Longwood College Library
rlaine@lwcvml.lwc.edu
http://spec.lib.vt.edu/viva/minutes941202.html