Present: Ned Berkeley (UVa), Betsy Pittman (VCU), Stephan Zietz (VPI&SU), Becky Laine (Longwood; lisison from ECC)
The Subcommittee's third meeting convened in Ned Berkeley's office at Alderman Library at 10:00 a.m. Minutes from the December meeting were approved. Ned reported that, because the tagging guidelines for the University of California project had not been received at Alderman, SCS perusal of the guidelines would have to be deferred until a later meeting. Becky explained that the December meeting of the Electronic Collections Committee had been devoted to a review of the RFP for the journal articles database; therefore, she had not had opportunity to present the list of basic hardware, software, and services which Steve had compiled and circulated to the Subcommittee for review. A revised version of SteveÕs list, with suggested changes incorporated, was circulated and approved. With the tagging guidelines on the way and new equipment arriving to complement equipment already in place at some of the doctoral institutions, the SCS felt that the finding-aids project could soon be under way at some sites. The only missing element is funding for student workers to enter the Special Collections data.
ACTION ITEM: Becky Laine will forward the hardware, software, and services list to Carol Pfeiffer prior to the ECC meeting on Friday, January 20, along with the SCS request that institutions stand by the commitment voiced at the November Steering Committee meeting -- namely, to find the modest internal funding needed for student workers to move the finding aids project forward.
Steve distributed handouts illustrating his work on a VIVA Special Collections homepage which would provide access to collection guides and full texts from the special collections of various public and private repositories in the Commonwealth. The guides, texts, and images would be reached by a variety of paths: by institution, by subject, by person or family, by corporate name (including firm, institution, or agency), by geographic name. Most of Steve's examples were drawn form materials available to his own institution, and he urged Subcommittee members to supply him other material.
ACTION ITEM: Ned will provide Steve addresses for existing files at UVa, and Betsy will provide information about VCU holdings for Steve to incorporate in the lists.
The Subcommittee considered at what point to share Steve's work with the Electronic Collections Committee, and it was decided that a late spring date would allow the SCS sufficient time to develop files and links and would be less likely to impede the ECC's efforts to meet pressing deadlines. Subcommittee members agreed that scheduling the presentation at Charlottesville would facilitate electronic demonstrations.
ACTION ITEM: Becky Laine will communicate the SCS's desire for a place on the agenda at the May ECC meeting, which should take place at UVa if the present site rotation continues.
Betsy Pittman reported on her findings regarding The Directory of Repositories in Virginia. Because this 1988 publication of the Virginia State Library and Archives seemed to the SCS to provide a natural starting point for the finding aids project, Betsy had checked with the compiler, State Archivist, Louis Manarin, on the status of the Director and plans for its continuation. She reported that the supply of the Directory has been exhausted, the content is not on disk, and no plan for an update has been finalized. To the Special Collections Subcommittee it seemed that the VIVA project might facilitate the revision, which in turn would contribute to the structuring of the Special Collections component of VIVA. The Subcommittee would like to have the Library of Virginia's blessing on this project and participation designee attending the February SCS meeting, if possible.
ACTION ITEM: Becky will present to Carol Pfeiffer the SCS request that the Steering Committee commend this project to the administration of the Library of Virginia and request prompt appointment of a project liaison to the SCS.
The meeting adjourned at 12:45 with the decision to meet again on Friday, February 3.
Recorder:
Becky Laine
Longwood College Library
rlaine@wcvml.lwc.edu
http://spec.lib.vt.edu/viva/minutes950113.html