Created Content Committee Meeting: September 13, 2016

CONFERENCE CALL

Members present: Ian Collins (University of Illinois at Chicago), Ellen Corrigan (Eastern Illinois University), Margaret Heller, Chair (Loyola University Chicago), Alice Creason (Lewis University), Adam Strohm (Illinois Institute of Technology), Jen Wolfe (Newberry Library)

Members absent: Sarah Prindle (Southern Illinois University Carbondale), Matt Short (Northern Illinois University), Rebecca Skirvin (North Central College)

CARLI staff present: Elizabeth Clarage, Amy Maroso, Nicole Swanson

Guest: Hannah Stitzlein (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Minutes

• The August 8, 2016 meeting minutes were approved with corrections.
• Adam Strohm confirmed to take minutes.

2016-17 Annual Project on Sharable Metadata

• Hannah Stitzlein, Metadata Services Specialist for DPLA at UIUC, was a guest caller for today’s meeting.
  • She explained her for UIUC/DPLA, including the creation of a metadata training module (including documentation, best practices, and usability concerns), and said that she’ll also be developing three presentations to introduce DPLA, the Illinois Digital Heritage Hub, and other topics.
  • Her work will not be specific to CONTENTdm, but she is hoping to run reports on all of the CONTENTdm collections that will allow specific institutions to see what their metadata will look like in the DPLA and made edits or decisions accordingly.
• Margaret summarized the ideas that the committee had developed for our annual project this year, including our concentration on case studies and review of previously recommended resources. Hannah agreed to send a summary of her work to the committee to avoid a duplication of effort between herself and the committee.
• Case Studies and Next Steps
  • Prior to the meeting, Matt sent Margaret a detailed explanation of NIU’s efforts to collect images from different collections into the school’s institutional repository. He is also working on toolkit for automated subject analysis.
  • Margaret suggested that this could be a good candidate for our first case study.
  • Adam recommended that another case study focus on knowing how to determine that your own institution’s metadata isn’t optimally sharable, including examples of ways in which metadata isn’t easily sharable or is organized or created in a way that makes it useful out of its home context.
  • Jen suggested inclusion of the CONTENTdm Catcher (https://www.oclc.org/support/services/contentdm/downloads-addons.en.html) web service for bulk editing of metadata. Ian asked if this tool could be used with CARLI CONTENTdm collections; Amy was unsure, but will check with the system services group to see if it’s something we can use or support.
  • Ellen brought up the need for administrative buy-in to the importance of metadata, and suggested it as something to include in a case study, as well as guidelines for title construction when one isn’t present.
  • Adam said that IIT is currently working to determine local guidelines for this situation, and he will share notes/guidelines with the group when they’re available.
  • Jen mentioned that the Newberry is using DACS title rules (http://www2.archivists.org/standards/DACS) to guide title creation, and Alice mentioned the Cataloging Cultural Objects (http://cco.vrafoundation.org/) guidelines as another option.
  • We’ll follow up on this in the next few meetings to decide on the other case studies, and Margaret will ask Matt to write something up for possible dissemination in November.

Ongoing Project Status Reports

• Tumblr:
  • Alice reported that the schedule for the year has been created, and that Tumblr and Digital Image posting schedules have been coordinated.
  • It will be determined at a later date if this is more convenient for the people responsible for posting.
  • Rules for weekly themes have not yet been determined for the year, and Alice described themes so far for the year as loose.
  • Jen recommended that the group move away from prescriptive rules and allow committee members more freedom to post date-specific or other uniquely relevant images, regardless of theme, as she’s seen other institutions doing.
  • Directions for adding text-only posts (for linking to featured images) will be added to the Tumblr guidelines.
• Digitized Book/Featured Image:
  • Ellen reported that a new rotation has been developed for the remainder of the calendar year, combining featured image posts with digitized books. The latter will be posted every fourth post.
  • This new rotation was created to better line up with Tumblr posting.
  • It was confirmed by Ellen that digitized book posts will still be sourced from objects deposited by CARLI in the Internet Archive.
• Promotional Efforts Impact Evaluation:
  • Adam reported that he, Ian, and Matt had discussed a pair of possible ways to gauge the impact of promotional efforts by the committee. The first was to add a Google Analytics tracker to Tumblr, and it was advised that Jen had already done so, and that the login information was already in the committee’s Tumblr documentation.
  • Adam asked about our ability to get custom Google Analytics reports for CARLI CONTENTdm collections, and Amy advised that Jessica can typically provide custom reports, but it would depend on what statistics we wanted.
  • Adam, Matt, and Ian will determine what would optimally be included in such custom reports and send that information to Amy.
  • Adam also brought up the possibility of using social media goals in Google Analytics, and it was agreed that the Tumblr tracker would be the easiest way to measure traffic and impact between Tumblr and CONTENTdm, whether this is done manually or not.

Other Items

• CARLI Annual Meeting on Nov. 18: handout and presentation:
  • Margaret confirmed that Alice will attend and present on committee’s behalf.
  • Margaret reminded us that we’ll need to begin working on the presentation and asked all to pitch in.
  • Amy confirmed that she has let CARLI know that Alice will present, and reminded the committee that the one-page handout for the presentation needed to be submitted by November 4 at the latest.
• CONTENTdm Announcement:
  • Amy relayed the announcement that OCLC is releasing version 7 of CONTENTdm this fall. She is uncertain of any more specific release date for the new version. Changes in the new version are expected to focus on making CONTENTdm work better with mobile devices.
  • Amy also explained that from version 7 on, CONTENTdm will now only be available for hosted customers. CARLI is not hosted, and has no plans to move to a hosted plan since there is already a contract in place for the next two years that cannot be changed. This means that there are no plans at this point to move to version 7. This hasn’t yet been announced more widely, but Amy will confer with CARLI management to see how this should be communicated.
  • Jen brought up that OCLC will no longer officially support non-hosted sites after the move to version 7, but Amy expects that while we won’t have official support, past work with OCLC indicates that we will continue to receive help from OCLC when needed. Jen asked what might happen when the current contract expires; Amy said that it will be taken up by CARLI Business Services.

Next Meeting

The next committee conference call will occur on October 11, 2016, from 11:00am to 12:00pm.