Digital Collections Users’ Group Meeting: December 19, 2012

Conference call

Members present: Ellen Corrigan (Eastern Illinois University); Chris Day, Chair, (School of the Art Institute of Chicago); Peter Hepburn (University of Illinois at Chicago); Benn Joseph (Northwestern University); Mary Rose (Southern Illinois University); Laurie Sauer (Knox College); Adam Strohm (Newberry Library); Julia Thompson (Western Illinois University)

Members absent: David Levinson (Lake Forest College)

CARLI staff present: Jessica Gibson, Amy Maroso (CARLI liaison to DCUG)

Confirmed Sauer as minutes taker. 

November minutes were approved with corrections.

Flickr Proposal

Hepburn summarized the proposal to create a CARLI Flickr collection for use by all CARLI libraries. There are two main purposes: a) to open selected images for which CARLI institutions need more information to the public so that viewers can add what they know through tagging, notes, and comments (three separate viewer features in Flickr); and b) to permit CARLI institutions to promote highlights from their collections through an additional platform that is readily searchable as well as findable from Google. 

A basic account is free. Cost for a pro account is $45 for 2 years and  allows for more flexibility, hosting more images, and allows reporting of usage data.

Discussed ongoing management issues, including the ability/willingness of CARLI to commit to ongoing payments. Hepburn suggested DCUG manage the project going forward, providing that guidelines are written and followed. If the pro account lapsed into a basic account, images would remain, but not be in groups; the original groups setup would be returned upon reinstitution of payment. Concerns were raised that the Flickr project will commit future DCUG iterations to managing something they might not want to continue.

Uploading images requires a login. Day asked if there would be any problems with sharing login amongst DCUG members and Maroso said she didn’t think there would be.

The group discussed what benefits there are to having a shared CARLI Flickr account. Maroso suggested we consider developing this as a pilot project and, at the same time, promote it to other libraries with training materials so they could create their own Flickr collections. 

There was general agreement that work should proceed on developing guidelines for the creation of Flickr collections by individual libraries. When these guidelines are disseminated to CARLI membership, interest in developing a more robust CARLI Flickr collection can be gauged. Hepburn proposed that a webinar be developed to present guidelines and gauge interest, perhaps in summer/fall 2013 at the earliest. Hepburn and Thompson will begin working on guidelines; others are encouraged to assist.

Project updates

Featured Image: Rose and Corrigan will begin posting image to the blog again on January 2. They extended an invitation to fellow committee members to contribute. Rose asked about promoting the feature to a more general audience, but the decision was made to keep announcements on digital collections interest group (DC-ig) list. 

Google Analytics: Day reported that the final quarter summary is finished and ready to post. There was discussion on the question of how much do we publicize each quarter’s summaries and about how the reports will evolve.

Twitter Account: Joseph reported tweeting featured image announcements is ongoing, and that the number of followers has been steady

Featured Collections: Strohm and Day reported they are working on format, presentation, and the questions that will be asked.

Digital preservation joint subcommittee: Sauer reported that the joint subcommittee met on Nov. 29 and the proposal for the Library of Congress “train-the-trainer” session was submitted to the CARLI Program Planning Committee on Dec. 6.

New Business/Conference Reports

There was no new business and no conference reports were made.