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Present: Ashley Augustyniak, Ron Brashear, Nicole Joniec, Hillary Kativa, Erin McLeary, Jay Muhlin, Jonathan Rochkind, Eddie Rubeiz, Daniel Sanford, Patrick Shea, Jim Voelkel

Absent: Stephanie Lampkin, Gillian Maguire

Updates on digital collections

  • HK: Reported on the work she has done onboarding Nicole Joniec, the new Digital Collections and Metadata Librarian, and stated how this transitional period might affect digitization and metadata workflows going forward.
  • Tasks of the new Digital Collections and Metadata Librarian: Nicole is working on completing metadata for already existing records rather than jumping straight to ingesting new content to help her get a sense of the metadata standards of the Institute. Presently, there are approximately 680 records that have been ingested with incomplete metadata, primarily missing a title and description, which are visible internally, but are awaiting publication. Hillary recommended that curators also continue to revisit records with incomplete metadata, as discussed during the last meeting. Nicole is finishing out the metadata on what she can and will touch base with the curators if she has any questions.
  • Ingest training: Hillary will train Nicole on ingests this coming week.
  • Ingest backlog: Over the summer, Jay has been busy digitizing, leading to a moderate backlog of content to be ingested.
  • Curator appointments: Hillary is busy introducing Nicole to the collections. In mid-October into November, Hillary will set up quarterly appointments with each of the curators for Jay, Hillary and Nicole to review materials selected for digitization. This will be a good time to look over the materials, determine how Jay will photograph the content and to have a conversation about the workflow, why the content was selected and additional context to assist with metadata creation. This casual show and tell is a good opportunity for curators to ask any questions they may have related to the imaging process, whether or not materials fit the collection scope, and any rights issues pertaining to materials under consideration for digitization.

Digital collection selection and curation

  • Goals: Jim asked what our goals for the future may be, which Hillary stated are yet to be determined. This brought up the important question of what statistics to track going forward and whether or not to set quantitative goals or milestones, as we did in preparation for launch. Ron is more concerned about what we can support and sustain rather than arbitrary numbers. He is hesitant to create a defined metric at this moment. We do want some objectives going forward but we’re not quite there yet. Hillary discussed the importance of having qualitative goals rather than setting quantitative numbers, which may not always be meaningful. We are mostly concerned about the quality of what we digitize and ingest rather than how much we digitized, therefore we are striving for a value-added approach. Eddie mentioned the importance of robust metadata. Going forward, Hillary and Nicole will also look into augmenting metadata for records that were published without descriptions prior to launch in order to meet the 5,000 objects threshold and create a more balanced collection relative to the quantity of records from the Beckman collection. Ultimately, we are still figuring out what our output can be with reduced staffing and time devoted to digital collections development. For now, we want to focus on publishing the content already digitized.
  • The group discussed what areas we could strengthen as well as identifying topics that could help guide selection. The following topics/themes were agreed upon to explore, as applicable to the different collecting areas:
    • 2 significant upcoming anniversaries:
      • The 150th anniversary of the periodic table
      • The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) Centennial
    • Works related to this year’s National History Day theme, “Triumph and Tragedy in History,” which will be highlighted on the LibGuide being developed by Ashley, Hillary and Victoria (some examples follow) :
      • Banning of DDT
        • Ads from Hercules; materials from Modern Library collection
      • WWI and chemical warfare
        • Gas masks and advertisements
      • The Pure Food and Drug Act and food science more generally
        • Witco content commemorating this anniversary?
        • Dow chemical for coloring French fries
          • Look into food dye books to be displayed for open house
        • Atomic bomb
          • Witco Stamp Collection-stamps commemorating Hiroshima
          • Archival materials related to atomic energy-Manhattan Project
        • Visually appealing works:
          • Botanical prints
        • Themes that crosslink between collections:
          • Pharmaceuticals with crosslinks to:
            • Botanical collection
            • Ads
            • Modern collection
          • Team up with the work happening within the Museum and Oral History teams around science and disabilities
            • Broaden to include women & minorities in STEM/access and inclusion
            • Could include:
              • Dow: gender roles in ads
              • Chemistry books for ladies
            • Other miscellaneous topics to potentially explore:
              • Aviation including:
                • Othmer postcards of flying machines
              • Rare earth elements
                • Potential materials from IUPAC
              • Prep for next All Souls Con – further tie-ins with rare books collection
              • Topics related to fellows’ research

Site updates

  • Not much to report on new site features since previous meeting in June.
  • We’re in the process of ingesting oral history transcripts
    • 189 oral histories are soon to be in the queue – targeting interviews where the full transcripts are ready to be made fully open & accessible
  • Jonathan worked on adding PDF functionality for the oral histories
    • Other pdf is the Neville catalog
      • Need to tweak with Jim’s assistance to locate/design a more attractive cover page
    • Future planning
      • The tech team is discussing the ongoing support of Samvera and is working on a long term plan involving investigating staying with Samvera versus exploring other options
        • This may mean the development of features on the current site may be somewhat slower so the team can devote time to a potential new platform
        • The current app is in a stable state in the interim
        • Please let Hillary know of any features you may want
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