Participating: Ed Van Gemert (chair), John Butler, Bruce Miller, Sarah Pritchard, Paul Soderdahl (recorder), John Wilkin.
1. SAB minutes. SAB minutes from May 20, 2010 reviewed and approved as amended.
2. HT Operations/Development update (Wilkin)
- Shibboleth authentication
Now in production. Northwestern, Chicago, Michigan State, and Michigan currently configured to use Shibboleth.
Shib-authenticated users can download full PDF of public domain and open access works and create permanent collections. (Unauthenticated users cannot download public domain of Google scans to comply with HT’s requirement to guard against systematic downloading.)
Full-text download of in-copyright materials is not permissible under prevailing interpretation of Section 107 (fair use). Full-text download is allowed when copyright owner gives permission (as is the case under certain publisher arrangements). Full-text download is also available when other copyright exceptions apply, such as Section 108 (for damaged, deteriorating, lost, or stolen materials) and Section 121 (for users with print disabilities). Section 108 will rely on the holdings database (now in development, see staffing below). Section 121 access will be built on Shibboleth (planned for future development).
Sarah Pritchard mentioned that users are confused about the various rights issues. John Wilkin indicated that this would be a good topic for the Communications WG to address.
- Large-scale search
Fully replicated at both sites, with failover and redundancy
- Non-Google book/journal ingest
Beginning to ingest Internet Archive from additional institutions. Currently working on UIUC’s Internet Archive materials, which should be available soon.
Working with sample materials from UIUC and Iowa to develop policies/tools for non-Google, non-Internet Archive materials. Working on a framework toward end of summer.
- Working Groups
Communications WG was approved by Executive Committee and members appointed.
Usability WG charge is still in draft.
- Membership
NYPL is now HT member; NYPL brings significant public domain materials to HT.
- Sustaining partner model
HT working with NYU, Maryland, and Arizona State to formulate the contract model.
- Staffing
HT has hired a developer to work on holdings database; data modeling underway.
Michigan is in process of hiring developer for mobile applications. Percentage of that person’s time will be available to HT to develop mobile interface for HT catalog and an iPad viewer for HT display.
3. Updates from SAB working groups
- Discovery Interface WG (Butler)
WorldCat Local installation occurred in late May, with a data load of approx. 3M HT records.
Usability testing has reviewed WorldCat Local interface to determine its readiness as a public beta interface to a digital library catalog such as HT. They have identified four critical issues that they’ve indicated to OCLC must be addressed before it can be a public beta:
1. Link to HathiTrust full-text search conspicuously and logically located in the interface;
2. Suppression of WorldCat Local-provided article records from HathiTrust search results;
3. Suppression or repurposing of the WorldCat Local preview button, which currently resolves to Google Book Search preview; and
4. Present HathiTrust login option; suppress WorldCat Local login.
A charge for the full-text search group has been finalized; now settling on membership.
- Error Rate WG (Soderdahl)
The group continues to refine the gating scenarios document (gating at ingest, gating at access, no gating w/ message displayed, no gating w/o message to user).
Currently under discussion is the notion of a “not-ready-for-primetime repository” as a mechanism for preserving materials not ingested due to quality. This could a separate repository without all the management overhead of HT, and with few, if any, services beyond whatever is needed for tracking. Such a model could be applied by any individual institution, a subset of HT members, or HT-wide.
In some ways, the current situation with GRIN and Google rejects reflects this model, where Google serves as the de facto not-ready-for-primetime repository. In that context, the need and timing for developing a separate repository depends on our individual or collective risk tolerance for relying solely on Google to serve that role.
John Wilkin indicated that it would likely be a small development project to extend GROOVE for a new workflow to identify and harvest content for this type of repository. Sarah Pritchard noted that the idea of applying different treatment for different material would be a good topic for the new Collections Committee. John Butler added that balancing access and preservation is at the heart of HT and a set of guiding principles would be helpful.
4. Collections Committee
- Ed Van Gemert noted the SAB’s appreciation to Ivy Anderson for all her work in developing the charge and related materials.
- Ed will distribute the appendix that accompanies the draft charge. The committee will be asked to review its charge and prioritize work for their first year action plan.
- Ed will seek Executive Committee approval at the June 23 meeting. He will also pose the broader question of whether this is the time to consider expanding the SAB. If there is expansion, one of the new committee members can be appointed to SAB and also act as SAB liaison to the committee. (This may or may not be same person as committee chair.) In absence of expansion, Bruce is willing to serve as the committee’s SAB liaison.
SAB in-person meeting scheduled for Friday, Sept. 24, at Big Ten Conference Center in Park Ridge, IL, near O’Hare. Next conference call: Thursday, July 15.