Advisory Board
Meeting
23 January 2012
@ British Library
Agenda:
Welcome and Introductions
Notes of the last meeting and matters arising
Terms of Reference & Role (updated)
Budget and Sustainability
Platform update
Development Log
Content Brainstorm
Innovations and Collaboration
OCR Report
MARC Records
Evaluating Success
Date of next meeting and AOB
Welcome and Introductions / Attending
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Adrian Edwards – British Library
Adrian Street – Queen’s University Belfast
Diarmuid Kennedy – Queen’s University Belfast
Elizabeth McHugh - University of the Highlands and Islands (on phone)
Erica Swain – Cardiff University
Gabriel Egan - Loughborough University (Chair)
Giles Bergel - Oxford University (Merton)
Joanna Ball – University of Sussex
Jonathan Gibson – Royal Holloway, University of London
Justin Champion - Royal Holloway, University of London
Laurel Brake – Birkbeck, University of London
Michael Popham - Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
Sam Tillet – British Library
Simon Eliot – School of Advanced Studies, University of London
Vic Lyte – Mimas
Alastair Dunning – JISC
Caren Milloy – JISC Collections
Scott Gibbens – JISC Collections
Apologies received
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Stephen Gregg - Bath Spa
Jerome de Groot - Manchester University
Mark Towsey - University of Liverpool
Paul Rayson – University of Lancaster
Tracey Hill - Bath Spa University
Andy Murphey – University of St Andrews
Ceri Sullivan – Bangor University
Matthew Steggle - Sheffield Hallam
Simon Bell – British Library
Jess Edwards – Manchester Metropolitan University
Chris Mounsey - University of Winchester
Beth Palmer - University of Surrey
Godfried Croenen - University of Liverpool
Notes of the last meeting and matters arising
 Terms of Reference – update and agenda item
 Benchmarking and evaluation – agenda item
 Membership – new members invited and accepted
Ceri Sullivan from Bangor University
Adrian Streete from Queens University Belfast
Andy Murphy from University St Andrews
Joanna Ball from University of Sussex (Library)
Erica Swain from Cardiff University (Library)
Diarmund Kennedy from Queen’s University Belfast (Library)
 Platform Update – agenda item
 Communications - JISCmail, www.jiscecollections.ac.uk, digital
literacy, focus groups, newsletter, twitter , articles, visits (verbal
update),
Advisory Board Terms of Reference
Principles
Objectives
Role
Membership (see spreadsheet)
Members are invited to discuss and agree the revised
terms of reference for the group
Principles
The JISC Historic Books Advisory Board works to support the following
principles:
 JISC Historic Books will be an easy to use, comprehensive, dynamic,
innovative and sustainable platform that is continually used by
researchers, teachers and learners in UK higher and further education
 JISC Historic Books will pioneer new technologies and techniques to
support changes in the scholarly environment and user behavior
 JISC Historic Books will open up and widen access to historical printed
materials through partnerships and international collaborations
Objectives
In meeting the principles, the Advisory Board will:
 ensure that the JHB provides the leading interface, functionality, content and
licensing to meet the needs of teachers, learners and researchers in UK Higher
and Further education, both now and in the future
 drive forward new developments to keep JHB in line with changing user
behavior and needs, the changing scholarly environment, and innovations in
technology and learning
 identify and prioritise content for inclusion in JHB to increase repeat use and
provide a better teaching, learning and research experience for users within UK
higher and further education institutions
 ensure that JHB adopts current and emerging industry standards/technologies
for interoperability, discoverability, accessibility, statistics, metadata and content
 make decisions that will provide the UK HE & FE community with the best return
on investment and support the future sustainability of JISC eCollections
Role
To meet the objectives, the Advisory Board will:
 represent the current and potential users of JHB within the UK scholarly
community
 guide and develop the JHB technology and content strategy
 hold open, frank and constructive discussions on future developments
 provide advice and guidance to JISC Collections
 work collaboratively with JISC Collections to help foster new and constructive
relationships / partnerships within the scholarly community
 champion JHB within UK HE and FE to help harness the power of the community
in future developments
 keep informed of developments in the digital historic book scholarly
environment and use this knowledge in decision making and when providing
advice to JISC Collections
Budget and Sustainability
JISC eCollections Service Budget
Service Fees
Development Funding Available
Members are invited to note and discuss the
Service Budget and the Development Funds
JISC eCollections Service Budget
This will be presented at the meeting
as it is too large to fit into this slide
JISC eCollections Service Fees
Band
HE
FE
Band A
£5,700
£500
Band B
£5,150
£450
Band C
£4,590
£300
Band D
£4,040
£350
Band E
£3,300
£300
Band F
£2,770
£250
Band G
£2,570
£200
Band H
£960
£150
Band I
£910
£150
Band J
£860
£150
Development Funding
WP1: Historic Books enhancements - £62,581 + VAT
JISC Paid MIMAS, Clawback from JC Content grant
WP2: Advanced Search - £31,067 + VAT
WP3: MARC records - £29,415 + VAT
WP4: Save and Print -£33,700 + VAT
JC paid directly from our content budget
Total Costs
JISC Collections allocated £100,000 for future
developments from the content budget. Of this £100,000,
the above costs have to be deducted:
Budget allocated
Reindex
Additional WP3 UI work to separate the proquest "Publisher Metadata" display
WP5: Persistent URL
Upgrade to PDF server software
Remaining budget for new developments
Platform Update
 Stop words – there is a quick fix in place to allow phrase searching
to include stop words
 Usage Statistics – we are working with the JUSP team to provide
comprehensive usage statistics. From August to November
236694 pages were viewed.
 Persistent URLs – this will allow users to use a unique URL to go
straight from a VLE or library catalogue into a specific book and
page
 PDF server – This project will improve the delivery of PDF
downloads
 EECO 2 content ingest – 50,000 more books to be indexed. In
addition more EEBO TCP text will be added (new files)
Development Log
 This log lists all suggested enhancements to the service that we
have received from users
 They have been looked at by the software developers to specify
rough time and costs to get this done
 We need to prioritise how important these are and add any
additional features we require
 Once the board has prioritised a more detailed specification of
each development will be written and passed on to the developers
 We would like the Advisory Board to assist in testing the
developments
 The log will be posted on the JISC eCollections website
Members are invited to discuss the
development log and prioritise the
developments in order of importance in
accordance with the ToR and the budget
available
Content Brainstorm
 Oxford University & Google 19th Century titles:
http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/dbooks/
 Connected Histories
http://www.connectedhistories.org/
 JISC Collections content tender
Members are invited to participate in a brainstorming
session to identify content that could be licensed and
ingested into the platform. Members are also invited to
highlight where collaborations and partnerships with
other providers may be beneficial for users of JHB.
Innovations and Collaborations
OCR report
MARC records
Improving OCR text within JISC Historic Books
Why is this of importance to education - verbal report
on the OCR summit by Gabriel Egan
 Taking it forward in the UK – verbal report by Scott
Gibbens
Widget
(quick
edits)
UK
HE
&
FE
JISC
Historic
Books
TypeWright
software
(expert
editing)
TEI-A used to
send the
textual
changes back
and forth
18th
Century
Connect
Centralised
Server &
Editorial
Board
Date & time
stamped with
versioning
Proquest /
Cengage /
British
Library
Improving OCR text within JISC Historic Books
Members are invited to discuss the proposed
OCRs project and to endorse JISC Collections
taking forward this project subject to a full
project plan
Members may want to consider forming a subgroup for this project
Providing UK HE and FE with MARC records for JHB
 What metadata and discovery mechanisms are required by the
key stakeholders (researchers, students and librarians)
 The possibilities for collecting and maintaining such metadata
together and the associated issues, costs, benefits and timescales
 Any IP issues associated with such activity
Study undertaken by Owen Stephens and full report available for
interested members
Report Recommendations (1 of 2) (in priority order)
 Recommendation 1: To satisfy the needs of those libraries who have
already invested in obtaining MARC records for EEBO/ECCO it is essential
that JISC Historic Books supports the ability to link to items within the
collection via one or more standard identifiers.
 Recommendation 2: Persistent links to materials in JISC Historic Books
platform should be distributed freely, with mappings to other key
identifiers (i.e. those listed above).
 Recommendation 3: JISC Collections should work with the British Library,
ESTC North America, and other stakeholders to achieve the release of ESTC
data under a license that explicitly allows re-use.
Recommendations (2 of 2)
 Recommendation 4: JISC Collections should contact Dr Mike Mertens
(Deputy Executive Director, RLUK) to pursue the possibility of using RLUK
metadata as the basis of open, re-usable, metadata.
 Recommendation 5: JISC Collections should work with the British Library
to investigate how crowdsourcing techniques might be used to improve
and enhance the metadata available for the 19th Century material.
 Recommendation 6: JISC Collections and Mimas should discuss the
possibility of automatic keyword extraction and text summarization, with a
focus on those texts with high quality transcriptions. JISC Collections
should also clarify the licensing terms (if any) governing the use of the
source material in this context.
MARC records: next steps
Members are invited to discuss the
recommendations from the metadata
report and agree to JISC Collections
proceeding according to the priority order
suggested
Members may want to consider a sub-group
for this project
Evaluating progress & success
 Y1: Need to gather data to inform
strategy, evaluate progress and to be able
to put together proof for sponsors etc
 Suggestion to use: Toolkit for the Impact
of Digitised Scholarly Resources http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/
Methodology: Quantitative
 Benchmarking usage of JHB against
ProQuest / Cengage (bi-annual)
 Benchmarking usage (annual)
 Web analytics / Log files / COUNTER
(Google / Mimas) (quarterly)
 Referrer links analysis (Bi-annual)
 Surveys by JISC Collections & Mimas
(annual)
Methodology: Qualitative
 Focus groups – understand use and how
can help embed use (annual)
 User testing – performance, accessibility
(annual)
 Feedback on lists / helpdesks / twitter
(quarterly)
Evaluating progress & success
Members are invited to discuss the proposed
methods for evaluating JISC Historic Books.
Following feedback, JISC Collections will write the
evaluation plan and put into action
Date of next meeting and AOB
May 2012
October 2012
January 2013