diglib: Today's SOU visit

["Normandy Helmer" <nhelmer@darkwing.uoregon.edu>]

James, Sara and Carol,

Thanks for making the time to meet with the representatives from Southern. I
am sending this to all of Dig Lib because it's faster to address it that way
and because I think it will be of interest to everyone.

To recap, today Jim Rible, Deb Hollands, Mary Jane Cedar Face and Lisa Haley
came up from Ashland to talk about their digitizing effort. They have been
given $400,000 plus for digitizing, acquired from IMLS by their congressman
getting a rider on a Christmas tree bill. They have to submit a proposal by
April 9 on how they will use this money.

I think we convinced them:

-define a small but very clear project which they are absolutely sure they
can complete in the allotted 2-3 year period
-define the effort as R&D
-spend the bulk of the effort in creating a robust infrastructure for
creation and management of digital resources, an architecture on which other
OUS schools might easily build and partner
-select standards that fit their materials and the audience they are serving
-start with a "Klamath" project that uses the Native resources Mary Jane is
interested in and the fugitive gov docs Deb is interested in, to provide a
balanced and multi-faceted coherent collection of value
-start with text, not photos
-report to Orbis on what they are up to and watch for ways to integrate
projects between Orbis members.
-cost acquisition & selection, production, cataloging, preservation, and
maintenance, not just the scanning.

After we had met I showed them the Digital Kitchen, the Aerial Photo
workroom, and E-Asia. One of Bob's students did an excellent job of
explaining their workflow and the general project goals for the visitors.

They were very, very appreciative of the time we spent with them and I think
their project will end up giving us useful data and potentially a good
framework for handling gov docs. They were truly floundering when they
arrived and went off feeling more in control. It was not convenient for any
of us to meet with them but we helped them very much thereby enlisting them
to do some legwork for us and look hard for ways to partner with us in the
future.

nsh