Attending: I. Welcome and Introductions William Gosling, chair of the Board, welcomed everyone to the meeting and introduced Sally Sinn, representing Nancy Davenport for CLIR, and Erin Luckett, representing Remmel Nunn for Readex. He then went over the agenda stressing that this was an important year for the project which finds itself with many successes but with many challenges of growing numbers of texts to manage, growing numbers of users, and growing demands on project resources, and that much of the meeting would be covering those issues. II. Updates TCP Production and Outreach Updates Shawn Martin updated the Board on project developments. Most notably 30 institutions have joined the EEBO-TCP and Evans-TCP projects since the last Board meeting (13 of which are ARL libraries) and over 3,000 titles have been produced making, the grand total over 12,000 for all three projects. Also, the ECCO-TCP project has commenced with the release of a demo, and TCP sponsored an ECCO selection task force in August. Shawn then noted that TCP projects – individually and collectively - are beginning to take on a life of their own. Librarians both from the TCP and from other universities are giving more presentations, usage is increasing, more scholars are aware of TCP, and more institutions are creating local implementations (six currently). This is a good sign of TCP’s relevance and mission, but an increasing burden on TCP’s resources. EEBO Updates Mary Sauer-Games reported that EEBO had sold to 30 new customers this year making the total number around 300 subscribers for EEBO including 94 ARL libraries. Some of the more unique ones this year were the National Libraries of Australia and China and consortia in Finland and Germany. There are currently around 100,000 titles and over 1.5 million uses of the database. Evans Updates Erin Luckett reported that Evans Digital now includes 283 institutions most recently including the University of Queensland, a consortium in Germany, and the Appalachian College Association. She also reported that there has been some interest from Mellon to study the use of this product in smaller schools. ECCO Updates Rich Foley reported that ECCO now covers 120 subscribers and a recent purchase from the JISC. The ECCO product has also sold well in Canada this past year. Rich also reported (relating to a question on Metadata) the release of a My Library product which is opening up access to their metadata at Gale and that he was interested in further doing case studies on how ECCO is used in research and in the classroom. III. Project Challenges Budget Mark Sandler reported that the TCP budget shows positive balances through 2007. In ’04-’05 we have exceeded expectations on income and under-spent in most budget categories. This means that at this point the TCP project has the revenues needed to produce between 18,000 and 20,000 texts by 2009. He also pointed out that this assumes no growth and that it is likely TCP will be able to attract more institutions between now and 2007. Discussion then began on how to further develop the TCP project and insure that we can create 25,000 texts. In order to do this, the Board felt that it needed more information about the complete number of texts possible to include in the corpus, a dollar amount per title required to complete the project, a report on the total number of institutions, and the gap between EEBO subscribers and EEBO-TCP partners. Shawn Martin will work with Mary Sauer-Games to gather this information and report back to the Board. Some members thought that EEBO-TCP should go back to already existing partners and ask for a second round of funds to complete the project. In order to do this, Board members felt EEBO-TCP should look very carefully at what titles it is selecting and come up with summaries of the number of desirable titles to convert and initiate a strategy that could persuade libraries that it would be worth another years commitment to complete, for example, all of the Thomason tracts, or all of a particular genre or canonical category. Coordination Mark Sandler then discussed the need for additional funds to coordinate the project. Running 3 projects is more difficult than running one, and Paul Schaffner who has run all editorial and logistical coordination up to now needs assistance to run the logistics for all three. The same is true of selection coordination. John Latta has run this for the past few years but more of his time is required to do this now. Therefore, it was proposed that the equivalent of one full time employee (one employee at half time for logistics and another at half time for selection coordination) be approved for coordination. Members of the Board also felt that TCP should complete an equity review of all of its employees to see what salaries are being offered from other universities and whether TCP’s salaries are in-line with what is being offered elsewhere. It was suggested that TCP might want to do a 10% raise across the board for all reviewing staff that remain with the project for five years. A formal motion was presented to the Board to approve the switch of one full time reviewer to coordination activities and to complete an equity review. It passed unanimously. Mark also mentioned that TCP is also stretched between providing assistance to more users with the growing number of TCP projects (providing more support for local implementations, assisting more scholars with projects, and attending more conferences to name a few). It was suggested that TCP train some librarians to cope with this and create “Centers of Excellence” where librarians could interact more with faculty. Some Board members felt that TCP should start targeting larger conferences like MLA rather than smaller ones, and that TCP ought to create a listserv for TCP that could perhaps managed by others to get information out about the project. Selection Shawn Martin then discussed the selection process for all of the TCP projects. Though there are commonalities between them, selection runs differently for all 3 projects and each project runs fairly independently. Therefore, it becomes a question of how much should TCP coordinate collection between the three projects and how should TCP manage duplication. Scholars prefer that TCP duplicate titles between EEBO, Evans, and ECCO; librarians prefer to avoid duplication. The Board felt that it should receive a report of all duplicated materials, that TCP create an oversight group of librarians to coordinate the three projects, and where feasible TCP should try to minimize duplication. IV. Project Successes New Interfaces Mark Sandler reported that the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and Washington University in St. Louis now have (or soon will) local implementations of TCP texts. Though this has always been part of the vision, that institutions would take responsibility for local users, it also imposes a burden on TCP at Michigan to inform users about these implementations. The Board suggested that it is more the responsibility of local institutions to support their implementations; however, TCP should put up something at the TCP site to inform users perhaps by creating FAQs or a site like MLA which lists the implementations of its bibliography. Presentations & Publications Shawn Martin then gave an overview of the many presentations and publications done about TCP independent of University of Michigan librarians. Though this is a great development, it also moves things out of the direct control of TCP staff and opens up the possibility that misinformation about the project could spread. The Board thought that overwhelmingly publication and presentation was good for the project and that TCP should deal with problems if and when they arise. Board Impact Mark Sandler talked about the importance the Board has played in the life of the TCP project. Price increases have helped to bring additional revenue and the Board’s decision on licensing and rights of use has helped greatly in TCP’s decisions about whom to help in academic projects.
TCP Conference for 2006 Members of the Board felt that a conference investigating the uses of EEBO, Evans, ECCO, and the TCP was a good idea. It was also agreed that in order to fund the conference, TCP should in addition to getting funds from ProQuest, Readex, and Gale work with David Stam to find grants and charge a conference fee. The date was originally set for Sept. 28- Oct. 2, but since that interferes with Yom Kippur, Shawn would work to find another date (note: since that time Shawn has looked and the most likely date now seems to be Sept. 14-18). Board members stressed that the conference should be as broad as possible including librarians, scholars, publishers, undergraduates and graduates representing all areas of study covered by the three products. It was also agreed that the Board should next meet the day after the conference concluded (likely September 18 or 19). Role of CLIR/DLF CLIR was envisioned to be a secretariat for the EEBO-TCP when it was founded, but in reality has administered funds for the project over the past few years. Since the University of Michigan finance office has handled financial matters for Evans-TCP and ECCO-TCP, it makes sense to consolidate these operations. A formal motion was put before the Board to move EEBO-TCP finances over to the University of Michigan that was carried unanimously. Because of this move, TCP now lacks an outside auditor to look over how it is spending money. It was suggested that members of the Board volunteer to form a Budget subcommittee that Shawn will report to at ALA meetings. Bill Walker and Sally Sinn volunteered to serve in that capacity. Other suggested that a similar committee should be formed for marketing. Betty Bengtson volunteered for this. Sarah Michalak also volunteered to be wherever needed, and if other Board members would like to be involved, Shawn will follow up. CLIR also expressed an interest in furthering its involvement with TCP in other ways such as helping to publish case studies about use, contextualize the TCP model in terms of larger library trends (scholarly communication, electronic preservation, etc.). The Board felt that CLIR could serve well in this capacity and Shawn will work with CLIR on ways to further these goals. VI. Google and TCP John Price-Wilkin, Associate University Librarian for Library Information Technology & Technical and Access Services, was a guest of the Board to talk about issues relating to the Google initiative and TCP’s role in promoting “enhanced” product to the library and academic community. TCP does have an important role in noting that OCR text, though good for many things, cannot serve all purposes scholars need, and TCP should continue to argue for structured electronic text for at least a portion of the collection. Perry Willett then discussed the new DLXS implementation of TCP text at the University of Michigan. New features will allow much better display of TCP text including such things as musical notation and foreign characters, and a better display of <gap> (unreadable) characters among other things. This implementation should allow users to read the text much more easily. VII. Planning for next meeting It was agreed that the Board should meet after the TCP Conference in 2006. It was also suggested that there should be follow up between now and the next Board meeting with the newly formed subcommittees on marketing and budget. William Gosling also mentioned that though he continued to serve as TCP Board chair for this meeting, he is no longer University Librarian of the University of Michigan library, and at the next meeting, the Board will have to review how it wants to run the new meetings with the new University Librarian. Other final points the Board felt were important from this meeting: 1. A strategy and follow up on winding down the project (budgets,
numbers of titles, strategies for second round or other funding)
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