DCUG Meeting: May 15, 2013

Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Conference Call

Members present: Ellen Corrigan (Eastern Illinois University), Chris Day, Chair (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Benn Joseph (Northwestern University), Mary Rose (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville), Laurie Sauer (Knox College), Adam Strohm (Newberry Library), Julia Thompson (Western Illinois University)

Members absent: David Levinson (Lake Forest College)

CARLI staff present: Jessica Gibson, Amy Maroso (liaison to DCUG)

1. Confirmed Benn Joseph as minutes taker.
2. Minutes from the April 17 meeting were approved with no corrections.

Project Updates

• Featured Collections: Adam Strohm and Laurie Sauer had sent in advance to the group a Featured Collections proposal document highlighting a series of webinars that could be offered by DCUG that would “spotlight particular non-CONTENTdm sites displaying digital objects and delve into issues regarding the thoughts and choices of platform, curating, presentation, promotion, etc. that went into a particular digital collection.” Some in attendance expressed concern, and felt that these webinars would be better off focusing on issues surrounding digital collections issues rather than platform-specific topics.  Amy indicated that it might be helpful to send out an announcement to CARLI members to solicit members who have collections they are willing to discuss in such a webinar, which may allow DCUG to target groups of users who are interested in specific topics. 
• Flickr/Pinterest/Tumblr: Julia and Chris continue to work on the individual Tumblr pages in advance of developing a future webinar or instruction document. Chris has begun to examine the Google Analytics reports for his Tumblr page and how it drives traffic to his digital collection. He notes an  average of between 15 and 20 visitors a month from the Tumblr site, comparable to the amount of traffic driven by WorldCat listings. Both Julia and Chris want to do more such analysis and testing to make a potential webinar more valuable to attendees. A webinar could possibly be done in Fall 2013 on this topic.
• Google Analytics: Chris Day, Mary Rose, and Adam Strohm have reported that the first two Quarters of 2012-2013 have been uploaded to the CARLI website: [http://blog.carli.illinois.edu/products-services/contentdm/google-analytics-usage-reports-carli-digital-collections].  They hope to have some “how-to” documentation for committee members carrying on the reports created by the next meeting.  Raw data requires some proficiency with spreadsheets and it’s best if the information presented can be quickly and easily interpreted.
• Featured Image: Laurie Sauer was the first “guest author” with a Featured Image that went up since the last meeting, and it garnered some positive feedback from a user. Ellen proposed trying some co-authored posts to give more perspective, or even trying to crowdsource a post.  An interesting point noted here is that it’s a good idea to point out great metadata for featured images, which folks who have their images selected can then put in their dossiers for review time. 
• Twitter: Benn Joseph has continued to post Featured Image links to the Twitter stream, but there has been no other growth (only 21 followers).  Items like the Featured Image will continue to be posted to the DCUG Twitter.  However, when the new Created Content group convenes this summer, they can decide whether to continue Twitter use.
• Digital Preservation: “Train-the-Trainers” acceptance notifications have gone out and the workshop will take place July 9-12.

Other business/conference reporting

Amy indicated that nominations for chair for the new Created Content committee will be invited for the next term (2013-2014).