Digital Collections Users' Group Meeting: October 19, 2011

Members present: Chris Day (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Ginger Frere (Newberry Library), David Levinson (Lake Forest College), Laurie Sauer (Chair, Knox College), Julia Thompson (Western Illinois University)

Members absent: Ellen Corrigan (Eastern Illinois University), Eben English (Loyola University Chicago), Peter Hepburn (University of Illinois at Chicago), Meg Miner (Illinois Wesleyan University)

CARLI Staff Liaisons present: Jessica Gibson, Amy Maroso

Confirmed Chris as minutes taker.

Minutes from the September meeting were approved with corrections.

Copyright workshop survey: The committee felt generally positive about their experiences at the workshop, feeling that the open-ended nature of the discussion was a success (as it was for the speaker). The responses from the survey were generally positive, but there were mixed feelings on both the format and lingering questions.

"Anatomy of a Digital Project" series: Future programs:

1. Peter's program, "Connecting Your Digital Collections to the Curricula at Your Institution", will not happen because of loss of speaker. The series will begin in December with Meg's "Contracting with Vendors for Digitization" by Thomas Wood (UIS).

2. Laurie had written a draft announcement for the series, which the group discussed. It was decided to group the programs into scheduled and planned, as well as adding a note on program length and the names of scheduled speakers.

3. Registration will go up about one month prior to each program. All info needed for registration needs to be finished about 2-3 weeks before registration goes up.

Subcommittee reports

1. Communication & Outeach - (Chris for Eben): Met after the previous meeting, on 9/21. CARLI Digital Collections Featured Image will start in November on the CARLI Blog. Helped to finalize the text for the copyright workshop participants' survey. Have been discussing new avenues of communication, including a DCUG twitter account and possible non-CARLI sponsored casual meet-ups. Will next meet on 10/24.

2. Documentation & Standards -No report was given.

3. Usability – (Chris): After technical issues stopped the meeting on 9/22, they met again on 10/13. The results of the usability survey on the CARLI Digital Collections website were interesting but are not leading to further specific usability testing. The survey will remain up and comments will be examined as they arrive. Currently examining initial reports from Google Analytics to see what can be learned and how best to share the results of these reports with the wider community. Will next meet on 11/3.

4. Digital Preservation - (Laurie): In-person Digital Preservation Forum (a joint venture with the Preservation Working Group) has been approved for April 10, 2012, and planning for the session has begun.

Other Business/Conference Reporting

None.