Digital Collections Users’ Group Meeting: February 20, 2013

Conference Call

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

Members absent: Benn Joseph (Northwestern University)

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

Confirmed Julia Thompson as minutes taker. 

January minutes were approved with corrections.

Project Updates

Digital Preservation Joint Subcommittee: Laurie Sauer said that CARLI Office staff will handle applications and attendee selections for the Library of Congress Train-the-Trainers digital preservation, and that the joint DCUG/PWG subcommittee will not  meet anymore. Amy Maroso said one application has already been received.

Featured Collections: Adam Strohm and Laurie talked after last DCUG meeting. Adam sent Laurie the information he has so far compiled about the project.

Social Media: Julia Thompson and Chris Day have focued on what individual institutions can do on their own to promote collections, such as using  social media sites like Flickr, Tumblr, and Pinterest.  They have not yet decided whether they will create a webinar or just instructional documents for CARLI member libraries.  Chris emailed links to the group that show WIU’s and SIA’s use of the social media sites. Julia and Chris will work on instructions for using both Tumblr and Pinterest to promote collections. Laurie and Ellen Corrigan suggested they write an instructive article for an appropriate library science journal.

Google Analytics: Chris, Adam, and Mary Rose have continued to work on the traffic and keyword reports for Quarter 1 data of 2013.  Before they work on Quarter 2 they would like feedback about their proposed revisions to the reports.  Chris will send out revised reports in an email after the meeting. The group wants to solicit email feedback from DCUG  about adding more analysis or context to the information currently provided in the reports. Documentation for creating the reports will be updated as soon as the group decides on revisions to the process.

Featured Image: Mary and Ellen have continued the blog posts.  They have enjoyed the personal approach to the posts, and also agree that it is nice to get feedback from featured institutions. Mary said that every library that has collections published in CARLI Digital Collections has been featured in at least one post.

Twitter: Benn Joseph absent; no report.

New Business

The group expressed interest in the demographics for Tumblr and Pinterest, as well as using these social media sites to promote collections. 

Laurie asked if CARLI will upgrade to CONTENTdm Version 6 soon; Amy replied that Version 6 currently has too many problems to move forward at this time.

Other Business

Adam and Chris were at the recent Code4Lib conference and reported that it was interesting.  While the content was technologically dense, there were several presentations that spoke directly to current projects of interest to DCUG. They also said that it's nice to see what other institutions are doing.

David went to Digital Directions from Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) in Ann Arbor in July. The topic was building and conserving digital collections.

Mary asked for suggestions for conferences.