Omeka server administrators' conference call

Brief notes from the local Omeka administrators' organizational conference call today...

• Xi will work on some design options for the overall homepage-- we'll run those by the Steering Committee before we commit to anything on the homepage
• Xi will also work on a Google document for administrators to share resources, procedures, etc.
• Steve is working on a chron job to give us some automatic backups on the Bluehost site-- no rush need on this at our current state of development
• Experiments, test collections, exhibits are already to be found at: http://www.ohio5.info/omeka/
• Steve got OAI harvesting working, but it seems that CSV file importing of metadata together with using the "drop box" for loading digital files is probably the most efficient method.
• Catalina will experiment with using Omeka as the grant project portal
• Meghan hopes to experiment with video files-- Steve's not pleased that Quicktime is the only mp3 player available right now

Omeka server support conference call

We had a conference call today to begin the process of explore the OH5 Omeka instance we've set up for all to use.  See this TIC webpage for the current listing of staff who'll be the main contacts for the immediate future.  We'll track who's working which which plug-ins at this site too.

Steve Flynn is trying to get the OAI Harvester plug-in to work so we can easily bring DRC content in to create Omeka exhibits.  Xi Chen will be testing out the loading of a tab-delimited file of metadata.  Bluehost creates daily and weekly backups that are constantly being overwritten, but  Steve will also work to develop a simple back up command so we can save the Omeka file snapshots elsewhere on our Bluehost site.

For the time being we hope each institution will create a test collection and exhibit.  Local Omeka administrators will begin to discuss next steps in an early November conference call.

OH5 Omeka server startup

Here are notes from today's phone conference exploring setting up a shared OH5 Omeka service (cf. omeka.org) on the Bluehost cloud-based web service.

• Alan Boyd (OBE), Xi Chen (OBE), Catalina Oyler (OH5), Steven Flynn (WOO), Meghan Frazer (KEN), and Robert Arnold (OWU) were on the call; Debby Andreadis (DEN) absent
• We will start by setting on OH5 instance of Omeka within which numerous individual Exhibits can be created for each institution
• Catalina and Xi will work to set up the OH5 Bluehost account.  Xi, Steven, and Robert (pending approval) will share the responsibilities as Technical Administrators, each able to respond to issues with the Bluehost server and the software components of the Omeka installation.
• At least one Omeka Project administrator will be designated on each campus as the main contact for training and support for projects to create various local exhibits-- Alan (initially-- OBE), Meghan (KEN), Steven (and possibly Marsha-- WOO), Debby (probably-- DEN), Emily (probably-- OWU); 
• Project Administrators will promote use of Omeka and should stay in touch with the online Omeka user community.
• Technical and Project administrators can meet as needed via phone conferences to coordinate use of the Omeka server
• The few established OH5 Omeka exhibits that are now hosted on other servers can be migrated to the shared server over time.

March 24, 2001 TIC meeting summary

All TIC members and Matt Rolf met at Denison.  Topics discussed included:

• Bottlenecks in OL and OARNET response to what seem like "simple" needs/fixes
  Meghan was somewhat hopeful that OL DRMC chair Gwen Evan's meeting w/OL and OARNET staff on this topic will be successful getting action on: 1) some form of OL staff "root" access to OARNET DSPACE servers and 2) quick implementation of a service request routing/monitoring system.  TIC will likely advise that Mark Christel send a letter of support on these issues after the immediate outcome of Gwen's meeting is clear.
  
• Review of Matt's current work agenda https://sites.google.com/site/oh5nextgenerationlibrary/Home/work-groups/digitization-group-1/interface-improvements
  Matt will be working through into "Medium Priority" items over the next few weeks
  
• Review of OhioLINK DRMC enhancement list
  Deferred until OL staff reviews numerous recommendations and ratings from OL DRC liaisons and comes up with a better consolidated list; OL is working on many of these enhancements to be implemented prior to an OL presentation at ALA this summer.         
• Reporting bugs for Matt
  Catalina and Matt will work up a method for the TIC to track interface bugs reported to Matt as well unsolved OL DRC bugs/requests we think others would be interested in knowing about.
  
• Quick Project Updates
  We went round the table on this--- we're all busy and no one reported any insurmountable problems
  
• Project documents: additional needs
  We all committed to paying attention to the local project page and keeping project tracking and and Project Info sheet up to dates.  Catalina will start linking resource documents for staff to each of the project tracking icons-- we'll all add examples as we can.  We'll also try to highlight exemplary projects dealing with different types of resources.  On the Project Info Sheets we'll document information on student worker/student classroom participation and on special interfaces used (e.g. photo gallery or book turning interfaces)
  
• TIC input for Staff Development workshops
  We suggest a keynote speaker on the topic metadata interaction within discovery layers e.g., the Electronic Landscape--- no specific names were mentioned, but NCSU and Oregon St. libraries were mentioned as likely institutions with leaders in this area.  We suggest that the rest of a summer workshop day be programmed with interactions among staff on topics popular in the survey and also on common issues arising from the current local projects.   We will work with Catalina to plan an "advanced metadata" workshop for a central location (or a couple locations) that includes all cataloging staff that might be included in metadata projects now or in the future.  We'll try to include  real hands-on work aimed at helping staff geared toward MARC records feel comfortable enhancing metadata for digital resources.
  
• Plans for cooperative outsourcing of digitizationWe discussed a variety of options for spending funds on collaboratively bid outsourcingeither in this phase of the grant or a phase2: digitizing yearbooks, student newspapers, honor theses, local newspapers, books published by our institutions or pre-1923 books published by our faculty.  
• Review grant activities
  We reviewed TIC-related goals that were written into the grant and concluded we were making satisfactory progress on all.
  
• Planning for the Project Portal
  We'll ask for input from Staff Dev. and the Steering committee and at future TIC meeting we'll outline the major components of the project's public portal.  We need to decide if we'll ask OL for a separate DSPACE instance that aggregates the local collections.  After defining the the major components of the public portal
  
• Metabuddy
  The Metabuddy idea is to develop a tool facilitate creation and coordination of metadata application profiles.  This would only be investigated during the current grant, but could be a significant compontent of a 2nd grant application.  We discussed various concepts of how this might work.  Catalina will see if contacts Alan made with OCLC research several years ago are still interested and try to gauge what progress has been made in this field in the interim.
  

Survey link for student NGL participants

Students who are paid under local NGL projects are required to answer the following survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/33FDMZY

Student who participate in an NGL project as part of course work are encouraged to take this survey.

TIC members will have the password to access the results at:

http://tinyurl.com/4pfn2cj

The survey is administered by Alan Boyd