REPORT OF CONSORTIUM SYSTEMS GROUP MEETING HELD 1/16/21
Jan 22, 2021
This is a report of the 1/16/21 Zoom meeting of the Consortium Systems Group to address technical and systems issues confronting the consortium.
The following people were present on the call: Doug Hickok NEFRL, Evan Nix WNRL, Mark Pavelchak WNRL, John Sileski WNRL, Samantha Sileski WNRL, Paul LeValley ANRL, Bob Proctor ANRL, and Dave Foote ANRL who was moderator and recorder. Members absent were Jim Sweeney of ANRL, as well as Mike Parker and LuCinda Gustavson from AANR-NW
Here is a summary of agenda items discussed with status of further actions if any:
A. SEARCH SYSTEMS FOR SCANNED IMAGES
- Mark gave a positive report about using Adobe Acrobat Reader DC to perform Boolean, multiple keyword, and multiple document searches. He has written up a “how to guide” and emailed it to members of the group after the meeting so that everyone in the group gains more experience using this system.
- Mark and Doug emphasized importance of the quality of OCR scanning in the search process, both saying that search results could often be improved by doing a second OCR scan using more current OCR scanning software. Mark said that the scanning capabilities of Adobe Acrobat 10, and later versions, were markedly better than found with older Adobe products such as Adobe Acrobat 7. Both said not to jump to any conclusions about needing to re-do the optical scans until simply re-running the OCR recognition on the original PDF with more current software, and checking search results.
- Bob Proctor suggested that with OCR being such a critical component of search, that the consortium needed a best practices for doing OCR. Mark said he had already developed a “how to” using Adobe and was going to send it to everyone. Beyond Adobe, several other OCR systems were mentioned for possible investigation, specifically Tesseract OCR that Doug was familiar with, and Soda PDF that had been used by John Cordone, the former scanner at WNRL. It was decided that Dave, Bob, and Jim Sweeney at ANRL would review Marks’s how to and come back to the group at the next meeting with ideas about developing best practices covering search, scanning, and OCR processing.
B. DEVELOPING USAGE AGREEMENT FOR CONSORTIUM SHARED FILES
- At the last meeting, Doug expressed concern that because full (downloadable) access must be given for a requesting library to make copies of GSuite files belonging to other libraries, the rules, responsibilities, and obligations of all libraries to protect scans of other libraries need to be spelled out with a usage agreement. Further discussion was held off until this meeting.
- Doug volunteered to write a draft usage agreement for us to review and discuss at our next meeting.
C. CONSORTIUM CATALOG
- At the last meeting, Dave said he wanted to to take the latest, best available catalog content from each library, standardize naming and numbering conventions, and build that content into a consolidated catalog listing for the entire consortium. It would include both original (paper) and digital content and identify which libraries hold which issues. Full discussion of this item was put off until this meeting.
- Dave said that although much of it is inconsistent or incomplete from library to library, he now has raw material from all libraries and is about ready to start his project. Dave will probably need to ask for assistance from each library when he starts to actually import the divergent content into a consolidated listing.
- Mark suggested that we would benefit from having, in addition to a listing of our holdings, a master listing along the lines of “Listing of Catalog Information for all Nudist Magazines Ever Known to have been Published”, this would of course include any issues missing from the collections of any of the four libraries. Dave agreed and said that eventually we would create such a listing. Paul said he had been involved in some research projects involving use of WorldCat where previously unknown magazines had come to light. Paul kept correspondence from these efforts, and Dave agreed to review Paul’s files to see how they might be incorporated into a master listing.
D. CONSORTIUM TAB ON ANRL WEBSITE
- In absence of an actual consortium website, Bob Proctor of ANRL has created a tab in the anrl.org website to contain whatever consortium content might be desired. People interested in looking at this content should navigate to the anrl.org home page and click on the consortium tab to look at what’s there now. Submit any comments, corrections, or suggestions for inclusion of new consortium material to Bob Proctor at admin@anrl.org
- At present, two pages in the consortium tab contain directory type information for consortium libraries, including things like names and addresses of the libraries, phone numbers, email addresses, names and titles of officers and consortium representatives, etc. Bob put this together based on his review of emails, websites, and other available documents. It was decided that it would be better to consolidate this directory information into one page in the consortium tab, and to request from each library exactly the information they want listed on the page. Dave said he would contact each library individually after the meeting , basically giving them a form to fill out with information for the directory.
E. OPEN DISCUSSION
Mark said he had been approached by a private party about disposition of 17 years worth of bound volumes of the old German language nudist magazine Die Schönheit from 1915–1932. The party intended to sell the magazines at auction, but first wanted to explore the possibility of WNRL or the consortium libraries agreeing to buy the magazines for less than what the seller considered full auction value. Mark had investigated and found that ANRL holds some copies of Die Schönheit while WNRL holds none. Paul and Mark agreed to discuss this matter off line to decide if the consortium had any interest pursuing this matter further with the seller.
F. NEXT MEETING DATE
It was agreed to continue meeting quarterly, with the next meeting date of the Systems Group set for Saturday 4/17/2021 at 10:00 AM PDT/ 1:00 PM EST