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HEADLINE: Summary Report of Committee Meeting

June 9, 1999
Charlottesville, VA
ACH/ALLC Meeting

Review of Prototype
Database Structure
Issues
Object Types

Present: Chuck Bearden, Charles Faulhaber, David Green, Susan Hockey, Lorna Hughes, Mike Neuman, Chris Powell, Matt Stoeffler, John Unsworth

The Working Group reviewed the current early stage of the database prototype, based on 110 records supplied by the NEH of digital projects funded by the Endowment over the last three years. The Working Group then reviewed issues raised by the catalogers working on the prototype at Rice and Michigan.

See Matt Stoeffler's "Proposed Fields for Database" as companion to this report.


1. Review of Prototype

  1. We agreed that all the NEH records should remain in the database; that funding by NEH was fine as an initial criterion for selection. However, we reiterated that we will include only records of projects that have a digital product, as opposed to those using computation in the process of producing a product.
  2. We would continue to process existing records, contacting all project directors, e-mailing them copies of their records and asking for information necessary for completion. We would focus on detailed "computational properties" of the project.
  3. Building as close to perfect a set of records as we could from the NEH data (together with records from the NSF and from JISC, if possible) would be the goal of the current phase (Phase I) of the project. This will entail a high degree of contact with project directors (higher than we envision for Phase II, when project directors would complete submission forms that would require detailed information). Once we are comfortable with the form and content of the prototype we will then open it for submissions by others for Phase II. Phase II could also include commercial products.
  4. Even though we have in-kind contributions (valued at approximately $10,000 each per year) from Rice and Michigan, we should now create funding proposals for completing Phase I (including travel to meetings where necessary) and outline a funding proposal for Phase II--for the enhancement and maintenance of the database.
  5. We need to clarify who will continue to work on the database at Rice and Michigan: a mixture of catalogers and selectors/subject specialists/ bibliographers would be helpful.
  6. We will produce a set of guidelines to assist the catalogers complete the database records.

2. Database Structure

  1. We need to clarify and print out field names of our revised structure (currently it is a hybrid between the NINCH "Proposed Collated Structure" of 10/7/98 and the Michigan Registry). (see new Proposed Fields)
  2. We should aim to narrow the number of fields and required fields
  3. We should collapse the "File Format," "Software Used" and "Standards Used" fields into a "Computational Properties" field.
  4. We need to review the recommendations on the use of Dublin Core, the model for our database structure, made in the HDS publication, "Discovery of Online Resources in the Arts & Humanities." Chuck Bearden and Lorna Hughes agreed to review the document and make recommendations.
  5. We should clarify that we are cataloging the digital project, not its contents.
  6. We should add a field indicating whether the project has been cataloged and how; if available we should dump MARC cataloging information, TEI header or other such cataloging or descriptive information into this "Cataloging Information" field.
  7. We will revise the Object Types (see below)

3. Issues

  1. We will use LC Subject Headings (instead of the current Subject list).
  2. We clarified the "Status" field: options will now be: STATUS: Accessible Y/N; In Progress Y/N
  3. We will include "networkable" CD-ROMs and will follow Chuck Bearden's suggested protocols, which will be written into the Guidelines.
  4. We will follow AACR2 where it helps
  5. Formats, software used or developed, standards used, etc) should be as complete and detailed as possible and should be requested directly from project directors. The purpose of this information is to help fellow practitioners gauge the quality and usefulness of projects as models and to decide on the usefulness of any software tools for their own projects. Guideline documentation here would help (see also the NINCH "Best Practices" Evaluative Criteria developed for gauging digital projects and practices).

4. Revised Object Types

Current Object Types

Proposed Object Types

1. Collaborative Spaces 1. Collaborative Spaces
2. Datasets 2. Datasets
3. Directories 3. Reference Tools
4. Image Collections 4. Teaching Materials
5. Multimedia Collections 5. Software
6. Projects 6. Resources (Editions, Collections: Text, Image, Sound, Moving Image, Born Digital, Multimedia, etc)
7. Publications
8. Teaching Materials
9. Software