In the first quarter of FY2002, due to vacations alternating with intense bouts of activity and unit planning, SPO lapsed in reporting its activities. This report is intended to describe our accomplishments and areas of work during that period. In November, we will resume our regularly scheduled reports.
At the beginning of September, SPO held an all day planning retreat to review the past year and our priorities for the year to come. This was a good opportunity to think about strategic directions and to set some concrete goals (forthcoming), as well as to consume some good food and (at the end of the day!) wine. We also began review of about 25 applications for the Interface Designer position. Bonn conducted phone interviews with 8 applicants - we are now in the process of scheduling campus visits with 4 of these.
SPO also produced an analysis of peer review needs and of software, as well as an annotated bibliography of articles related to these issues. This is now being shared with other CIC institutions.
For the backlist, we set up functional mockups using MOA content and are now in the process of responding to feedback from the project staff. We have also arranged for DLPS to scan the backlist in-house. They are almost completed with forty books to be used in the first round of development and will scan another 150 or so this year. We have received a database of the 750 titles that the project hopes to convert in the next few years, and we are working on identifying these titles, correcting and extracting records, and generating headers.
We also received the first sample frontlist title (only a partial book), converted it to Textclass and then mounted it in Textclass. We have used this as an opportunity to provide feedback to Nancy Lin on tagging their XML files. We are also working with Nancy Lin to develop an image database for ACLS.
We have begun to explore possibilities for collaborative work with the UM Press. We evaluated the technical aspects of three potential publishing projects for the Press. One of these is extremely complex and is reserved for further discussion. The other two were quickly put into test implementation in bibclass. The Electronic Thordike-Kibre -- an index of incipits of medieval scientific writings in Latin - and the Mary Miracles Catalog are now being reviewed by the Press.
Some work went forward on a number of our projects that have been in the works for some time. Most notably, considerable work went into the development of the system for the fully encoded MQR backfile (1996-present). We demonstrated this system to the MQR staff, who are pleased with the results, but decided that they wanted to wait until the complete backfile was converted to release the site. Article breaks have been identified for the complete scanned backfile (1961-1996). In this period we also converted Spring 2001 and Summer 2001 issues to textclass. This is an important activity in that it further tested and refined our conversion methods.
Philosophers Imprint published A Kantian Rationale for Desire-Based Reasons in July. We mounted a first implementation of Post Identity and undertook minor modifications on the Index to 19th Century French Political Trials (now officially released) and The Medieval Review.
Two of our journal conversion projects, Cross Currents and Michigan Feminist Studies have now gone through bitonal scanning, qc and image-tagging. We are awaiting the OCR from DLPS. We also worked with the emeritus editor of Cross Currents to write introductory materials about the conditions of its creation.
Brian Sheppard also dedicates some time to resolving UMR identification problems related to the DLPS UMR full-text implementation and to DLF collection maintenance and updating.
Web Exhibits: Rosenblum completed and released the Special Collections exhibit: Jo Labadie and His Gift to Michigan. We also began work on an exhibit for the Cafe Shapiro anthology; we expect that the anthology will be an ongoing series.
Several new publishing opportunities arose during this period. One that has moved quickly is the Guide to Washtenaw County Programs and Services for People Over 60, a project undertaken in collaboration with Taubman Medical Library. After meeting with the content providers and Pat Redmond, we have assessed the data structure and converted the directory from Word form to a Filemaker database and implemented a test version in bibclass.. We have also been involved in conversations at Taubman about mounting an electronic version of a popular Multicultural Nursing Guide currently published by the UCSF Nursing Press.
We are in the early stages of two new humanities projects. We have begun discussions with Traianos Gagos about online publication of the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists. We are currently evaluating the content and its considerable font and character challenges as well as the opportunities afforded by online publication. We have also held several conversations with Bryan Skib and Dena Goodman (faculty member, French and Women's Studies) about building an online collaborative translation of Diderot's Encyclopedie, created primarily for undergraduate education. Skib and Goodman are exploring the interest in the scholarly community, while SPO is investigating the possibility of securing electronic publication rights to one or two long out of print abridged translations.
Finally, Bonn met w/ David Porter of the English Department to discuss the possibility of building a database of materials about "literary works of enduring interest." Several issues were discussed, but it is unclear what our next steps are.
In a final burst of MoA related activity, Bonn completed the final narrative and financial report on the project. The final accounting has turned up some remaining scanning funds that will be used to scan more volumes in scope for the project. In addition to the final report, Bonn completed the draft of Assessing the Costs of Conversion, an economic handbook for the Mellon Foundation that details the costs and methods of MoA4. A much condensed version of its findings will appear in Benchmarking the Costs of Conversion, an article to be published in RLG Diginews in October.
SPO has worked with Sandy Ackerman to design an information brochure. It is near completion and will be printed in October.
Bonn has continued to serve on the reprography task force. She also collaborated on Preservation's RFP for scanning vendors, and served on both the Women's Studies and Classical Studies Field Librarian interview committees.
Brian Rosenblum gave a presentation/demo to visiting group of 17 university rectors from Tianjin, China and attended the IFLA conference in Boston. Brian Sheppard attended the DLXS Programmers' Workshop. Maria Bonn gave a demonstration to librarians from Western Michigan University.