LITAC MEETING NOTES
February 1, 2008

Members Present:
Allan Barclay, Mark Beatty, Travis Jiskra,Gail Kuhl, Sanata Lau, Judy Lyons, Cathy Markwiese, Ruth Ann Montgomery, Stef Morrill, Alicia Mundt, Josh Ranger, Stacy Stevens, Jim Trojanowski, David Weinhold, Robert Zabkowicz.

Members Absent:
Jim Davis, Peter Gilbert, Leanne Hansen, Jeanne Higgens, Dawn Nordine, Michael Tyree.

Staff present (DPI):
Bob Bocher, Sally Drew, Martha Berninger, Abby Swanton, Donna Steffen, Debbie Cardinal (WiLS)

The meeting was called to order at 10:00 a.m. by Bob Bocher.

Review and approval of meeting notes from October, 2007.
A motion to approve the minutes was made by Stacy Stevens with second by Cathy Markwiese.

Wisconsin Digital Archive issue paper - Abby Swanton
Abby used a PowerPoint presentation to explain the scope of the project, collection development strategies and collaborators. The project is an outgrowth of the Wisconsin Document Depository Program (WDDP), which is mandated by state statutes as of 1991. Details of the project are available in the issue paper.

Josh Ranger asked for clarification of the difference between public records and content of digital archive. He said that the definition of a public record excludes publication collected by the WDDP.

Sally Drew said if a publication is contributed to the WDDP, it takes the onus off of the agency that created it to have to save it. In general the category of public records is much broader than the category documents. Public records can include correspondence, meeting minutes, etc. The difference between a state document and a public record is determined by the agency. If it was intended to be disseminated to the public and is considered a published record, it is document. But there are many things that agencies create every day that are public records but aren't formally published or disseminated. Some agencies are trying to determine how to archive items that aren't considered publications.

Bob Bocher said that statutes define public records.

Josh Ranger - Should you consider removing from your document the word "all" public documents?

Sanata Lau - The purpose of the digital archive isn't to provide public records digitally, correct?

Abby Swanton - Yes, that's correct.

Josh Ranger - Was there any debate over the name then? Digital Archive could be misconstrued. It somewhat muddies the waters in terms of the intent of the project.

Abby Swanton - We've talked about this endlessly. We're using the OCLC Digital Archive software and took a cue from that name. I see that coming down the pike that there will be a need for clarification of the difference between this collection of "library" documents and a true "archive" of all content created by state government agencies.

Abby Swanton gave a brief demonstration of how the digital archive tools captures data. She outlined the technical limitations of the OCLC Digital Archive tool. It only grabs content accessible via the http protocol, it can't capture audio or video requiring streaming server technology or PDFs embedded in documents. It can only accommodate files of 4 GB or less, and software can provide false positives. There are as yet unspecified improvements to the tool being released by OCLC. But there aren't good alternatives to the OCLC Digital Archive tool at present, and there's not enough staff or expertise to support alternate software solutions.

Stef Morrill asked if we could easily remove content from the OCLC tool if we decide to switch platforms.

Abby Swanton said that the OCLC contract specifies that we can download our records and explained that the PeDALS project, which the Wisconsin Historical Society is taking part in, will allow us to learn more about how we could host our own content.

Sally Drew - The Reference and Loan Library has been piggybacking on some large federal projects carried out by other states. We don't have the people to write large multi-year grants and or support such projects. PeDALS is the latest one we are involved with.

Josh Ranger asked what historical content has been digitized that would fit into the Wisconsin Heritage Online collection development guidelines. He said that some state government materials have been digitized, and wondered if those could be isolated and pulled out from where they are now and added to the WHO site.

Abby Swanton said we're working with WHS to create a connection between digitization and the digital archive, and that she will be working with all state depository libraries to identify collections to be added.

Sally Drew - There is definitely overlap and we need to look at it. We were trying to find a methodology to preserve content we knew would be lost without this project. Using OCLC allows us to have bibliographic records for the paper records and the digital record side by side.

Josh Ranger - Do you harvest UW system publications?

Abby Swanton - No, we don't consider it part of the depository program - we haven't traditionally distributed them.

Sally Drew - According to the statutes, UW-Memorial Library is responsible for maintaining UW-System government documents. A few may be distributed in the WDDP.

Abby Swanton - They may be electronically preserving their own content.

Josh Ranger - I doubt it.

Abby Swanton - This could present another opportunity.

Cathy Markwiese - Many academic institutions focus on output of the faculty rather than output of the agency.

Mark Beatty - earlier this week the Government Printing Office (GPO) came out with a statement that they were going to offer digital access to public documents, but it was very nebulous. This was the first time they said they would. Assuming they come up with a way to do this with GPO documents, are you anticipating that you might try to link in to some of this, like the Great Lakes regional stuff?

Abby Swanton - I haven't really thought about it. I'll have to put it on my radar, but we're guided by the statutes. I could see the program growing to the point where we redefine the statutes. I'll have to look at their guidelines, but we're limited by staff, time and the setting.

Sally Drew - Our time for discussion of the Digital Archive is almost gone. We probably won't get to a discussion of the issues and options because we wanted to give you a demonstration to help you understand the project. We'll review the issues and options at the next meeting.

Abby Swanton said she'd update the presentation for the next meeting.

Sally Drew promised to add the PowerPoint to the LITAC site.

Wisconsin Heritage Online (WHO) Issue Paper
Sally Drew asked Debbie Cardinal (part time WiLS person who's working on WHO) and Josh Ranger, who is on the WHO Board to address questions and fill in gaps. WHO has been a very collaborative project with Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS), WiLS, University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center (UWDCC), and the Division. We're trying to look at where we go from here. How do we make sure this collaboration can continue? Do we need a different structure or funding model?

Bob Bocher - Can you clarify the WiLS funding?

Sally Drew - WHO is a WiLS for the current time - it's under Special Projects in the WiLS budget.

Debbie Cardinal - I work with the planning group and the various partner organizations to implement aspects of the projects. WiLS does not operate the technology.

Josh Ranger - UWDCC is the physical center of the activity.

Sally Drew - UW Madison libraries and the UW system collaborated to develop the UWDCC that takes proposals from campuses, evaluates the benefits of each, then schedules the work to be done.

The Division entered the program with the Great Lakes Maritime History Project to see if we could bring in some work from other agencies. The Division-UWDCC collaboration worked well and out of that we learned a lot about costs and how we could expand the project. UWDCC agreed to allow the Division to allocate $35-$45,000 per year for public library or state government agency related projects. We're funding six or seven projects per year. Library staff do selection and documentation but the scanning, metatagging, and hosting activities are handled by the UW.

Stef Morrill - Is it now a requirement of people who are part of LSTA project to become members of WHO?

Debbie Cardinal - I think ongoing funding is an issue that is going to be taken up by the Board at the end of February. Generally WHO membership fees aren't working - everyone in the state thinks it's a great idea, but hardly anyone is giving us money.

Stef Morrill - That fee structure has never worked for SCLS either.

Sally Drew - The Division never thought that libraries who received grants would have to pay ongoing fees, so we need to talk about this.

Debbie Cardinal - We've never really tried to make anyone pay us. Stacy's group is paying us but we negotiated for six months to a year. We're trying to understand what people need and what they're willing to pay for.

Sally Drew - I know this is a technology committee - but we do need to discuss funding for some of these projects. The first issue in the paper is about a future funding model.

Josh Ranger - LSTA funds are bringing a lot of content into the project.

Debbie Cardinal - The decorative artist's database program is bringing in a lot of content.

Stef Morrill - Funding is a huge issue for the small historical societies that would like to participate.

David Weinhold - Where did WHO get the initial funding?

Debbie Cardinal - Some of the WHS projects are grant funded.

Sally Drew - The WHO Board tried not to rely on a big grant to start the project activities. The Board worked to bring together partners that could put some funding into ongoing activities. UW-Madison has provided the WHO website and searching capability and WHS has agreed to host collections for sites that don't have the capability. But it's not clear that this model is sustainable long-term. Government agencies and the UW are going into another round of state government funding requests next spring. Our options are kind of wide open but we need to start thinking about this now. We need to discuss the need for this program - is the WHO program meeting a need?

Jim Trojanowski - One of the things that has to occur is that libraries and historical societies have to decide that this is the method to preserve their materials. Then they need to decide if they're willing to expend the effort - and then decide to find the funds. Some have decided it's important enough to their mission that they will fund it themselves. The other model is federal funds (LSTA) - I don't know if we've explored other funding sources. We need to create the need before libraries or historical societies will be able to decide it's important enough to do.

Sally Drew - The Division has had the best success with local libraries working with their local historical societies and including them in grant requests. It's been happening without much prodding and we plan to continue to let that happen. WiLS is talking about a statewide grant to train local historical societies - but that's mostly to raise interest in this kind of project. WiLS doen't know if they will get that funding.

Debbie Cardinal - I'd like to encourage the library/local historical society collaboration. Local historical societies social relationships with their communities are very fragile because so many members are old and dying off.

Stef Morrill - That's absolutely true - historical society leadership is slim - often just two or three people.

Debbie Cardinal - Llibraries have a firmer foothold in the community.

Josh Ranger - It's been awhile since WHO has met. WHS has suggested that they may take on a larger role in the leadership of WHO, but we don't know what that will mean. At what point will we have a better idea of what the financial needs will be?

Debbie Cardinal - In two years. WHS is relying on a capital campaign to provide funding. A month ago they told us they won't know until the end of the process where the funds will be allotted.

Josh Ranger - We can't count on WHS to save WHO.

Cathy Markwiese - It might have been anticipated that organizations that got LSTA funds would have found other funding sources, but they're coming back to LSTA instead.

Sally Drew - We have had some repeats, but not that many for a single library. LSTA guidelines have put a cap of two years on any particular institution. Some small libraries don't have a lot of things to digitize, and they may have digitized most critical items in two years. In larger libraries it may be more of a bottomless pit. Manitowoc Public got $50,000 from the community to do their own project. We got a nice proposal from La Crosse PL this year. They've done a lot on their own prior to applying for a grant. Their proposal includes the archives at UW-La Crosse and WHS.

Travis Jiskra - Is WHO responsible for digitizing and putting up content? The cost of maintaining current collections isn't large.

Debbie Cardinal - Paying UW for harvesting and portal hosting is the biggest cost.

Josh Ranger - WHO's responsible for the index of metadata?

Debbie Cardinal - Selecting and documenting the items themselves are the responsibility of the owning organization.

Travis Jiskra - How realistic is it for communities to find a sponsor for each collection, to highlight the collection on WHO, and to solicit funding support from local organizations?

Josh Ranger - The fact that the WHO collection needs to be funded annually is tripping people up. There is no funding for advertising in the options, and perhaps there should be but there are probably lots of laws against it.

Jim Trojanowski - What is WHO? Is it a formal organization?

Sally Drew - Yes, WHO has a Board and committees. Its activities are based on collaboration. There's no overall ongoing funding structure. The Board and committees came together to set standards and to do technical thinking and collaboration. WiLS has provided a half-time staff member.

Josh Ranger - The IRS views WHO as part of WiLS.

Debbie Cardinal - WHO is a collaborative.

Jim Trojanowski - Is part of the answer to funding creating a more formal structure so it's less nebulous? When you have an organization that evolves organically it can cause problems.

Josh Ranger - There is always some major institution that plays a central role. University of Denver is the major player in Colorado.

Debbie Cardinal - Colorado was grant funded for most of their lives, but now BCR in Colorado has absorbed the Colorado Digital Project (CDP). They're getting the funding from BCR's fee structure.

Debbie Cardinal - When I informally surveyed funding for state programs, I found that other states use different names for the structure of people and the portal itself. Giving each its own name may help clarify who is doing what.

Josh Ranger - In two years it could be WHS.

Mark Beatty - I think Jim raises a good question. We start out informally and try to figure out how to fund things. Deb was talking earlier about small historical societies and how they're so dependent on individual people.

Sally Drew - If we are going to put together a funding proposal at some level, it's easier if the partners are able to request funding through the legislature or agree that a specific agency will do so. By virtue of the nature of the organizations that are part of WHO, some are authorized to request funding. We have some good stable partners, but not a good way to bring that all together.

Is there a long term need that requires a different sustainable structure?

Allan Barclay - Have there been any grants pursued to support the site itself as opposed to funding the content to be put into it?

Sally Drew - The website has been created by UWDCC. Most of the staff and technical expertise came from UW Madison libraries. It succeeded in showing that not everything had to be hosted on the same server. As far as I know UW plans to continue the website, although it may not be clear how it will be funded in the future. We need more education and implementation and we need to decide what else people want.

Travis Jiskra - Is there another source people can turn to in order to preserve materials at risk?

Debbie Cardinal - I've been learning that the WHS has various pots of funding they will distribute to smaller historical societies, to use as they see fit. But a lot of the historical societies view digitization as scanning content as JPEGs and mounting them on their website. They may not use standards that make it possible to incorporate their content into the WHO website.

Jim Trojanowski - Travis has suggested a path I've thought about - finding local organizations that will lead the drive to preserve content. I work with tribal libraries and they have important documents, but tribal governments have more pressing projects that command attention.

Stef Morrill - Make it easy for those organizations to see how much support they need.

Sally Drew - Many smaller libraries don't have data processing departments.

Debbie Cardinal - That's where the Content DM hosting piece is so important.

Josh Ranger - One of the options is the Ohio Memory model - where an organization contacted every county in Ohio and said it would do the project if each county supplied their best 10 images or documents. WHO could see a real renaissance if it had a more representative collection which might make it easier to command support from local organizations.

Debbie Cardinal - The decorative arts project has been very successful because Emily does everything and made it so easy for others to just identify content.

Josh Ranger - WHS had decided it's too much work.

Debbie Cardinal - Too many people think the information stored on a digital camera image is all the information they need.

Josh Ranger - The De Pere Historical Society has done a lot. They've scanned tons of images and asked people to come in and use the information in-house. They think it would be an insult to make the images available online.

Sally Drew - I don't think there is one way that fits all. We have tried to find a structure that has a long term migration path. How should we continue? How fast? How can we keep the elements we have decided are important as part of this process?

Travis Jiskra - Is there a model in the business community?

Sally Drew - There is a furniture catalog project. The groups WiLS is thinking of asking for money are private foundations.

Sanata Lau - What about individual community foundations? If each community contributed small amounts, it might amount to enough to support the project.

What about the Wiki?

Debbie Cardinal - The Wiki is where the documentation that explains the project and the guidelines exist but it's just supporting material.

Sanata Lau - Could the Wiki be used to act as a starting point for housing digital content?

Stef Morrill - There is a Western Springs Wiki based site that we could look at.

Allan Barclay - UW-Madison has started a project to look at more open source and open development. That's one of the few places I could see this highly structured data being useful.

Josh Ranger - Can it be scoped down to just WHO content? The primary users are school children and the interface needs to be easy.

Allan Barclay - The interfaces are easy to use.

Josh Ranger - What is WHO comparable to? It's a statewide resource with a statewide audience of school children - it's like BadgerLink and WISCAT. I think we need to follow those same funding models.

Debbie Cardinal - The Missouri state librarian and state archivist took a proposal to the legislature and got $600,000 per year, but no other states have been able to do that. When I talked to Tracy Beryl about it she said it was a very easy sell.

Cathy Markwiese - I think most other state programs have grown out of academic institutions and some states don't want to enter into this area.

Jim Trojanowski - Wouldn't this be appropriately addressed at COLAND Spring Visioning Conference? Several people here will be in attendance.

Sally Drew - I'm hoping the papers we've developed will be used as part of that process. We have some hope that the visioning conference will highlight directions that will create support for projects that may then get legislative funding.

Virtual Reference Issue Paper
Martha Berninger reviewed revisions made to the issue paper since October. She presented a summary of the current public relations campaign and the upcoming YouTube teen video promotion, and outlined discussions currently underway with Milwaukee Public Schools about the possibility of adding a link to AskAway. The first issue to be discussed was funding.

Mark Beatty explained that he is training librarians on the virtual reference service as part of the current public relations campaign because he believes that participating librarians are the most effective champions for the service.

Cathy Markwiese recommended a combination of state and LSTA funding because it would keep local funding off the table, which might avoid some controversy among local libraries.

Jim Trojanowski expressed concern over continuing to use LSTA funds. Historically LSTA has tried to avoid becoming a permanent source of program support. He feels LSTA funds are appropriate for pilot programs.

Sally Drew said that LSTA funds are currently being used to pay for the 24/7 service. She said that about half of DPI's budget is federally funded. She asked the Committee to suggest a funding proposal that would be acceptable, rather than focusing solely on the specific source of funds. She asserted that some parts of the state can't sustain the program either in terms of funding or staffing, but their patrons are using the program. She asked LITAC if they could agree in principal whether or not continued statewide reference service should be provided. If the LITAC agrees that it is a priority the next step will need to be finding a funding model.

Cathy Markwiese believes it should be available to all of Wisconsin, and she believes LSTA funding is appropriate.

Stef Morrill said there hasn't been enough statewide publicity. She wondered if virtual reference could be rolled into BadgerLink, which is accepted as a statewide program.

Gail Kuhl said AskAway could be a great thing for schools, and wondered if it would be affordable for school districts.

Jim Trojanowski said his libraries acknowledge that they aren't promoting virtual reference and they're not willing to promote it. But he agreed that teachers could help promote it.

Cathy Markwiese agreed with Mark Beatty that enthusiastic participating librarians are one of the most effective means of publicizing the service. She said that her patrons are finding the service without being told about it.

Stef Morrill said that patrons are using the links without a promotional effort. She said sometimes you have to go around the libraries that won't support the program. She pointed out that some of the most successful states participating in QuestionPoint have paid statewide coordinators and Wisconsin doesn't.

Jim Trojanowski reminded the Committee that the per library costs included in the paper are subsidized costs and without the LSTA funding the cost would be higher.

Sally Drew reminded the Committee that anyone can put the AskAway link on their page, including schools, and we need to determine who's going to do the work of supporting patrons using those links, particularly if libraries that are currently participating drop out. She said that at a total cost of about $122,000 it's about the cheapest statewide library reference service being offered. She asked how many people agreed that we should continue the program. A majority of the Committee indicated their support for that concept.

Moving on to Issue #2, how the service can be maintained, she suggested that a subcommittee may be needed to examine the fee structure.

David Weinhold asked if the whole picture would need to change if we funded it through BadgerLink.

Sally Drew said BadgerLink might give us a funding concept, but so far we haven't been able to get any new content paid for, so assuming that we can add more costs to BadgerLInk may not be wise. She said that it's important to get funding for virtual reference approved on its own. This would be necessary even to make a request to add it to BadgerLink. Also, BadgerLink was conceived as a source of full text information, not just a method of paying for statewide services. AskAway is a service not full text content.

Jim Trojanowski said we keep coming back to funding. It's been an issue for all the programs we've discussed today. Do we need to set funding questions aside?

Sally Drew said we were running out of time again and asked the Committee to read the proposal and give us feedback in writing or by email or phone so we can finalize the paper at the May meeting.

Josh Ranger said that UW-Oshkosh is looking at a just-in-time training program that uses web-based video clips and asked if that had been considered as a training option for AskAway. He said that production rates charged by the UW Extension are pretty low.

Mark Beatty said the public relations committee has thought about it, but it's difficult to coordinate because of the lack of staff dedicated to AskAway. He said that WiLS has thought about it as well.

Alicia Mundt suggested that it might be worthwhile to promote AskAway to librarians who are just starting work in school libraries and media centers.

Martha Berninger said she would revise the paper for the May meeting>

Sally Drew asked Committee members to review the paper and plan to finalize recommendations at the May meeting.

BadgerLink RPF Process and Content Outlines
Sally Drew - The Division needs to have a new contract in place by January, 2009. I'm starting the process already because it takes so much time. Your meeting packet contains a schedule and the entire RFP used five years ago. I need as much feedback today as I can get. By May I need to be working on final RFP requirements and I'll have put together an RFP review team and we'll be ready to put it out to bid over the summer. The awkward part of this is that we'll be working on the budget for the next biennium and will need to include quotes from current vendors as a placeholder even though we may be changing vendors. If there is content you really think we need please say so now. I need to define what we'll actually be buying as opposed to getting quotes for products we won't be buying. Can you let me know if there's additional content or functionality.

Cathy Markwiese mentioned genealogy. MPL gets two genealogy products and they're so popular the Milwaukee County Historical Society has agreed to fund them so they won't go away. She also asked about encyclopedias.

Stef Morrill - SCLS has discussed encyclopedias and concluded that our users won't use them.

Cathy Markwiese - Our users want also auto repair manuals.

Stef Morrill - Test prep software is very popular.

Sally Drew asked about newspapers? Do we want the whole current coverage? Do we want depth in terms of dates? We have old stuff - Newspaper Archive and we have some newer stuff. Some are telling me they want very recent Wisconsin newspapers so they can get away from microforms.

Cathy Markwiese - The public likes Newspaper Archive. I think we should concentrate on Wisconsin newspapers if possible.

David Weinhold - Having major local newspaper available online would be helpful.

Josh Ranger - WHS is working with the Wisconsin Newspaper Association (WNA) for online access.

Sally Drew - I've also been talking with WHS and WNA.

Josh Ranger - Are there serious competitors to Newspaper Archive?

Cathy Markwiese - Gale has 19th century newspapers.

Josh Ranger - Newspaper Archive includes some good mid-sized newspapers which are helpful for tracking local events. Our students love it, and if it's not in BadgerLink we would have to buy it.

Sally Drew - It sounds like you want both old & new newspapers for Wisconsin.

Josh Ranger - Can we get Newspaper Archive for just WI? My community patrons really love Newspaper Archive for local coverage. His library is an Area Resource Center.

Ruth Ann Montgomery - I think that most genealogists would like to have national coverage since their relatives may not be in the state.

Bob Zabkowicz - I'd like to say it would be helpful to include more ethnic content.

Stef Morrill - I think a Spanish language magazine database would be good. Our patrons hate the African American Biographical Database (AABD) and would like us to get rid of it.

Sally Drew - We never actually bought AABD - it was given us by the vendor because we had problems with another source they sold us.

Travis Jiskra - Sanborn maps are also very popular with our patrons. We even had one guy register for class just so he could access the Sanborn maps.

Sally Drew - Areas I'm thinking of beefing up are statistics because we have such a hard time tracking use across all our vendors. Administration is another one - we need a way for libraries across state to go in and customize for their own use.

Cathy Markwiese - We get a lot of requests to customize.

Stef Morrill - We don't like EBSCO visual search and we don't have the administrative access to eliminate that.

David Weinhold - Libraries in our system would like to be able to reorder the database list. If the system is expected to do handholding for BadgerLink that administrative access has to be available to systems.

Sally Drew - What about Web 2.0 functionality, RSS feeds, etc? General agreement that it would be wise to roll newer functionality into the RFP.

Any other things we should think about?

Allan Barclay - You can ask about Application Programming Interface.

Stef Morrill - I'd also like to hear about how they're trying to push their content out to Google and other search engines.

Sally Drew - EBSCO has done an interface with Google, but you have to use Google Scholar to see the articles. I'm going to have to figure out how to describe a core set of content we're sure we're going to buy and additional content that we'd like to add if we could find the money. I'm toying with the idea of having people submit quotes for items we don't yet have funding for.

Cathy Markwiese - I think that's what EBSCO does by adding new content in their "New Features" area.

Sally Drew - Is there anything we're purchasing now that you consider low priority content that we could eliminate? Please send me any more written feedback on actual requirements that are in here.

Consumer Driven Technology Issue Paper
Stef Morrill - I missed the discussion last time, but Cathy Markwiese and I have made modifications based on the feedback you provided. There was a suggestion to add content on copyright, but we felt it was too much to cover in this paper and should be a whole separate paper. We decided not to tackle it, but we'd like to propose a copyright paper. On Page 3, we added a "question to consider" - will libraries exist only to serve the digital "have nots?" We put all our "Questions to consider" into call out boxes.

Cathy Markwiese - Our whole paper is one question after another rather than issues and recommendations. Libraries will probably do what they've always done - wait for standardization before wading in too far. The market is moving around us no matter what we do.

Sally Drew - What do you want to do with this paper? We can leave it out there as questions to consider if you don't think there are specific recommendations to consider.

Cathy Markwiese - We see it as more of a current awareness thing.

Sally Drew - Are you trying to alert libraries that market is moving around them and they need to do something about it or should they abandon the new media formats? What sort of stance should libraries take?

Cathy Markwiese - We've included our thoughts in the questions to consider.

Stef Morrill - I don't think we can impact the market because we're such a small part of the total market, and vendors aren't necessarily interested in working with us. Those that are seem to be offering substandard offerings.

Cathy Markwiese - As Jim Davis noted at the last meeting there's a cost to everything, and maybe we've reached the point where we can't afford to pursue all formats.

Allan Barclay - Maybe we could gather information on what libraries in Wisconsin are doing and create a site for vendors and patrons to clarify the issues, what the impact is, and why we can't do more.

Sally Drew - Is there any possibility that this is the way it is now and that vendors are trying to work around us to saturate consumer market, but that at some point that market will collapse and then they'll be eager to work with us again?

Stef Morrill - The technology may completely shift by then, and I don't know if five years from now there will be something else new that we still won't be able to afford.

Travis Jiskra - I can see how this information could be valuable when a school or library team gets together to draft their five year plan, and they need to consider only those formats they can afford.

Cathy Markwiese - One of the problems is that we are serving people who have the latest technology and folks using older technologies.

Allan Barclay - We find ourselves having to explain to the public the changes that vendors have made, and we are taking the heat.

Gail Kuhl - In schools we have lots of problems with bandwidth because students are demanding more as new products require more bandwidth.

Josh Ranger - Should we pass this paper on to WLA and recommend that they push the issue forward?

Travis Jiskra - This kind of document could be a great background for libraries and schools trying to negotiate with vendors.

Allan Barclay - Maybe this should be forwarded on to ALA as well because it is ultimately a national issue.

Sanata Lau - Maybe I'm too traditional, when I go to the library I'm just looking for a book. I'm a technology professional, but I think that libraries need to focus on books.

Cathy Markwiese - We're dealing with folks who don't have computer access at home, and they come to the library to access resources they can't afford.

Bob Zabkowicz - It's the Barnes & Noble syndrome - people think that their public libraries need to have all the same things that a bookstore has.

Mark Beatty - At my branch library there are a number of people who come in and use the library in the traditional way. But I think you'd find that many more people just come in to pick up items they have put on hold online and never use the library in a traditional way. Stef and Cathy created this paper based on their libraries, which are fairly affluent, but there are other libraries in the state that don't have the same resources.

Maybe we should take some funds and create a "sandbox" that will allow libraries to enter and test different new products and technologies and share their feedback on which ones work well or poorly.

Sally Drew - The Division had a new technology grant category in LSTA this year.

Bob Bocher - More than half the new technology grants were for online gaming. But we could suggest to people that they do something like a sandbox.

Stef Morrill - A lot of these services are not available to libraries at this point in time, and that's part of the problem. Patrons want to know why we can't get them.

Sally Drew - Perhaps we just post this paper and make it required reading for the visioning conference attendees.

Josh Ranger - Is it worth a WLA conference program?

Sally Drew - We could recommend that this be a WLA program which could potentially save library professionals the time and effort of investigating these options themselves. I'm looking for consensus that this paper not be revisited by LITAC again. We can publish a revised paper and recommend that a program be delivered at WLA. Is that comfortable for people? There was general agreement that people were comfortable with that step.

Sally Drew - Are there any other kinds of technologies that you didn't include but would like to? Cathy and Stef focused just on "user-created" content. Do you think we should define Web2.0 technologies and incorporate them into BadgerLink and local OPACs and other statewide services? I don't think there's a widespread agreement on what Web2.0 means and what the impact will be on libraries.

Cathy Markwiese - Thinking about blogs and Wikis, two of the most important Web2.0 technologies, I don't see how they would work in BadgerLink.

Allan Barclay - One example might be Acquabrowser which would allow users to add reviews into OPACs. I think covering how to get content out - like pushing content to mobile devices, might be useful.

Josh Ranger - How much is the need of this group relative to other groups and libraries?

Sally Drew - That's what I'm trying to decide.

Stef Morrill - I think it's just a huge topic - I can see the value for statewide projects but I don't know if a general overview will be helpful. It might be too general to be useful.

Update on the COLAND visioning summit
Sally Drew displayed the Visioning summit page on the DPI website, and asked participants to please complete the Visioning Questions - they've been up for some time, but we don't have as many responses as we'd like.

Update on ALA Technology Initiatives
Bob Bocher said the Division finally got a state budget in October allowing the state Teach program to use E-Rate funding for bandwidth increases. Those requests are now being processed - library requests are being done today. So schools and libraries will have more bandwidth, but we'll need more a year from now.

ALA got a Gates grant to study bandwidth issues, and the study found that no one has enough bandwidth. They found that libraries may do better when they work regionally to address bandwidth issues. That led to a meeting in December representing libraries from around the county. ALA will be developing two new proposals - one is a whitepaper on factors that go into determining how much bandwidth you need and the second is looking at a brochure aimed at Congress and state legislators to inform them of K-12 and public library bandwidth needs.

There's a lot of fermentation on the national level about the bandwidth issue and how much we've fallen behind a lot of other countries. Half of the people in the country have only dial up access in their homes.

ALA has been talking to the Gates Foundation about the bandwidth problem.

Josh Ranger - Time Warner is going to begin charging by the amount of content you download.

Bob Bocher - Comcast has taken to slowing down your access if you download lots of content. I think we're going to see a real threat to the open internet as these kinds of actions proliferate. We're hoping that after the election there will be more action on the bandwidth problem.

Definition of Information Literacy (relative to Information Literacy Issue Paper)
Donna Steffen - Sally distributed the definition of information literacy this group asked for at the last meeting when we reviewed the Information Literacy paper. I'd like you to read through it and if you have suggestions for additions or changes, please send them to me and we'll incorporate them into the version of the paper to be delivered in May. Before then we need to develop models and best practices relevant to different types of libraries, especially K-12 and public libraries. Are you willing to endorse this as a general statement or do you have suggestions?

Bob Bocher - Strike the word "citizens" and use the word residents instead.

Donna Steffen - That's a good idea.

Cathy Markwiese - I wonder about the phrase "Have the tools become information?" Is that correct?

Donna Steffen - We'll look at that phrase. If there are no more ideas can we go with this version?

There was general agreement that the present version of the definition was acceptable.

Sally Drew - Any last thoughts? Thank you all for braving the weather and coming out today.

Bob Bocher - Our next meeting is May 19, 2008.

The meeting was adjourned at 3:30

For questions about this information, contact Sally J. Drew (608) 224-6161

Last updated on 7/22/2008 12:22:47 PM