In its first year of existence, SPO has developed considerably, despite not meeting all of its (perhaps over-ambitious) goals. Its successes are nonethess marked, considering the staffing picture remains incomplete. The hiring of a SPO programmer was finished in March; we are currently advertising for an interface designer.
Our focus in the first year has been on the development of tools and methods, with development work concentrating on using Quark and Quark Avenue, Logictran's rtf2xml converter, and Apache's Cocoon. We have also worked on assembling a body of content, established agreements with several journals, and are in discussions with several more. The most recent additions are Michigan Feminist Studies and Post-Identity, a journal in cultural studies from the University of Detroit-Mercy. Work for the ACLS History eBook project has also begun, with some test files received and experimentation with delivery underway. The books for the History eBook backfile have begun to arrive and to be processed for scanning. The year has also been productive in terms of staff development and education. Staff members have attended training workshops in XSLT and XML tools for publishing, as well as building connections with other academic electronic publishing enterprises around the country.
The transitional work from Digital Library Program Development continued to occupy SPO staff in 2000-2001. Following the completion of the conversion and implementation of the MoA4 volumes, Maria Bonn spent considerable time analyzing and compiling a handbook detailing the methods and costs of the project, as well as attending to several financial issues and loose threads from the project. Sheppard and Rosenblum brought to completion and monitored several of the small bibliographic publishing projects that they had begun in DLPD.
Although some work has been done in promoting our services and capabilities on campus, we did fall behind in this area this year; at the end of the year, however, we released the SPO web site and we are working with the library's graphic designer on a brochure. We also lagged in planning further development of our management systems -- partly because of not having a formal programmer in place and partly because there has not yet been a real demand for these services. This work will continue to be a priority in the coming year.
Timeline: | October-March | |
Responsibility: | Rosenblum with assistance of hourly worker, and input from Bonn | |
Status: | Compiled list of about 55 publishers. Survey was been sent out to Humanities journal editors. Response was dismally low. We continue, however, to meet and talk, as opportunity arises, with a number of campus editors, informing them about our services and discussing their concerns. Much more work will go on in this area in the next year. |
Timeline: | Ongoing | |
Responsibility: | Bonn | |
Status: | Although no specific activity has gone on in this area, a meeting was held with Earl Lewis, Dean of Rackham to discuss the publishing initiative. |
Timeline: | To be determined. Possible first meeting at midwinter ALA. | |
Responsibility: | Bonn | |
Status: | DLF sponsored a meeting of several academic publishing enterprises (staff from: NYU Press, Cornell's Project Euclid, University of Chicago Press, IATH at UVA, CDL, Columbia's EPIC and UM) held at NYU in May. Attendees were enthusiastic about the opportunity to meet and share information,expertise, and anxieties. |
Timeline: | To be determined. Possibly in conjunction with All things Digital. Aim for a speaker by March. | |
Responsibility: | Bonn | |
Status: | No activity in this area, but staff did attend talk by Highwire representative at Rackham event on digital publishing. |
Timeline: | Ongoing with milestones as noted | |
Responsibility: | All staff, coordinated by Bonn | |
Status: | Web site has been releases. Brochure is currently in development. Bonn has met with Wanda Monroe to discuss PR possibilities. Bonn has also met with Senior Managers and with Special Collections to discuss the publishing initiative. |
Timeline: | Ongoing | |
Responsibility: | All staff, coordinated by Bonn | |
Status: | Staff members have attended sessions in the Electronic Humanist series sponsored by the Institute for the Humanities, the SI Copyright symposium and talks sponsored by Rackham on publishing. |
Timeline: | Ongoing | |
Responsibility: | Rosenblum, Bonn | |
Status: | Bonn talked to about 20 Humanities journal editors at a session sponsored by the Institute for the Humanities. Much work remains to be done in getting the word out on campus about SPO's mission and services. |
Timeline: | by end of November | |
Responsibility: | Rosenblum, Programmer | |
Status: | Done. |
Timeline: | Ongoing | |
Responsibility: | Rosenblum, Interface Specialist, Programmer as needed | |
Status: | Done. Three articles are now on-line. |
Timeline: | by end of November | |
Responsibility: | Rosenblum | |
Status: | Done. |
Timeline: | September-February, first issue on-line June | |
Responsibility: | Rosenblum, Interface Specialist | |
Status: | All in process |
Timeline: | Milestones as noted. Backfile conversion complete by end of year. | |
Responsibility: | Conversion of existing electronic files coordinated by Rosenblum, other conversion activities coordinated by Bonn. | |
Status: | Done. Scanned volumes are not yet online. Fully encoded electronic files are on-line in development, release pending approval from MQR. |
Timeline: | October-May with milestones as noted | |
Responsibility: | Rosenblum coordinates, Interface Specialist | |
Status: | Cross Currents has been scanned and is currently being qc-ed. OCR is scheduled upon completion of QC. Additional indexing will take place later in the summer. |
Timeline: | Dependent on Media Union staff and CoE | |
Responsibility: | Bonn for proposal, others to be determined as project takes shape. | |
Status: | Proposal went forward and was greeted with interest by CoE administration. Currently awaiting funding to move forward. |
Timeline: | Ongoing, depending on directions determined by Rackham and the Library. | |
Responsibility: | Dependent on types of tasks to be determined | |
Status: | No activity in this area. |
Timeline: | Ongoing | |
Responsibility: | Bonn | |
Status: | There have been several conversations about publishing Special Collections resources. SPO assisted Special Collections with the creation of two Web exhibits, The Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia and Joseph Labadie's Gift to Michigan in development, release pending approval from Special Collections). Work is also underway to create an electronic version of the BHL volume on Women in the Early Years at UM. |
Timeline: | Ongoing with initial analysis and specification in December | |
Responsibility: | Interface Specialist, Programmer | |
Status: | Staff conducted initial assessment and discussed with DLPS-IR group. As we have implemented MQR there have been several small adjustments that make the system more suitable for journal delivery. |
Timeline: | Dependent on ACLS timelines | |
Responsibility: | All staff as appropriate, working with DLPS | |
Status: | No monographs have been received. |
Timeline: | Education and training September-December, implementation dependent on arrival of content, availability of browsers with xml support | |
Responsibility: | Rosenblum, Interface Specialist | |
Status: | Experimentation has been underway with Cocoon and associated style sheets applied to demo files from ACLS, as well as for delivering the materials from our own Web site. |
Timeline: | July for specification, August for implementation | |
Responsibility: | DLPD staff with CS | |
Status: | Done. See http://spo.umdl.umich.edu/tools.html. |
Timeline: | Specifications in February, implementation dependent on programmer hire | |
Responsibility: | Interface specialist, Programmer | |
Status: | Staff fell behind on this activity. One of the early tasks of the Interface designer will be to develop specifications for this modification. |
Timeline: | Specifications March-April, implementation dependent on programmer hire, | |
Responsibility: | Interface specialist, with input from Rosenblum, Bonn, Programmer | |
Status: | While this activity did not take place, SPO has begun exploratory work on peer review by analyzing user needs and assessing some commercial systems. An early draft of the report on this work is available. It will be revised and completed in July. |
Timeline: | Internal assessment, November. Work with editors, February and on. | |
Responsibility: | Rosenblum, Bonn | |
Status: | Existing system seem sufficient. Awaiting demand for service to test. |
Timeline: | Initial assessment January then ongoing depending on ACLS timelines | |
Responsibility: | Programmer with CS, Interface Specialist, Bonn with contributions from ACLS project staff | |
Status: | ACLS has decided to handle all commercial transactions themselves so will not require us to support on-line charging. The next year will see and exploration of SPO's needs in this area. |
Timeline: | by end of December | |
Responsibility: | Bonn assisting Preservation staff as needed. | |
Status: | Discussions have been held with ACME Bookbinding. Library has decided to develop RFP to solicit vendor responses. |
Timeline: | January, dependent on Preservation staff | |
Responsibility: | Bonn assisting Preservation staff as needed. | |
Status: | This issue has been discussed in CMDC. There is now a small working group resolving several of the issues around Print on Demand. |
Timeline: | February-March, dependent on Preservation staff | |
Responsibility: | Bonn assisting Preservation staff as needed. | |
Status: | See 6.2 |
Timeline: | February-March, dependent on Preservation staff | |
Responsibility: | Bonn assisting Preservation staff as needed. | |
Status: | See 6.2 |
Timeline: | by end of year | |
Responsibility: | Bonn assisting Preservation staff as needed. | |
Status: | See 6.2 |
Timeline: | Initial assessment March then ongoing depending on ACLS timelines | |
Responsibility: | Rosenblum, Bonn, with contributions from ACLS project staff | |
Status: | Have worked with DLPS to specify the collection and display of title level statistics. These are currently in development. |
Timeline: | Initial April-May then ongoing depending on ACLS timelines | |
Responsibility: | Programmer with CS/HZ, Interface Specialist, Bonn with contributions from ACLS project staff | |
Status: | See 7.1 |
Timeline: | Dependent on ACLS timelines | |
Responsibility: | Interface Specialist, Bonn with contributions from ACLS project staff | |
Status: | Mock-ups have been received from ACLS and will be implemented when the backfile is ready to go on-line. |
Timeline: | ASAP depending on approval from O. Feinstein | |
Responsibility: | Bonn, Sheppard | |
Status: | First release is done. Currently collecting information for updating directory (updates are coordinated by Chuck Ransom). |
Timeline: | Dependent on approval from Skib/Amman | |
Responsibility: | Sheppard | |
Status: | This project has slowly. SPO has completed the first on-line version but Amman wants to undertake considerable revision and additions before releasing. At the current time we are looking toward a September, 2001 release. |
Timeline: | by January | |
Responsibility: | Rosenblum | |
Status: | Current version is on-line. Becky Dunkle is looking into resources for supplementing the records with reel numbers. |
Timeline: | ASAP depending on approval from Herrada | |
Responsibility: | Sheppard | |
Status: | Done |
Timeline: | by January 31 | |
Responsibility: | Bonn | |
Status: | Work is done in this area, except for a few clean-up tasks. The final report and handbook were submitted to Mellon in July, 2001. |
Timeline: | ongoing | |
Responsibility: | Bonn, Sheppard | |
Status: | AOC process is smoothly in place and low demand. MoAA appears to have gone into hiatus. Saline Historical Photos are digitized and on-line. |