1.1 Build understanding of the needs and concerns of campus publishers by conducting an environmental study, including

• Compile list of scholarly publishers on Campus (including content, frequency of publication, etc.)
• Contact editors- introduce ourselves, get information from editors on their current tools, processes, their interests in e-publishing, their needs in this area, their concerns -- perhaps a formal survey?
• Analysis and summary of survey information

No new activity.

1.2 Work with OVPR/Rackham to promote moving subsidized journals to electronic publication

Met with Earl Lewis of Rackham to discuss our developing services and our hopes for working with the Press on future projects.

1.3 Possible meeting of university libraries engaged in publishing efforts in their first two years of operation with no more than 5 FTE to talk about sharing tools, information, purpose.

Meeting took place, under the aegis of DLF, at NYU, May 9-10. About 15 people from 7 different academic electronic publishing endeavors attended and shared ideas and methods.

1.4 Bring in or visit with staff of Highwire and Project Muse in order to learn from their experience and understand their aims.

No activity in this area.

1.5 Communicate with and educate library staff about purpose of SPO and its services

• Develop website (in tandem with development of DLI site)
• Brochure and paper information (December)
• Hold information meetings with library staff (reference staff, collection development staff, PR dept, Health Services, Media Union, esp librarians or departments who might have more contact with faculty.) February-March

The brochure and Web site have both been stalled by sickness and travel. We still hope to release these before the end of the year.

1.6 Analysis and education of staff about issues like copyright, authentication & access, and other issues that editors are likely to ask about (as determined though conversations and environmental study)

No formal activity in this area

2.1 Communicate with and educate faculty, particularly faculty editors, about purpose of SPO and its services.

• Rosenblum met with the editors of Michigan Feminist Studies to discuss further possible backfile conversion and online publication. They are committed to moving ahead with electronic publication.
• Rosenblum discussed our XML conversion process with instructor for Post Identity XML workshops. They will be conducting XML workshops with their student assistants in May and we will get in touch with them after the workshops to discuss the project in more detail.

2.2 Support for the Philosopher's Imprint

2.3 Support for The Medieval Review

• Move TMR from mail robot submission to journal management system
• Facilitate moving TMR to text class to resolve outstanding issues about URLs and tag set.

Worked with TMR to help them start using the journal management system. There were several problems with permissions and ID names, which appear to be fixed now. TMR staff has now moved fully to submission of articles via the journal management system.

2.4 Support for the Michigan Quarterly Review

2.5 Work on publication opportunities with Slavic Department

2.6 Support for 4DP2

2.7 Provide support for electronic publication of dissertations as program develops as needs and directions develop.

No activity in this area.

2.8 Work with Library staff to identify publication possibilities within their collections.

• The online version of the Special Collections exhibit Joseph Labadie and His Gift to Michigan is still in development -- have worked extensively with Julie Herrada on making it a richer and more interactive resource that the previous mock-ups (mock-ups on fizzie may not be the most recent -- some development is being done on desktop machines).
• Began preparing the BHL's Women's Voices text for conversion to textclass. Also inserted figure tags into Women's Voices.

2.9 Miscellaneous

• Set up series of r2net and perl scripts to batch convert files of various journals from rtf to journal.dtd to textclass.dtd
• Modified cleanup script for removing dated headers and bodies for all journals.

3.1 Assess needs for modification of textclass retrieval system for journals

No new activity in this area.

3.2 Apply textclass retrieval system to ACLS monographs when they appear

No new activity in this area.

3.2.1 Explore and implement XML style sheets/style associated display. Demo with IE5.

No new activity in this area.

3.3 Develop generic, customizable interface/search and display templates

No new activity in this area.

4.1 Develop basic management tool for collection of bibliographic data and submission of completed files.

Done

4.2 Modify journal management system to support issues-based publishing (currently supports only article-based publishing)

No new activity in this area. Specifications are unfortunately still overdue. We hope to make this a focus of activity in June but it may well roll over into next year. Sheppard did begin considerable work in teaching himself MySQL, work that may contribute to the journal management system's development over time.

4.3 Specify system to support peer review process

Since the resident process has been stalled, SPO has begun some preliminary work in this area, surveying and assessing avaialable commerical and free products for peer review. Bepress.com presented staff with an elaborate telephone and web-based demonstration of their peer review and journal management tools.

5 Electronic subscription management

6 Continue exploratory work on print on demand

Although this issue is very much alive, little work has taken place on it in the past two months. In early April, a meeting did take place with several collection development staff to discuss criteria for reprints for our collections. Why work has stalled is not entirely clear. Bonn has agreed to serve on the Reprography working group, which may move p.o.d. work ahead on some fronts.

7 Support for ACLS

8 Transitional goals

9 Miscellaneous Activities

• Brian Sheppard was hired as the SPO programmer and began work in his new role.
• Sheppard did some UMR file mapping follow-up in response to some problems with reloading of UMR CDs.
• Brian Rosenblum attended Society of Scholarly Publishing XML Workshops in Chicago
Rosenblum, after much preparation in April, travelled to Kygryzstan and made presentations on digital libraries to university administrators, librarians, and library school students in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. He was also heralded as a model librarian.
• Rosenblum and Sheppard attended DLF Electronic Publishing meeting at NYU.
• Bonn gave a keynote talk on MoA document analysis tools in digital library use at the 2001 Symposium on Document Image Analysis Technologies in Columbia, Maryland.
• Bonn attended the DLF Spring Forum in San Francisco and gave a talk on Assessing the Costs of Conversion: Some Preliminary Findings from the Making of America IV Project.
• Bonn attended a meeting of the ACLS History E-book Project participants in New York and gave a presentation, with John Price Wilkin, on some of the possibilities for electronic projects.
• Bonn particpated in the CIC site visit focus group for Presses and Libaries.
• Bonn coordinated the MyLibrary evaluation activities. Two focus groups were held. Bonn summarized the focus group and survey findings for Kitty Bridges to use in further planning, but a formal report still needs to be prepared.
• Bonn participated in a meeting with the University of Chicago Press to discuss digitization services for University Presses.
• Bonn met with Mary Erwin, Interim Director of the UM PRess, and Wendy Lougee and John Price Wilkin to discuss a number of issues. Some possibilities for collaboration between SPO and the Press arose and will be explored further.
• Bonn met with Rashidah Bolhassan (Sarawak State Library, Malaysia)