20180129 SC&A WG Meeting Notes

Date

29 Jan 2018

Attendees

• Sebastian Hammer

• Julia Kim
• Jeanine Nault
• Aaron Trehub
• Catherine Uecker

• Peter Murray

• Regrets from Gregory Bailey

Agenda

• Welcome and thanks

• Discuss and finalize charge

• Discuss next steps and action items

Discussion items

Ashley Blewer (formerly of NYPL) has other commitments and is not able to join the WG.

Members discussed the background to and rationale for the working group, as well as the rationale for forming a working group instead of a FOLIO SIG at this point. The main advantages to a working group are flexibility, agility, and speed of response. If the group decides to transition to a SIG, that can be done.

In discussing the draft charge, the members agreed that it makes sense to do an environmental scan of current SC&A software solutions as a first step. However, some members said that we need to look beyond the solutions that are currently on offer. They argued that the SC&A solutions mentioned in the charge are still heavily EAD-based, focus on traditional analog materials, and do not really do a good job of accommodating or describing hierarchically complex born-digital materials (e.g. digital video recordings). Julia Kim made the point that her office at the Library of Congress currently has over two terabytes of born-digital video content on deck and is having difficulty finding a satisfactory software solution for description, access, and preservation.

In that connection, Sebastian Hammer mentioned that Index Data is one of a number of companies that are responding to an RFP from the Hungarian National Library in Budapest for a comprehensive national library solution, including special collections management. Sebastian said that Hermesz-SOFT (Hungary) and Arkivum (UK) have also responded to the RFP. He said that he expects that the selection process will take a few more weeks to play out. The group agreed that exploring this initiative would be a more-promising approach than trying to shoehorn our requirements into an existing software package. At the same time, we should start defining the main functional requirements for a comprehensive SC&A software solution. Julia has some preliminary materials for this.

Sebastian also said that the Hungarian RFP represents an opportunity to pitch FOLIO to additional institutions in Europe. Aaron Trehub suggested that one of those institutions should be the National Library of Estonia (NLE) in Tallinn. The NLE has a strong track record in digital curation and digital preservation and would make an excellent development partner.

Catherine Uecker made the point that some institutions have made a substantial investment in existing SC&A software packages and that any solution we decide on or develop should play well with them. She mentioned the case of Aeon at her institution.

What we want to wind up with is a comprehensive GLAM software solution that can accommodate all kinds of materials, from traditional analog materials to born-digital multimedia content. In other words, a high-end Swiss Army Knife, as in:

https://www.victorinox.com/us/en/Products/Swiss-Army-Knives/Large-Pocket-Knives/Work-Champ/p/0.8564

Conclusions/action items:

• Start with an SC&A needs survey, not a software survey; start defining core functional requirements.