Report of Business

The Intellectual Access to Preservation Metadata Interest Group meeting was called to order at 10:30 a.m., Sunday, January 17^th at the Mid-Winter Meeting of the American Library Association.  The first hour of the meeting consisted of a presentation given by Lisa Schmidt, electronic records archivist and team lead for the Michigan state University Digital Curation Planning Project.

The program was scheduled with an eye to three objectives from the ALCTS strategic plan:

Objective 1. Sponsor programs and open forums to encourage collaboration and discussion of practices and problems.
Objective 2. Evaluate and document practices.
Objective 3. Encourage and recognize innovation and motivate practitioners to adopt new and improved practices.

Like other research universities, Michigan State University has amassed a growing body of digital information—some of which only exists in digital form. Without an active, well-considered plan for managing and preserving these resources, they will eventually become inaccessible due to the ever-changing nature of technology. The Michigan State University Archives & Historical Collections (UAHC) recently embarked on a digital curation planning project designed to help ensure the trustworthy preservation, management, and stewardship of the university’s digital assets and intellectual property. Project activities will include a campus-wide survey followed up by in-depth interviews of select units that may be accompanied by inventorying and appraisal of digital assets. Schmidt’s presentation was followed a question and answer period

The meeting was concluded by Janet Gertz, chair, Audio Metadata Task Force formed by this interest group, gave a report of task force progress. The group is working to document the actual implementation of the various metadata standards used in working with sound recordings. The work being done is in accordance with three objectives from the ALCTS strategic plan:

 Objective 1. Sponsor programs and open forums to encourage collaboration and discussion of practices and problems.
Objective 2. Evaluate and document practices.
Objective 3. Encourage and recognize innovation and motivate practitioners to adopt new and improved practices. 

The task force has reviewed the information collected so far on the wiki it is using to compile the content for the audio metadata listing it intends to produce.  To date, the task force has divided up the work of finding examples of institutions that are using each of the metadata standards/guidelines it has previously identified.  The groups is in the process of determining which reporting formats are acceptable for posting on the PARS website and what is involved in making it available there. The NEH would like to be able to refer to this work in giving guidance to people writing proposals, and that it would be helpful for them if it can be made available by March.