DIGOR Email Discussion list

DIGOR Spring Meeting

Thursday April 15, 2004

OLA Annual Conference, Hilton Hotel, Eugene

The meeting was called to order at 5:35 p.m. In attendance were Laura Ayling, Judy Andrews, Deniece Davis, Valery King, Ted Smith, Alex Toth.

Minutes of the Fall 2003 meeting were approved.

Chair Alex Toth reported that we have $826.76 in our account. Our membership as of March 1 is 28, an increase of two since last Fall.

OLA PROGRAM

Election of Officers

Chair Alex Toth opened the floor for nominations. Valery King nominated Laura Ayling for Vice-Chair/Chair Elect. Ted Smith said that he was willing to return as Secretary if no one else wanted to take the position. No other nominations being received, nominations were closed and the two nominees were approved by acclimation. Thus, the officers board for 2004/5 will be as follows:

2004/2005 DIGOR Officers

Past Chair: Alex Toth, Pacific University
Chair: Valery King, Oregon State University
Vice Chair/ Chair Elect: Laura Ayling, Lewis & Clark College
Secretary: Ted Smith, University of Oregon
Web editor: Ted Smith, University of Oregon

Long Range Planning

Alex Toth expressed the desire for DIGOR to engage in some long range planning. We should not limit ourselves to year-by-year activities. What projects can we do to serve the larger community and remain relevant? Suggestions included: investigate cooperative efforts with the Orbis-Cascade Alliance, a project to capture fugitive documents from regional offices of Federal agencies.

Deniece Davis mentioned that OIT has an LSTA grant to digitize documents relating to the Klamath River Basin. The Bureau of Reclamation has opened their archives to the project, which provides a good base. The project is tentatively called Klamath WaterWays, and will tie in to the larger Western Waters project of the Great Western Library Alliance.

Valery King mentioned that this type of project is where actual work of this type is likely to be done. To try to tackle the whole realm at once would be too much to contemplate. Perhaps DIGOR's role should be to serve as a gateway to all such projects though our web site. Ted Smith mentioned that it would be useful to do a survey of what types of documents regional offices of agencies are producing that need to be captured and archived.

Consensus was reached that a reasonable project would be to develop a web page that could be used to provide links to digitization projects such as OIT's and Southern Oregon's, along with the results of a survey of regional office publications that could serve as a list of targets for future projects.

It was also suggested that we could develop a page to list particular strengths of Oregon libraries' documents collections. The group thought this was a good idea as well.

OLA Program for Next Year

Incoming Chair Valery King asked if we should continue our involvement with the OLA Conference. Based on the success of this year's program, the group thinks we should try to do another one next year. No specific topic was proposed.

Award for Agency Publications

Alex Toth asked if we might consider establishing some type of award for the best publication from an Oregon state agency. The group approved this idea. It was suggested that perhaps we could announce the award during the program at OLA, which has a higher attendance than the business meetings.

DIGOR Publications

Valery King asked if we had ever officially stopped the Documentor. Ted Smith answered yes, that we had discontinued publication at a previous meeting (Fall 2002), with the idea that the web site would serve as our primary information dissemination medium. We should probably do more to utilize the site, and Ted offered that if others contribute content he would be glad to format it and post it on the site. Judy and Valery will give a report on the upcoming Federal Depository meeting in St. Louis to be posted, and we will look for other content to make the web site more relevant and a useful tool for the group.

Next Meeting

It was suggested that the Fall meeting could be in Klamath Falls. Deniece said she would agree to host it, pending approval of the library director. The group tentatively plans to meet in Klamath Falls on the second or third Friday in September. Members should e-mail Chair Valery King with any agenda items.

The meeting was adjourned at 6:10 p.m.

Submitted by Ted Smith, DIGOR Secretary