Dear Partners,
It was great, at yesterday’s meeting, to hear all of the excitement and enthusiasm expressed by everyone in the room. Just to recap (and for the benefit for those who couldn’t make it):
Tom Clareson and his team from Palinet will be here on October 7th-October 9th. There will be a group meeting with the consultants for an hour or two probably on the 7th. Then the team will split up and visit all of the sites that have collections. Someone who is knowledgeable about the collection should be available on-site to answer questions.
2. Palinet will deliver their report sometime in late fall. Also, around that time, Tom will come back and present a workshop on best practices for preservation, digitization, and copyright.
3. Everyone agreed that this group should be expanded to include other local historical societies, the universities, and other entities that collect local history information. There was talk of having an expanded meeting sometime in January after the we have the Palinet report in hand.
4. There was agreement that our group should not remain ad-hoc. It should be given cohesion through, at the very list, a mission statement, a name, and membership list so that will our work can continue well beyond the initial grant period.
5. We talked about access, portals, formats, copyright and other issues that the Palinet folks can help us with.
