Technology Committee Minutes: Mar 2011

Present:
James Ghiorzi (San Benito County)
David Meyer (UC Santa Cruz)
Jennifer Fellguth (Hartnell College)
Stacy DeMatteo (Salinas PL)
Pam Poandl (Cabrillo College)
Deborah Stephens, Chair (Watsonville PL)
Steve Watkins (CSU Monterey Bay)
Dana Young (Gavilan College)

1. Today’s minute taker: Steve Watkins
2. Agenda review: agenda was approved as presented
3. Minutes from last meeting: approved with no changes
4. Administrative Council Report.
   Steve attended the first portion of the February 11th Council meeting to participate in the presentation of the Website Task Force recommendations along with Georg Romero, who chaired the Task Force. Following the presentation and question and answer period, the Council voted to accept the recommendations.
5. Study: Recording and archiving training sessions.
   Stacy has the video recordings from the January 28th workshop on mobile strategies for libraries and will be converting them to digital format and making minor edits soon. David reported that he has successfully set up a free hosted site on Kaltura.com that will serve as a testbed for uploading video content and making it available for streaming. While the free version has some limits on bandwidth and disk storage beyond which a paid version would be required, it is anticipated that the free service would be adequate for the anticipated volume of MOBAC content, its lifetime, and anticipated usage, especially since the video does not need to be stored in high-definition. Therefore, Kaltura.com may be the recommended solution for long-term hosting and streaming. 

   Part of the plan will need to address editing platforms and operating systems (e.g., iMovie on Mac OS and Movie Maker on Windows), however it was proposed that the amount of post-production editing effort be left to the discretion of the group that organized each program.

   A basic, self-contained kit will be designed, consisting of digital video camera, microphone, tripod, and simple operating instructions. A digital video camera with hard disk that stores content in a native digital format that does not require conversion prior to editing is desirable, preferably with up to four hours of battery life and disk space. An external microphone will greatly enhance audio quality over a built-in camera microphone. There was discussion of whether we should also plan for a more sophisticated configuration for larger venues, to include a small 4-channel mixer, lavolier microphone, and connections for additional audience microphones. The capability to work with such external audio inputs should be part of the specifications of the camera model to be recommended. On the other hand, there were concerns that a more complex setup would make it more difficult to use under the self-service model, since there is no available technical support. David volunteered to investigate camera models and pricing based on these factors.

   The group discussed options for where the equipment might be stored in order to keep track of it but also make it readily available to MOBAC program planners. A member library that is on the ILL delivery system would be desirable, as that could provide an easy mechanism for receiving and returning the equipment. There was also discussion of the possibility of recommending that two kits be purchased, both for redundancy in case of equipment failure and to maximize geographic accessibility by locating one kit in the north bay area and the other in the south, for instance.

   David demonstrated and explained how Kaltura.com makes readily available snippets of code that can be embedded in the MOBAC website to make the videos viewable there. It is also possible to create playlists of related content, either manually or by assigning metadata tags, which could be used to organize videos (and audio content) by themes, by sponsoring committee, etc.

6. New business
   2011-12 Budget Request
   Deborah reviewed the funding requests submitted by the committee in recent years. MOBAC allocated $6000 in 2009/10 and $5000 in 2010/11. She will contact the PLP office to verify the amount that the committee has spent to date on workshop programming during the current fiscal year. The committee confirmed plans to present one hands-on workshop and one Future Technologies Workshop again next year. Because the workshops often involve travel costs for presenters from beyond the region that drive the costs higher than this year’s, the committee agreed to request $5000 again for 2011/12.

Next business meeting is: 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. on April 21, 2011, in the Library Administration Conference Room at the CSU Monterey Bay Library.