[Nathan Hall] Recording now. Thank you. I'm sorry. You can proceed, Mike. 

[Mike Foreman] No, no problem, Nathan, thank you for that. Remembering the record and that's important for us as well. Kelly, would you briefly introduce yourself? 

[Kelly Altizer] Hi, everyone. Good to see you. I'm Kelly Altizer, I'm an associate  with IEN. I am recovering from laryngitis so I'm sorry my voice sore today. Great to be with you all and I will kick it to my colleague, Dr. Selena Cozart. 

[Selena Cozart] Hey, good afternoon, everybody I'm Selena Cozart and I'm here working with IEN as a consultant and facilitator helping out today. 

[Mike Foreman] Thank you. I'm Mike Foreman, also with IEN as a Special Projects Manager and who've been with them since 2018. So we're all three of us are excited to be with you and look forward to additional comments and input for Nathan and Alex. So with that, I'd like to review the agenda. Kelly, would you mind screen-sharing that for me? Just very briefly, we'll look over the agenda and let us let you all know we're gonna do today. We've been through the 01:00 session and proceeding into 1:10 where we are just some introductory information. The bulk and core of our work today is hearing a presentation from Alex Kinnaman who works with Nathan and I'll look to her for her own introduction here as she begins. But this is a key piece for participants of this process to consider as Virginia Tech sets up this digital archive. So there'll be a very important thing for you to consider. We'll go into breakout rooms at 02:00 after a short break just to consider some of the basic questions, are questions of clarity or immediate questions you may have after listening to Alex and her presentation, we'll get into some large grouping debrief. Just let everybody hear everybody else and what concerns are, there may be some synergy that's developed and common things that people want to know. Alex will offer some reflections on what she heard and additional thoughts on the MOA. We'll go through a period at the very end of the day we'll just have some next steps and questions and things to consider as we take a several week break, we'll come back on June 24th for our final virtual workshop. So thank you, everybody. Appreciate it, Kelly, for sharing. Thank you very much. I will now turn to Alex for her own introduction and presentation on the Memorandum of Agreement. Please, Alex. 

[Alex Kinnaman] Thank you so much. Yes. Hello, everyone. I am Alex Kinnaman and I'm the Digital Preservation Coordinator here at Virginia Tech University Libraries. You get to hear from me today because I had the opportunity to help develop this Memorandum of Agreement for our digitization imaging or digital imaging lab, excuse me, so I know a lot of the ins and outs and that is what we'll be hitting on today. I'm going to just make sure that, nope not share, slideshow.  

[Mike Foreman] Here we go. Great. 

[Alex Kinnaman] Can you see my screen okay?  

[Mike Foreman] Yes, ma'am. 

[Alex Kinnaman] Sounds great. Alright, we'll, get started. And I apologize in advance, I'm throwing a lot of information out at you all today. And please feel free to stop me if there are questions. I may forget and get on a roll so if there are questions and I don't see the chat, please feel free to interrupt me. So this presentation will be covering what a project champion is in the library. I will introduce the project proposal form, but we won't quite get into the nitty-gritty because that's a smaller document. We'll define an MOA and what an MOA means here. I will go through each section of the Virginia Tech MOA just to make sure that we get all of the basics covered and we have room for any conversation there. And then we'll move to our breakout room activity, which is to read specific sections and translate it into what you understand it and how you feel about it, and hopefully get some feedback on how we might improve versions in the future. So building trust is really the main goal of this. Building trust with transparency through mutual understanding, collaborative communication, flexibility on both sides, and of course, just general agreement on what we're all doing and that is what the MOA is meant to do for us. A little off topic, but this is one of my favorite quotations about clicking the I agree button. We've all read the "did you read the terms and conditions" and you go "yep, yep, I did." And that is in this quotation and act of surrender and not have consent. And I wholeheartedly agree with that and just wanted to share that as a kind of a spirit of this presentation. We want to make sure that everything is very clear and understandable and useful to you. So our approach to trust-building has been with one-on-one discussions and representation with a project champion. And we'll get into that. You introduce your project to us in the libraries through a proposal form that is then fiddled with and it goes through an iterative review process. And then that moves to the detailed documentation of what exactly the project is, how exactly will be carrying it out, and all of the details in the Memorandum of Agreement. And then throughout all of this, there's just ongoing communication and feedback and hopefully some flexibility involved. Knowing that, you know, timelines may change, content may change, your collection might grow or shrink, things like that. So the first step is the project champion. This is a member of the VTUL faculty or staff. Generally this has been a collection manager or a curator. But it could be someone that you've already built trust with who is willing to represent you, to be in the libraries, to be your voice for the project in the libraries with direct contact with all of the departments that will be working on your project during all of the overall workflow. This person will help you create the original application form, so that proposal form, and help develop some of that workflow for your project and be that voice. And then it will help communicate between you and the libraries so that there is a, there's always a direct link and connection between you and the people actually handling your content and doing the digitization work and metadata work and all of that. So the project champion helps you with a proposal form, and this form is much more lightweight than the MOA. But this is the initial proposal. This is created for specifically the digital imaging lab in the libraries. This helps us understand the project and what we need to make it successful, what you need to make it successful. And then it also helps us kind of queue the projects and keep track so we're on a good role with handling multiple projects. [Nathan Hall] Alex, can I interrupt and ask a question? 

[Alex Kinnaman] Of course! 

[Nathan Hall] Can you go back to the proposal? 

[Alex Kinnaman] Yes. 

[Nathan Hall] Who writes this? Does the, are we asking our participants to write this? I'm being an obvious plant right here, but I'm also forwarding an actual question that came from the participant. So yeah, are we expecting everyone here to write this or does the somebody else do that? 

[Alex Kinnaman] Yes. Participants here would be responsible largely for at least the content. But your project champion, depending on your relationship with them, might be able to do some of that work as well. It kind of depends on your context. But we do expect the content for this proposal to come from the stakeholders so that it's represented appropriately. 

[Nathan Hall] In my experience working with it, I've done it myself, but getting but I have to interview the stakeholder to get it. So I don't know the description of materials until somebody tells me about them and I don't know about the publishing rights until somebody tells him about them, but I'm in my experience something on filling out forms when I worked with someone, but there's other people in the library who do this for other collections. But since I don't have the expertise, I can't speak to the collections themselves. 

[Alex Kinnaman] Exactly. And so we do rely on the stakeholders to provide their intentions for the project, even if the project champion is the one actually writing it, all of the information will come from participants. Does that answer your question? 

[Nathan Hall] Answered for me it does. We'll see if there's follow-ups later. 

[Alex Kinnaman] Sounds good. Again, feel free to interrupt me. So again, so the process with the proposal specifically is we define your project champion in libraries. You will work with them to develop this first draft of a proposal. And usually there's a little back-and-forth with your champion to get a little bit more specific understanding of the content and what the audience is and how we're going to display it. And that's that, those kinds of details. Then we'll begin customizing the MOA and then carrying out the MOA. So that's really the overarching process that we follow for projects that are coming into our digital imaging lab that we will then host. So MOA, I'm not sure how familiar everyone is with a memorandum of agreement or a memorandum of understanding. But in our case, this is a written document that clearly defines the processes and practices. This will highlight how we communicate the responsibilities of Virginia Tech, and responsibilities of the stakeholder. This will help us manage expectations so we don't have any scope creep. Nathan said that he doesn't like scope, but we need it. I know he's laughing at me. And this also helps in creating kind of a timeline for work so we can give you a rough estimate on when we hope to have your content available. And all of this is towards the goal of agreeing and cooperating together on the shared objective and of course, to build trust so that we all are on the same page and know what's going on. I did want to point this out. Originally, we in the libraries had developed a Memorandum of Understanding, but our university legal counsel had us change it to a memorandum of agreement. And so I actually wasn't familiar with the difference, so I thought that I would review that very quickly. The MOU is kind of a mutual understanding. There is no transfer of funds or services and does not require action. Whereas a memorandum of agreement is more of a conditional agreement. So we will be transferring or exchanging content, not funding, but content and services. In our case, the digitization services that we will provide, the information that you will provide. It also outlines the transfer of content, in our case, so transferring physical archives to our digital imaging lab and then back to the stakeholder. And I will say, from my understanding, the MOA has a lot more legalese, which is why we wanted to spend a whole session just kinda slugging through and making sure it's still made sense. So yes, MOAs outline understanding. They kind of, I read a really great description, they range from an informal handshake, handshake to a legal document. They also serve as a letter of intent, which is really what we're going for here. And can include a range of activities and timelines, people, terms, and conditions. And it's really just designed to decrease the risk to both parties. So we'll move on to the VTUL Digitization Project, Memorandum of Agreement. Try saying that five times fast. So this was built by our digital imaging lab with the digital collections implementation team, which I'm a part of in the libraries. It was reviewed by Virginia Tech stakeholders. So a lot of our content managers and collection managers. And then also reviewed by the Contract Review Officer in the Virginia Tech University Legal. It has been live and ready to go as of January 2022. We had been implementing parts of it, but this is the final perfected version, as far as Legal is concerned. Some sections can be changed. Most of them actually can be changed. Some can even be removed depending on the context of your project. And it's mostly designed to cover the common relationships we might have in terms of flexibility and adapting how we might want to work together. And if there are special circumstances, then there's room for addendums and that sort of thing. So this is where it gets a little much. We're gonna go through each section of the MOA. I know that it was emailed to you earlier this week and today. So if you have it available, you could follow along that way. Otherwise, this will just be kind of a brief overview of each of the larger sections. So the very first section is the purpose. This, and I've taken direct quotations from the language, but this section cannot be removed. It will be altered with your project details and it defines the vocabulary that's used in the rest of the MOA, like holding institution, for example, and the goal of this is to manage expectations of the parties involved and help guide project planning and assist in coordinating the work between multiple departments for multiple institutions. So really just stating, what are we doing here. Terms. This one is it can't change and it must be included, but it's how we might terminate the agreement if something were to happen or if the if we just decide to amicably and the relationship. This defines that it's a statement of intent that we will we will work together until we mutually agree not to.  The scope of work. This, this part is really interesting to me. So this is where we would outline all of the material that you might have. Some of it might be digital, some of it might be physical, whatever it is that you have, this is how we organize the amount of content and how just how much there is so that we can translate that to approximate data sizes. This section must also be included, but everything will change based on your content. And if there are changes to the scope of work, then it is included as an addendum at the end, just saying like hey, we expanded it and here's the new scope of work with this kind of chart that is pictured here to show what has changed. Projected resources builds off of that as well. So this is how we estimate how long it will take to complete each phase of work. Again, section must be included, but it will always change based on the project and your needs. So some, for example, you might not need project planning. Perhaps you don't need metadata creation, but we'll need to incorporate the metadata. Perhaps you are publishing it but are preserving it, that sort of thing. And then on your end, just kind of estimating what you will need to do to prepare your content so that it is as complete and accurate as possible before it comes to us. And then some project management and working between us. So these are examples. The hours are absolutely arbitrary just to show what it will look like. Responsibilities. So there's a very large responsibilities section that's split into two. And we will be going over those in our breakout sections. The first section is Virginia Tech responsibilities. So this includes a list of all of the possible actions that Virginia Tech may perform regarding any transfer, digitization, metadata preservation, all of that. It's highly flexible based on what the intent of the project is and what your comfort level is. One quotation I really wanted to pull out was that we will not digitize documents that you do not give us or that you intend to not include on the on-site digitization. I know that this came up last session and I wanted to pull out the exact language in there. And also, we will not sell, donate, or deposit materials at any other institution. Unless that is the goal. If that ends up being the goal, then we would modify this. But presuming that it's not, it is in the MOA. I will stop here. Were there any questions that have come up? 

[Mike Foreman] Questions for Alex right now? Please go ahead. 

[Speaker 1] Yes, this is [speaker 1], hello. You talked about these charts to be filled out and the preliminary material leading up to that. Then when you said the responsibility, you said we will be going over that in detail in the breakout section. Will there be a section, a part of that breakout meetings where we'll talk about the other thing, the earlier text? 

[Alex Kinnaman] The proposal form, is that what you're referring to? [Speaker 1] Well, I'm looking at the Memorandum of Agreement. I do have some  

[Alex Kinnaman] Oh, okay. 

[Speaker 1] Anticipated issues on the proposal form. But I can address this within the context of simplicity, I have some heartburn on some of the purpose and terms and scopes of work issues. Will we be, will we have time to talk about my heartburn issues? 

[Alex Kinnaman] Yes. I believe in the larger group discussion when we come out of our breakout sessions, that will be a time for that discussion for sure. [Mike Foreman] That's correct. Thank you, Alex. Good. 

[Speaker 1] Thank you. 

[Speaker 2] I'd like to add a note here. It says in the bottom bullet that you agree not to sell the materials. But under copyright, It says that you would provide, that we would provide copies for commercial use without permission from the holding institution. It seems to be a contradiction there. 

[Alex Kinnaman] So this is the full version of the MOA that includes all of the content that could possibly be there. These are the, so, responsibilities and copyright are the three sections that we will be going over in most detail today to show that flexibility where things can change based on your needs. So I definitely hear you because I've seen that as well. And in some cases it's using it for promoting a collection to get funding for the collection or for the digital library. But if that's not something we want, then it's not included in the MOA. 

[Nathan Hall] I'll add to that  that this MOA, while it's approved for use for these projects or this kind of initiative, it's also what the legal counsel has approved for basically any shared agreement we do for, so it's not just for the Southwest Virginia Archive, it's also for the anything that's special collections, that our special collections unit uses. So other people in the library would use this for different reasons, which would include some of those like copyright transfer ones. So I've never entered into an agreement where I take copyright from a project partner, but somebody else in my, in my organization might do that with a different partner or for a different initiative. 

[Alex Kinnaman] That's a great point, Nathan. Thank you. 

[Mike Foreman] Hey Alex, please continue so we'll give you plenty of time for your presentation. 

[Alex Kinnaman] Sure thing. All right. So this is the first half of this responsibilities with Virginia Tech and then the next section, are responsibilities of the holding institution. It's a little similar, it includes a list of all the possible actions that the holding institution may perform, especially regarding preparation of the material, the transfer of the material. Not to say that we can assist with these things, but these are things that you have the final word on. The review of the material after digitization, before it goes public. Review of the descriptions and the metadata that we apply to that. And just access, like how would you want people to access this? What are the permissions? What is the intent of that? So this section is again, highly flexible to change based on your needs and your project needs. The next section is custodianship and temporary custodianship. This is a section that I wanted to specifically bring up. It's a very short section and it must be included if we end up transferring materials. So we become, we Virginia Tech Libraries, becomes the temporary custodian of any physical materials in our care that are agreed upon. And we'll work with holding institution to determine what those materials are. And it's just a temporary custodianship because we want to care for them in the same way that we care for our materials and wouldn't want anything to happen to them. So that is why this section is there. But it is very short and I feel very clear. So if there are questions on that, we'd be happy to talk about that. [Nathan Hall] Alex, is this what we use to ensure that if anything is lost or damaged, it's covered by our own insurance policy? 

[Alex Kinnaman] Correct. Thank you for clarifying that. Copyright is the other, is the third section that we will get to. This is very large, but it's mostly to cover all of us to make sure that the materials that are being digitized can be without any copyright issues. And there's some flexibility for change on this. Like I said, certain things may not be appropriate to the your project, so section will be around, but it's mostly to make sure that we understand the copyright of your content so that we are obeying those copyright laws. 

[Nathan Hall] Alex, if something was in the public domain and was no longer under copyright, how would we handle that? Would that be an area where it's flexible, where we changed that and just say that the holding institution has the right to enter this MOA, but leave out that there are, they have the sole copyright? 

[Alex Kinnaman] That's a good question and I don't have the answer for you at the top of my head. If someone could write that question down, I can dig into that during the break. Ownership is another short, succinct section, but I still wanted to give it a little special attention. Ownership sounds, it's really the crux of what we're trying to go through here, and we just want to state that Virginia Tech owns the website, the database, the digitized content, and then the holding institute can request copies of that digitized content that we will provide. This is one section that must be included and cannot change. But the ownership is more for Virginia Tech to say we own the website and the database where we're holding this information. Timeline. This just very broadly states that we together, both parties, must adhere to the agreed upon timeline or agreed to timeline changes just to make sure we're being flexible with each other and staying on track. And this will not change and cannot be removed. Contingencies. So when timelines change or if they change, this section just says that if everyone is okay with that will make a new timeline. This is very similar to the previous, where it must be included and cannot change. But it's both of us agreeing that if we both agree to change your timeline, then that's okay. Last one, I promise this is the notice and point of contact. It just includes contact information from all parties and information for communicating via mail or email for both Virginia Tech and the holding institution. And of course, this information will change where appropriate, but it must be included overall. Okay. Oh, I forgot one more. I lied. I lied on my slide. Just addendums to note as needed if there are substantial changes in the content that we will be working with, the timeline, any additional resources or other needs, then there's room for addendum throughout. Okay, awesome. So that concludes the really, really boring section. So in our breakout session, again, I wanted to come back to this online terms and conditions. How long do you spend looking for the agree button versus actually reading the conditions? And I just I thought this was funny, so I decided to share it. Because we don't want this to be, we want it to be opposite for this process. So the goal in our case is to create an additional resource for stakeholders and that outlines in understandable language how you interpret the MOA. Then, secondly, to get your feedback on how we can improve this in the future and clarify what's, working, what isn't really working, what's really confusing, and just your general take on what we're providing you. The translation into plain English. This, so we'll each have a section to look at and we'll spend most of the time, I think, reading and then providing feedback on what do you think this means? What's good, what could be better and what is confusing. Because we want to make sure again, there's some clarity in there and that you have a chance to point out like that's worded really funny. What does that mean? As legalese might do. This is an example of what we're looking at. So the CodePen, I know there was a lot of questions about that, but it was just an example of how they did this with their terms of agreement. So you can see the official legally binding stuff on one side that you don't want to read because it's small print and too much going on. And then their one to two sentence translation. That makes it just a lot easier to understand and read. So this is kind of what I was going for in terms of translating it so that you're like, okay, this section is this in one sentence and you feel okay with that. Just for fun, we actually did this in another group with a membership agreement. And you can see that we took each paragraph and summed it up into one sentence. All agreed on that one sentence. And now we use this to help with new members walking through the membership agreement before they sign it. So section assignments, and these will be repeated, but group one will do Virginia Tech responsibilities. Group two will be the holding institution responsibilities, and group three will be the copyright section. I think that's my section too, so should be good. Then when we come back to the main room, what we really want to hit home is, is the MOA clear? Is it equitable? Would you agree to the MOA yourself, why or why not? And we do mean like you individually. Then we'll take a pulse check on your confidence level with your board or governing body, and then just have a discussion in any other comments or feedback. That is all from me, Mike. Thank you. If there are any questions, be happy to take them. 

[Mike Foreman] Why don't we hold our questions? It could be some extensive questions and responses. So why don't we stick to our timeframe and address those in the groups group sessions coming up, Alex, I think that's appropriate. [Alex Kinnaman] Sounds good. Thank you.  

[Mike Foreman] Okay. 

[Alex Kinnaman] I will stop sharing. 

[Mike Foreman] Okay. Thanks. Good to see everybody and thank you, Alex, for good presentation. Kelly, would you set us up for the breakout room? We have time before our break for that. 

[Kelly Altizer] Sure. Did you want me to do you want me to open them before the break? 

[Mike Foreman] Do want to take a break now, is that what we plan to do? 

[Kelly Altizer] We have  breakout rooms opening after the break on that agenda. 

[Mike Foreman] Yeah. I'm sorry. I got that backwards. Yeah. What don't we do our five minute bio break starting right now at quarter of two and come back at ten of two and then we'll get into our discussion breakout rooms and hash this out a little bit. Does that sound good to everybody? Alright, Thanks so much. So we'll see you at ten of two, five-minute break. Thank you. Well, Selena and I will lead a little bit of a question-and-answer session for Alex just in a general way, if you, Alex went over the topics will be in our breakout rooms, but there's a general question you had that you're confused about, we'll spend just a few minutes on those. So would anybody like to offer a question for Alex on her presentation? 

[Speaker 1] This is [speaker 1]. I do have a general question on the-- how do you start? First thing was we need a project champion. Understood. Who starts that? If I'm a holding institution, do I call up Virginia Tech or Nathan or somebody and say, hey, I've got something I want to do. And then he says, okay, you need a project champion, to which I will usually reply, how about you? How does that work? 

Alex Kinnaman] I might let Nathan answer that because I think in our case, he might be the project champion on many of these projects. 

[Nathan Hall] Yeah, that project intake form was used. So right now I oversee the Digitization Lab, but last year I didn't. And the person who is managing and at the time came up with this because he was managing digitization projects across the entire library and university, and these external partnerships that I enter into. Because I have colleagues who are also coming to him with projects, each of us, my colleagues and I would be like he just had us each be a project champion. Were the sort of the project champion is like the intermediary between who are, between where the work is from and in the library. So I'm a frequent project champion, but I'm not the only one within the library. Now I happen to oversee the Digitization Lab, but I've kept the processes in place just to make sure it's like equitable for my colleagues who don't have a digitization lab that works for them. Because I don't just serve my interests, I serve my my institution's interests. So I've just kept that in place so I have to follow the same rules as everybody else. 

[Mike Foreman] Thanks, Nathan. [speaker 1], [speaker 3], your hand is raised. 

[Speaker 3] Yes. Question. Could Alex provide a copy of her presentation because I really liked the succinct bullet points. I'm going to have to explain it to other people in my organization. So I thought the bullet points in her presentation are very helpful. 

[Alex Kinnaman] Absolutely. I was hoping to send it out in an email after the session. 

[Speaker 3] Very good. 

[Nathan Hall] Yeah, it's a good idea, it has a lot to digest for anyone who's not a lawyer. 

[Alex Kinnaman] It's a lot. It's a lot for me as well. Hence, the slides. 

[Mike Foreman] Time for one more general question for Alex. 

[Nathan Hall] I think [speaker 1] had a question again. 

[Mike Foreman] [speaker 1]? 

[Speaker 1] No, I was just going to agree with [speaker 3]. 

[Mike Foreman] Oh, ditto, [speaker 3]. I agree with him. With all of you. Great. Last chance before we go into some breakout rooms. Oh, [speaker 4].  

[Speaker 4] Yeah. I'm coming into somewhat late. I missed the first two meetings. I was out of town. And I'm the Tribal Historian for the Rappahannock tribe, which is Eastern Virginia. And I'm really trying to figure out how we can be part of this or whether this is something that's useful for the tribe. And I don't know what your thoughts may be on that. 

[Mike Foreman] Maybe Alex, Nathan may handle this one at least initially. 

[Nathan Hall] Yeah. Sorry because I was looking at my own notes and screen earlier. I couldn't hear, were you at the beginning of this call? 

[Speaker 4] I was. 

[Nathan Hall] Okay. So yeah, I would hope you'd be involved as well. And I think to figure out exactly how it would be a conversation between you and me about, in the first session, people talked about what kinds of collections they had in on of the intro sections. So I think we can talk about, about what materials you have and what's appropriate for sharing. So in my experience talking with tribes and people who work with tribes, you have sensitive information in non-sensitive information. So I think it'd be good to start with a non-sensitive information. And it could be, it could be non-religious artifacts. So we can do 3D scanning, for example, or we could just take pictures of them if that's appropriate for those materials and for the community. It could be like contemporary history that has more written documentation about what's current tribal governance documentation.  

[Speaker 4] Okay. 

[Nathan Hall] Rappahannock. And you've got, I think IEN has been working with you. Is this the tribe that IEN has been working with or am I mistaken? 

[Speaker 4] I am kinda, like I said, I'm kinda coming to this late. So I'm not exactly, I know that we were in the process of working on a digitization project and we were working, I think at one point with Jessica Taylor with Virginia Tech. 

[Nathan Hall] Yeah. She recommended you to this initiative. 

[Speaker 4] And so we have a grant out there for digitalization of tribal archives. But I think we're still waiting on the final determination for that. 

[Nathan Hall] I'll to reach out to you by e-mail we can set the time to talk further about-- 

Speaker 4] Okay. That'd be great. 

[Nathan Hall] About the appropriate uses for your community. 

[Speaker 4] Yeah, I wouldn't really appreciate that.  

[Mike Foreman] [speaker 5], if you have something short, we'll entertain your questions, sir. 

[Speaker 5] Well, it's just because I have to report to my board. I want to have a clarification and understanding. When Alex was talking, it sounded that like if for some reason we wanted to dissolve this relationship, it sounds like it has to be a mutual agreement and I just wondered if you could talk a little bit more about that. 

[Alex Kinnaman] For sure. Let me let me scroll up to that section really quickly. So in this section specifically, I wanted to make sure I read everything out. Either party can terminate the agreement with 60 days notice. Anything that is created, so if we were to do any digitization and then the project was terminated, the content produced as a result of this will just be what we have and it won't be complete per the original MOA. I'm making this answer more complicated than necessary, but essentially either may terminate through a written notice with 60 days because we will need to work on a workflow for returning items or what we'll do with the digitized content now that we don't have permission to host it and things like that. But either party may. 

[Speaker 5] Thank you. I didn't mean to sound negative, but I just I just don't -- 

[Alex Kinnaman] No it's okay. I understand for sure. 

[Mike Foreman] Thank you. Good general questions. So let's, Kelly, why don't we move to our breakout rooms and we'll, Selena and Alex and I will entertain some of the core parts of the MOA for discussion. [Kelly Altizer] Great. I'm going to open the rooms in just a moment. But before I do that, I want to make sure that everyone has access to the Google Doc if you would like it. I'm going to put that link in the chat one more time. That's where you'll find the section of the MOA that you'll be discussing in your breakout group. Your facilitator can also screen share that. So if you can't access the Google Doc, you'll still be able to see it. I just wanted to make sure you have it if  you would like it. I'm going to open the breakout rooms now. You should have a pop-up on your screen inviting you to move to your room. 

[Selena Cozart] I think that as Nathan said the recording follows him. So he must be here. 

[Nathan Hall] I just jumped in. So yeah, I'm just seeing if, I wanted to get in really quick to here and Mike and see if there's any initial questions. This room and Mike's room to see if there's any initial questions so that nobody gets stuck. 

[Selena Cozart] Yeah. So we were just introducing what the task is. So as you read through the responsibilities for Virginia Tech, the questions that we're dealing with are, what do we think it means? What's good? And you can just label things as good with smiley faces and emojis. What could be better? And where are you confused? So we have the responsibilities at Virginia Tech and the Virginia Tech University Libraries perform the following work with respect to the material. Create and champion, a project proposal using establish workflows and forms used by VTUL. And I'll just pause there and see if there's any confusion about what that means, what you think it needs, what's good about that, and what could be better. Any responses to that first bullet? [Speaker 6] Are they talking about the overall project or individual projects? 

[Selena Cozart] So this would be the MOA with each cooperating organizations. So this would be between Virginia Tech and your organization. And Nathan's nodding his head. Okay. Any other questions? 

[Speaker 2] I'm curious. If in the process of processing this material, Virginia Tech damages some of it, is it responsible for doing whatever is necessary in conservation to repair the damage? 

[Selena Cozart] Okay, Well, let's see, There's all of these bullets we're gonna go over. So we're just going over this first bullet. Creating, championed a project proposal using establish workflows and forums use by VTUL. I would imagine that your question, [speaker 2], is going to come up in one of the later bullets, but while we have Nathan here, you can just answer quickly yes or no. Is their coverage for if there's any damage? 

[Nathan Hall] I don't know the full value of Virginia Tech's insurance policy or how to assess something's value. But this hasn't really happened before. So I don't know what happens, but the material is covered when we when we take hold of it by whatever insurance we have. But I think we should probably document this. Because it sounds like if [speaker 2] had the question, lots of people probably have the question. So yeah, I'll open up my copy of this and I'll type that in while the rest of you chat.  

[Speaker 2] Okay. I think this is the second time you brought up Virginia Tech insurance. Having the material insured by Virginia Tech, perhaps that should be mentioned in under the responsibilities. 

[Nathan Hall] Alright. Thank you for that. Oh sorry, Selena, I was going to find that, I didn't want to slow down conversation because you're facilitating. I can jump back. 

[Selena Cozart] Awesome. So any questions or comments here about this first bullet? We've got several, so I'm going to keep moving. If you need to come back to it, we certainly will. Responsibility for Virginia Tech to perform collection analysis of the material outlined in the project. In the project proposal, either by transferring material to VTUL or during a site visit. So what do you think that means? What's good, what could be better? Where are you confused with that bullet? 

[Speaker 6] Does that mean the collection analysis would be how they're going to determining how they might want to deal with it, digitize it, or categorize it or? It just seems a little vague. I'm not sure.  

[Speaker 7] I'm also a little unclear on that term. 

[Selena Cozart]  All right. You're probably not the only ones. And so collection analysis of the material outlined in the project proposal, either by transferring materials to VTUL or during a site visit. Is there anything else in there and that's confusing? 

[Speaker 7] Not a critique, but I like that it can be either during the transfer at the library or during a site visit because that gives us as the host maybe some more wiggle room with our board that we have to answer to. 

[Nathan Hall] I'm going to jump into Mike's room to see if there's any, if there's any  sticking points there that I can help with. So thanks for letting me sit in. 

[Selena Cozart] Thanks Nathan. We'll continue with our notes. 

[Nathan Hall] Please, yeah. 

[Speaker 8] This is our response, the holding institution, our responsibility to-- 

[Mike Foreman] Okay, yeah. You're right. So yeah. Does that mean they would come to your place or something with, I'm trying to figure it out myself. Okay. Yeah, they're gonna take it, take the, I mean my assumption here throughout the last three sessions is you were agreeing that the holding institution is going to deliver or they're going to pick up what you want them to digitize. They're going to take it back to Virginia Tech, right? They're going to do the digitization, then return it to you in the same format came back in, right? That's the general process. I'm not sure what they mean by this. It may be in the wrong spot. It could be just a  typographical thing where that's not in the right spot. But anyway, that's a great point. Let me add to my comment. Holding institution is not doing the work so to speak. Okay. I also wrote  another one in, and anonymous leopard can write there too, but I already  also wrote ID files that can be publicly accessed. Is that -- what bullet is that. It says work with VTUL to identify digital files that can be accessed publicly through the library's platform for digital collections. So that means they can just get the permission notice, go to your own website or whatever and digitize it themselves as well as out that means to all of you? 

[Nathan Hall] So I jumped in a minute ago to see things, if anyone's feeling stuck. So I hear people, I can hear you engaging with this and see and identifying the parts that are, that are vague. And so that's good. That's what that's for. Is there anything before I jumped in that that was, that kind of made the conversation temporarily stuck that then I can answer that to help you move forward or is it just you're just engaging with it and finding the areas that need to be more, that need to be clarified? [Mike Foreman] I think we're doing fine. We're just sort of digesting, Nathan. There was a comment that really wasn't related to the holding institutions responsibilities, is the idea of 3D scanning, [speaker 3] wanted to know a little bit more about that and perhaps your presence here can answer that question for him. So what does it mean, how does it work or what do you, how do you define it. [Nathan Hall] So onsite versus Virginia Tech takes it, is ,that you're asking for the difference when we do that or?  

[Mike Foreman] Well, I'll just wait, [speaker 3], you may want to re-ask your question to Nathan directly. 

[Speaker 3] One of the things that we have at the Greene County Historical Society are physical collections, objects, et cetera, et cetera. I presume in order to, from a technical perspective, you would want to take them back to Virginia Tech and digitize them. How then are they accessed after you do the 3D digitization? You're able to go online and be able to rotate and see all the different aspects of a particular article.? 

[Nathan Hall] Yeah. Did I share that last week after the meeting? I thought I sent some information out that included 3D technology stuff. 

[Mike Foreman] I think you did, but I'm not sure that it's exactly what [speaker 3] is asking. 

[Nathan Hall] If we have a site that we put things on, that would allow people to interact with the 3D model. We can and have done some 3D digitization on-site. We've got different technologies that we use to do that and some are more involved than others. More time and labor intensive and require different environments. So we've done a lot of on-site digitization at the Taubman Museum because we don't want to transfer their materials to Virginia Tech. We don't have anywhere near the environment, stabilization, the stable environment, sorry, environmental stability that the Taubman Museum in Roanoke has. We've taken archival materials from other institutions and digitized them on-site and then return them. Or in one case, depending on the scope of the project, someone brought in something, it was digitized and then they left with it. There's probably different ways of doing it, but those are three models that come into mind. So any of those are possible, including with 3D digitization. Because of, and most of that was pre-pandemic, and there's no reason technically why we couldn't do that kind of work now other than the person who's doing the onsite 3D work is no longer with us. And so right now I just have part-time people doing that. Like being able to fund their travel is a bit more complicated because they're students and they'd be in class time and so forth. So, yeah, so labor is actually the constraint at the moment, but we have done that and we could do it again. Does that answer your question, [speaker 3], I kinda just talked at you a whole bunch. 

[Speaker 3] Yeah. Yeah. For instance, I didn't think we would be able to provide an adequate environment, particularly for 3D scanning and given the fact that it may be a fairly cluttered environment, you probably, with 3D scanning, want to control background and all this other sort of stuff. 

[Nathan Hall] Not necessarily. We've done, depends on the size of the item, if it's a small item, it can take up nothing, we can do it on a desktop. If it's larger, we can kind of, we just need to be able to walk around it pretty much with a few square feet around it. 

[Speaker 3] Okay. This may be off topic, but it's a question following on to the ID files that can be, to identify files can be publicly accessed. I've seen that some historical societies actually, in essence, post a thumbnail of an image. But if a customer wants to have a detailed JPEG or TIFF image, some historical societies charge for that. So would that prohibit actually an historical society charging for the detailed JPEG or TIFF images? If that case, if we have them digitized by you all? 

[Nathan Hall] Anything that we digitize and put online is available for free to the public. We don't, there's nothing commercial. There's no, we don't collect money for anybody and we don't charge anything for ourselves either. So the digitization is free, but we're trying to make the collection accessible for free as well. If you have certain materials that you want to charge access for at your institution, then those would probably be outside of the scope of what we would want to, of what you'd want to give us to digitize. So you can give us the less interesting stuff that you can give away for free.  

[Mike Foreman] It's lucrative, right? Well, Nathan, Thank you. If you wanted to go to the, if you wanted to check in somebody else, that's great, we're just going to continue accepting comments from folks. What else, in terms of clarity, we would like to entertain here this afternoon. 

[Nathan Hall] Yes. 

[Mike Foreman] Anyone else have any  other comments or questions or things they don't understand about this list of bullets? 

[redacted]

[Speaker 7] So metadata is data about data. So like, who created the record, title, things like that. So all the good stuff that you would describe the record with. If you were asking. I'm sorry, [speaker 2], if you weren't. 

[Speaker 2] Thank you. 

[Selena Cozart] Yeah. So Nathan we were up to the metadata option there. I mean, item. Digitize the original documents to FADGI for standards unless otherwise specified, and provide quality control for the scanning. Probably in the same vein is what is metadata, what is FADGI. I'm sure that there's maybe an index or something like that. Index is not the word I'm looking for. Glossary. Ok, so we've have 2 minutes. Okay. Apply metadata to digital files using the data model established in collaboration with the holding institution. In addition, if the holding institution has responsibility for the metadata creation process, the VTUL l will supply a metadata profile for the intended public platform. Any questions there? Okay, I'm seeing heads shaking no. So I'm going to move next one. Provide development work for interface customizations to facilitate research use of the digital collection. Anything? 

[Speaker 7] No idea what that means. 

[Selena Cozart] Thank you.  And [unintelligible] Provide development work for interface customization. Is that the one we just did? Okay, alright, so we've got 30 seconds. Ingest collections. I don't know if anybody has anything [unintelligible] K we've got like 18 seconds. You guys did great. If anything comes up, you have access to the document. We can add more questions as we  go for Alex and Nathan. Thank you all. 

[overlapping voices] 

[Kelly Altizer] No I love it, I was going to message you earlier to be like, I like your background. Welcome back everybody. I'm just going to check and see. I think that is all of our rooms. Yeah. So Mike and Selena, everybody's back now. 

[Mike Foreman] We can do a bit of debriefing on what we heard, Kelly, about it from breakout rooms? Alright, Alex why don't you go first, you would you hear on your content for the copyright piece? 

[Alex Kinnaman] Yes, I actually would like to start, [speaker 1] was in the middle of asking a question when we were leaving our breakout sessions. In the copyright portion, there's a lot of reference to Virginia Tech's access guidelines. And I believe [speaker 1] was trying to ask a question on, what even are those? That's a great question and we can provide information on what our access guidelines are. But generally it's for accessibility for print-disabled patrons or hearing-disabled patrons who might have trouble reading specific types of fonts or looking at a very, very small picture. We would provide alternate text for images, for print-disabled folks and things like that. But I could give you a lot of information on the access policies if you're interested. So let's see. So for the copyright section, we got through, I think, about a little less than half because copyright is complicated and I have a lot of questions, but I will be asking our copyright librarian to help clarify. But we had some discussion on like, what exactly is a transfer? What do we mean by copyright? The question I will be bringing to our copyright librarian is, what happens when someone violates the use of content provided by stakeholders. A patron of Virginia Tech violates copyright. What happens? I personally don't know the answer to that. Maybe Nathan does, but I think I will get in touch with our copyright folks to double-check. But it seemed that once we got through the irritatingly complicated language of copyright, that what we were discussing was making sense, was my take on it, please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but we went through everything pretty detailed. I feel like dedicating more time to copyright would be really useful for all of us in the future. All of us, including me. Let's see. 

[Mike Foreman] Anything else that was a highlight for you there? 

[Alex Kinnaman] I don't think so. I guess there was a comment, and I wholeheartedly agree, that creating some kind of plain English version of our MOA would be very helpful to our stakeholders as they approach our boards, their boards and governing bodies of trying to explain all the details to them. So I think that is something perhaps we would work on. [Mike Foreman] Yeah, I think your example of some of the language of using CodePen, I think maybe it would be helpful even just to send out independently of any of our workshops. Sounds great to me. 

[Alex Kinnaman] Oh yeah, I'd be very happy to do that. It'll take me awhile and I want to hear everyone's feedback so that we can incorporate some of those questions in. One was, what is a transfer and I was like, man, I would never have thought of that as how it was described from someone else's understanding. And I was like, that is confusing, thinking about it that way and it makes perfect sense. But we had a great discussion and thank you all for participating. 

[Mike Foreman] Selena, will you talk about your 20 minute session and what you came out of it, ma'am? 

[Selena Cozart] Absolutely. So our group was focused on the Virginia Tech responsibilities and one of the first things that came up in discussion was the notion of what does Virginia Tech's insurance cover and who's responsible? And how are they responsible if damage occurs? What's the value of the insurance policy? And so in other words, like just understanding like who, carries responsibility and how, and those kinds of things. There were several questions about just terms being used, like what is 'collection analysis' and what is the scope of that? One comment there was that it's good that there is an option for the collection analysis to be at Virginia Tech or on site with the hosting institution. Is there an after- digitization condition report? There was discussion of that. And we might not have gotten to that. We didn't get through all of the bullets. But there was that curiosity there about whether or not there is an after digitization report. Is the digitization report the same as or part of the collection analysis? And then that just brought up a question because there were three bullets together that seemed to discuss a process. And so that question was, is this a process, steps in a process? Or are these bullet points redundant? Like are they talking about the same thing in different ways? And the suggestion was maybe to categorize the bullets into steps in relation to each other just so that that question doesn't come up, that you're just talking about the same thing over and over again. A couple of other terms that were, people are curious about is what is metadata and what is FADGI for. Then there's a question about one bullet altogether where it says, what does 'provide development work for interface customizations to facilitate facilitate research use of the digital collection,' even mean. 

[Mike Foreman] I'm with them on that one. 

[Selena Cozart] Yeah. So that's how far we got. We had a great discussion. We've got about a third of the bullet points still left that we didn't get to. 

[Alex Kinnaman Selena, would you mind pointing me to the redundant bullet points, could you tell me which one that was please?  

[Selena Cozart] Yeah so it wasn't so much-- The question was, are they redundant? 

[Alex Kinnaman] Ah, okay. 

[Selena Cozart] I'm highlighting them here now, because these four-- 

[Mike Foreman] On the Google Doc Sheets highlighting Alex. 

[Alex Kinnaman] I see okay. 

[Selena Cozart] And bring them over to the chat as well. 

[Mike Foreman] Now, there may be some utility in making like a hierarchy kind of bullet thing or some are sub-bullets of others or something, may add clarity. [Alex Kinnaman] Okay, I hear you, for sure. That's great feedback. Thank you. 

[Mike Foreman] So in my small group was there was the content around the responsibilities of the holding institution, and like Selena's group, we wanted to hear what what the definition of metadata was. I mean, I think I know what it is, but in terms of representing my group. Alex, if you'd want to respond now that's fine or not either way is I think okay, but the whole idea of what metadata is and how it's going to be used for the foundation for this work would be important to define, I think so. And how extensive is it? We had a question around 3D scanning and how that would be, the technical aspect of that. It sort of sits a little bit outside of work group, but it was important to talk about and Nathan came into our group and explained that question, responded to that question and what that meant for digitization services. So next thing was the last bullet, in our group, was provide an adequate environment for digitization of the permanent collection. Brought up the issue of where or, is Virginia Tech coming to us, or coming to the holding institution to do the work, or where they're going to take the materials. Just a little bit of lack of understanding of how that process would work. And I was clarified a little bit by saying well it could be situational for each organization. Some may have great space to have this done in their own location, or maybe it's not quite as organized and appropriate to do the digitization work there so Virginia Tech would come and take the material and then return it when it's finished. So just a little bit of clarity around that issue eventually would be appropriate. Then the last thing was about which files, identification files that can be publicly access. So that was one of our bullet points and whether  that just means to give permission, for Virginia  Tech to go onto your, someplace else and acquire the information on a website or whatever and utilize it. I'm not quite sure what that meant. So any of those, Alex, if you'd like to respond or weigh in on that as fine as well. So I'll stop there. 

[Alex Kinnaman] For sure. So, here I'll turn my video back on. Metadata. Big question. I again could talk about it for a long time. But in this case, it's how we describe your content. Like what is the what is the title, what is the brief description? What kind of document isn't it? Is it maybe a town council meeting minutes, is it an image, is it notes from a meeting sort of thing. Is it, what exactly it is. What format it's in, which we would have. Like, is this a TIFF? Is this a JPEG? Is it a 3D object? So just describing what it is so that it is very clear to a use. And the metadata helps to search. It's like a tag. When you tag something. If we were to tag the subjects or the collection with a tag and people search for that word, everything would then pop up. So we use it for a lot of different things. And it's very, very important. And one of my personal favorite things. And how extensive is it? This depends on what information you have. Some things may not have a lot of information, so we provide what we can. And other items might have a lot of information that we can provide. So there are some minimal requirements like title and description, like what the core of what it is. But really it can be more extensive or less extensive as appropriate. Nathan, do you have anything to add to that? Okay.  

[Speaker 2] So it's like a library catalog entry? [Alex Kinnaman] Yes. Exactly. Exactly. [Mike Foreman] That explains it. Yeah, that's great. Thank you both. 

[Alex Kinnaman] So 3D scanning, this is fairly new to the library, but Nathan has started a program to 3D scan physical objects. So think computer game, where you're interacting in a 3D world and you can turn an object and interact with it. Nathan has started a, an entire program for providing that service to multiple collections. We have a fantastic entomology collection that has been really well, really well done, it's awesome, to interact with bugs. We have some really, really cool bugs in the entomology department that are very fragile. So interacting with them tends to cause the bug to deteriorate over time. Oh, yes, thank you, Nathan. These are bugs and rocks. So this allows us to interact with an object without risk of damaging it or deterioration. And that way you can kinda see the whole thing all at once. I believe that there are a few things at the Taubman that we might be interested in doing. Yes, the public can look at these 3D bugs. We're currently building the infrastructure to host them in our digital library, but this is where they are currently. Do we have it set up, Nathan? In SWVA?  

[Nathan Hall] I'm sorry, what did you say? 

[Alex Kinnaman] Do we have the 3D objects in the digital library? 

[Nathan Hall] Oh, no. So what I've got, I've been sharing right here is an external site called SketchFab that we have a subscription to. They are going to go into our own Digital Library. I'm not happy with our own native viewer and how it's been implemented yet. So there's still some development to do on that side. And also I have to have the students generate thumbnails for all of them. So SketchFab has this stuff built-in. I just put the link into the chat if anyone wants to look at this later. But there's some geo specimens, there's some insects, there's some pieces from a costume collection. Most of what you see will be the insects. We're finding there's limitations on some things. Some things are harder to digitize than others, so there's variants in quality. So the butterfly Swallowtail just showed you I'm rather happy with, this bumblebee, I'm less happy with because hairy things are really hard to do 3D scanning with. It takes a while to fully, so really good detail some aspects of it, the back looks kind of chunky and waxy and kind of slightly deformed. So anyway, there's limitations on the technology, but this is just a view of what, what, what Alex is talking about. And we can do small things like bugs, we can do larger things like statues. 

[Mike Foreman] Thanks Nathan. That's a great example. Appreciate it. Alex, do you want to continue? We want to leave room, of course, for you for reflections on today's discussion as well. 

[Alex Kinnaman] Either way, I'm happy to keep going. 

[Mike Foreman] And we will, we want to well, if you have a few more minutes on some of the other questions like the environment, like whether we Virginia Tech comes to the holding institution or they come and pick it up or how does that, how do you see that differences happen? 

[Alex Kinnaman] I think that it would really depend on what resources the holding institution has. We're currently working with a group where we have provided some consultation on digitization guides and some equipment. And some of the finer details. But then they are performing the digitization themselves. And then we will then transfer it into our preservation system and our access system. That's one example. Another, I know I've brought up the Taubman. We went to them with our digitization equipment to photograph on site. Another option would be we receive your content, so your physical content is transferred to our digital imaging lab and then we perform digitization and return the physical content. So there's a lot of different objects or objects, excuse me, I was looking at a word, a lot of different ways that we could go about doing it. And it's really just dependent on what works best for the holding institution and what resources are available and how much you want to be invested in the digitization process versus the description process or another one of the processes. So it's very, very context dependent. [Nathan Hall] Two other quick examples. One, people have brought the materials, had them for a very small collection or very small project, brought the materials to the library and then walked out an hour later, the stuff was done. They brought them, took them home the same day. That's if it's a few book volumes. That's really easy. And then there's also the on-site stuff that Alex already mentioned. There's, it could be done over a period of time Where, were there hours a day for days in a row. Or there's been, we've done this, well, some of my colleagues did this with Calfee, they came in and did a digitization day there. So that was a model that wasn't that wasn't my program. That was another Virginia Tech partnership with Calfee. It was Virginia Tech that you did that with, wasn't it, [speaker 5]? Yeah. And then Virginia Tech also, and this time it was the library with the Montgomery Museum in Christiansburg. There was a digitization day there as well. And that was actually, actually that wasn't hosted at the museum, it was hosted at the Christiansburg Public Library. 

[Mike Foreman] I see. Yeah. [speaker 6], your question, would you ask that for us? You're on mute. Sorry. She's asking [speaker 6], you're on mute. It's okay. 

[Speaker 6] I was thinking in terms of the 3D scanner at being used on-site for at the holding institution, if that was possible. It could allow for objects that you wouldn't normally, you know, might be too fragile to move or that sort of thing or too expensive and you're afraid might get damaged. 

[Nathan Hall] Yeah. We have done, we have done off-site digitization. We don't, we haven't really scaled it into a large project, but we have examples of that. So at least one of the costume pieces in that SketchFab link was done on-site. That was really involved because hanging a costume on a form is a challenge in itself. 

[Mike Foreman] Interesting. Selena and I just were like migrating to a group discussion which is in our agenda, so we're doing fine. Just wanted to point that out that you're getting to open it up now for the last few minutes before we let Alex reflect a bit. Selena, would you have any comments to date for the moment? 

[unintelligible] 

[Selena Cozart] [speaker 3]s hand is up. I wanted to see what his question or comment. 

[Mike Foreman] Thank you. Go ahead, [speaker 3].  

[Speaker 3] In the case where we may be handing over material to Virginia Tech for digitalization, would it be possible to kind of insert an expected timeline in there? We'd be probably happy to let it go, some of our archive material go for a week, a month, but a semester would be a bit long to do without. So it is, would it be possible in certain timelines into an MOU if it's to be digitized at Virginia Tech?  

[Alex Kinnaman] Absolutely. Absolutely. That would be included in the scope of work section and the projected resources. So those two charts on in that section would outline approximately how many hours would be necessary to digitize a certain amount of content or to provide metadata for a certain amount of content. And this, this will include details of transfer. So if we are transferring, it would be explicitly written how we're going to do it, who is responsible and the timeline involved. So absolutely. 

[Speaker 3] Very well. 

[Mike Foreman] There's a couple of more minutes for some Oh, [speaker 2] I see your hand. 

[Speaker 2] Yeah. This is related to the copyright section and something I've mentioned before. I think this whole project is based on a collaboration between Virginia Tech and our other organizations. And I think we're working together to create something that can be of real value to the larger community as well as our own. And I think that the section is talking about granting a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual license to commercialize without the permission of the holding institution, isn't working within that spirit. It sounds more like a taking than a collaboration. And these organizations are often really challenged financially and our working hard just to survive and perform a mission. It might be better if this could be reworded, not on a case-by-case basis, but on a, an agreement basis that in some way work it out so that Virginia Tech could collaborate with the member organizations to commercialize. And the member organizations would get some benefit from that. So that Virginia Tech would then be working to strengthen our organizations as well as collaborate and sharing information. 

[Alex Kinnaman] Yeah, I hear you. I could see how that language just kind of comes across the wrong way there. Excuse me. So right after that sentence on access for, pardon me, frog in my throat. So right after that sentence on provide access copies for commercial use without permission from the holding institution, it's followed by, if the holding institution notifies VTUL that it does not have permission to provide copies for commercial use, then we would direct anyone asking for permission to use it for commercial use back to you. Does that soften that a little bit or do you still have some concerns? 

[Speaker 2] That's still doesn't, only in this situation where the whole institution doesn't have permission. But what about the things that the holding institution does have permission with? They're generally not able to quickly and easily commercialize on that material. Whereas Virginia Tech has extraordinary resources to do that. Where in a collaboration, the holders of the material can collaborate in commercializing it. With financial benefit going to the, to the university as well as the holding organization. And it just seems to fit the whole spirit of collaboration. [Mike Foreman] Perhaps, Nathan, you can discuss that issue with your attorney and maybe soften that language or be inclusive with the holding institution directly in that statement. What do you think? 

[Nathan Hall] What I'm thinking about right now is, so there's the memorandum that was drafted by the by the university legal that's editable. So I'm wondering if, if, if we, from that, made a template that we are most likely to enter into all of our agreements within this initiative, within this particular Southwest Virginia archive initiative, and take out things like that that are not in the right spirit. And because I have no intention of commercializing anything from this project and or even letting it be commercialized by someone else at the university. So yeah, I'd rather probably just strike that from any agreement that I work in on this initiative. In terms of, for me, that would be the easiest way forward to try to identify a revenue stream and a way to process that. So that we can generate revenue in the library and then transfer it back to an, to a partnering institution would be extraordinarily complicated for the library. So the best, the closest way I've been able to come is through a project like this where I invite you in and compensate you for your time, to your organizations. And I hope that that's helpful in that spirit, but to do it on a permanent basis going forward, so if somebody uses material and then we have to collect money and transfer it back, I don't know how what the mechanism would be for that. I'd be inclined just to remove that language from what we've put up. I mean, we can put this agreement or an agreement example on our website and say, here's the kind of things that, here's the kind of agreement that is how you interact with us. But we'll just have the the template that we're, the version of the template that we're most likely to work with. Do you think that would be helpful?  

[Speaker 2] Yes, I do. [Nathan Hall] Alex, do you think we'd be able to do that, to create our version of the MOA? 

[Alex Kinnaman] Yes. I think that's completely appropriate. And again, the copy the whole MOA is like the big full thing of everything that could be included. Things can be removed for sure and that might be the most straightforward way to handle that as Nathan said, just striking that section out. 

[Nathan Hall] I really appreciate your question and your frankness and directness. That's, that's easy to work with when it's framed like that. Thank you. 

[Mike Foreman] Thank you. [Speaker 2] My feeling is that removing that section doesn't remove the possibility of commercializing. That could be worked out on a case-by-case basis as something separate from this agreement. 

[Mike Foreman] Thank you, [speaker 2]. Good good responses, Nathan and Alex.  [speaker 3]? 

[Speaker 3] Yes. I had I think I asked Nathan earlier about the issue of charging access and basically Nathan again says that's outside of scope. Same answer. I think that [speaker 2] got, however, I also note that several historical societies, when they charge for images, there's one charge if it's going to be for personal or non-commercial use. If it's for a commercial use, it's another charge. And so maybe allowing the Historical Society to be able to, in essence, charge for commercial use and get permission for commercial use might be, I don't know if that'd be appropriate language to include in the MOU. 

[Mike Foreman] Nathan, Alex, would you be willing to accept some suggested language perhaps back to you in an email or something, maybe you can entertain that.  

[Speaker 3] Okay. 

[Nathan Hall] Yeah, I think that could happen on a case-by-case basis. We can make adjustments to the language. But again, my only reservation is about Virginia Tech collecting revenue and then transferring it back. Even just the collecting revenue part through the library's website is, there's nothing like that that exists right now and it creates all sorts of IT security issues to transfer funds for it, for us to even receive funds electronically. [Speaker 3] I think understand that the issue would be, in essence, the holding institution would not relinquish a right to ask for compensation, commercial usage? [Nathan Hall] Asked from, for people that-- 

[Speaker 3] Right now someone who wish to use it for commercial purposes, then I think it would be appropriate to have that company organization, whatever asked for permission. 

[Nathan Hall] So I think in examples, so if let's say a textbook publisher says we want to include this image in our textbook that's gonna be distributed across the country and it's gonna be sold to elementary schools or whatever. We'd like to use this image from your collection. Do we have permission to do that? And what Virginia Tech would typically say in this case is, here's the person who owns that. You have to get permission from them. And then the publisher would reach out directly to you and enter into that agreement. Does that sound appropriate and helpful?  

[Speaker 3]Yes. That would be, I think, clarity on the situation more than just in the commercial  use kind of way. [Nathan Hall] So we talked about metadata in some of the discussion today and what that is and that would include or could include that kind of language like the Terms of Use. And that would be a private use is allowed, commercial use, please talk to you, the holding and the owning institution. So that's how we would typically label that.  

[Mike Foreman] Thank you. Great discussion and a key point and really important to get straight. We're getting close to 3:00 and in our agenda Selena and I wanted to turn to Alex for some reflections. She was our core presenter today and a key person in the formation and development of the MOA. So Alex, would you offer any reflections on what you heard today and some path forward perhaps. 

[Alex Kinnaman] Absolutely. First, I just want to thank everyone for all of their feedback on this document. I know that it's large, unwieldy, and full of jargon. And I very much appreciate all of you interacting with it and interacting with us to provide feedback. We really appreciate it. What I'm hearing is that there are, there's too much jargon for real clarity. And I think that that is something that we can work on through some kind of translated version that provides links and describes the FADGI is the F-A-D-G-I, which of course is very specific to digital libraries. So to really clarify some of that vocabulary I think would be a great first step for us to work on and to provide to you. I'm also hearing that copyright and ownership is high priority and sorting out the details on how content would be used or reused. And I fully agree, and I believe that our copyright section, as it stands now, can be edited. We can strike certain sections and we can work with you to determine what is most appropriate for you rather than leave all the language as is. And that's part of the goal. I also agree with Nathan on creating kind of what our more standard MOU would look like, or MOA would look like, in terms of our relationships with each other. I think taking out some of those commercial issues and clarifying some of the copyright especially would be helpful for us to work for, or work towards. Let's see, I'm looking through the feedback again and I think we've touched on many of the questions that came from the small groups, and we can provide clarity on quite a few of those. There will be some email follow-up, particularly about copyright, since none of us here are quite the experts in that for some of those specific questions. But this was really helpful for me personally. I think that once we create another resource that translates it so that you can understand it, determine if you agree with it and bring it to your board. That would be my personal next step, I think. Nathan, do you have anything to add? 

[Nathan Hall] No. Nothing to add other than I just wanted to revisit again because in case anyone came in late or miss that part just the, I really appreciate your time and there's tremendous value in it. There's tremendous value in this conversation and in hearing your feedback and so we can improve our processes. This day was really productive for that. Because I value your time. This grant does compensate it. And so this will not be handled by IEN this is between Virginia Tech and you. So IEN is helping me by maintaining a list of who's at which meetings so that we can basically I'll be following up with you probably in July after the last meeting. So I'll be able to reach out with everyone and ensure delivery of compensation. There'll be a bit of a trail paperwork. [speaker 2] has been through this because he's been a consultant with me on this project for the last three years, but I think there's always been a, I think we initially had to register him as a consultant for the university and then there has been an invoice that he's submitted quarterly. I don't know if you had to provide a W2 at some point or what, but I'm assuming you just did that once rather than every year. I'm not sure. Anyway, it's hopefully not too onerous, but it's it's, uh, yeah, I'd like to anyway, that's all to say, I'm grateful for your time and I want that to be reflected in how we treat you. 

[Mike Foreman] Thank you, Nathan. Also, Alex, you indicated earlier you would send the PowerPoint out for people's uses as well as they move forward with their boards and various folks for information's sakes. Well, we're going to end very soon. We have two more quick things to do and they're all, it's all about, we wanted to check the temperature of the room, so to speak, to use a tired metaphor, we wanted to see for those in particular has been through the last three sessions with us now and the one today about MOA, we wanted to see where your level of confidence would be and just sort of signing up for this in a general way. So we're asking for sort of a thumbs up or a thumbs are no response kind of a thing. If you feel like you're feeling pretty good about this and what you've heard. And it seems like there's just a few obstacles and barriers in the way. And you think this is a great idea that we'd asked just if you would give Nathan and Alex a sort of indication of how you're feeling about this. So if it's okay, if you just give a thumbs up, if that's okay. And for those who do not want to do that, we're just gonna kinda count the thumbs, so to speak. How are people feeling about this? Alright, I see mostly thumbs up. All right, Fantastic, Great. Two thumbs up, [speaker 8], and we can only count one set of thumbs! So thank you very much. 

[Selena Cozart] I did notice we had -- 

[Mike Foreman] [speaker 1], Did you did you have a thumb? Oh it was like this, one-and-a-half thumbs, I see, [speaker 1], did you ever vote for that yet or not? Do you have a thumbs up or anything? Oh, good. Okay. Great. He's on you but I see a thumb up, so I'm not going to ask him. So this is a personal thumbs up. You're feeling pretty good. What about your board and organization if you were to present this and things, these questions have been worked out, do you believe your organization would then move forward? Would you give an indication of that as well? A thumbs up. Okay. Pretty good, resonant, okay. Great. Alright. Sounds like we have pretty good agreement thus far with some of our outstanding questions. So that sounds great. Appreciate that. And I think that's good news. Go ahead, Selena. 

[Selena Cozart] Yeah, I was just wondering for those of you who don't feel confident with your board or your ascending organization, is there anything that you need that you know of that might be helpful? 

[overlapping voices] 

[Speaker 3] I think having a copy of Alex's presentation would help. I also think it very likely, rather than just say we would provide blanket access, to really build that trust relationship with certain things that we feel very comfortable with and other things that maybe we'd be a little less comfortable with later on. 

[Mike Foreman] Thanks, [speaker 3]. Sounds reasonable. Yeah. Anybody else want to chime in? 

[Speaker 5] I just want to articulate back to my board, just what this is, but I think they will be reassured by the number of other partner organizations involved in this process. So that what we don't understand, or we're not certain about, the fact that so many wonderful institutions are involved, that we have to think that this is a good thing to enter into.  

[Mike Foreman] Thank you, [speaker 5]. Anything else from you, Selena, on this issue? 

[Speaker 1] Yes. Speaking particularly from the Blue Ridge Heritage group's perspective, we likely will become over time a holding institution by becoming aware of sources of information that are not officially in existence right now. And therein, from that perspective, all of my questions about, what do they really mean, you know, why do I have to do this? You know, I've had contracts before with the government and then that didn't work out well, what's going on here? So some help in selling the idea to the non-pros of the group. 

[Speaker 2] Hello. 

[Mike Foreman] Thanks [speaker 1], that's a good  point, appreciate it. Nathan, would you send us off well, on a Friday afternoon? Final comments. 

[Nathan Hall] I hope you all enjoy the weekend and thanks again for joining me today and for the last few sessions or if you may, this might be the first one for [speaker 4]s case, but I'll be in touch and I can see that there'll be a lot of work ahead. It looks like there's a lot of follow-up to do with individual organizations. So my biggest obstacle on my side will be capacity. So, but I've gotta team, so I hope to be able to find a way to be reaching out to all of you. I'll be on break for the next, well I'll be on conference next week and then on break the week after that. So I look forward to seeing you all at the end of June and then I'll start being in touch about compensation and then moving forward with the limited scope of to get it to get us started. 

[Mike Foreman] I think our next meeting is June the 24th. Put that on your calendars now. 1:00. Same time and day kind of thing, Friday at 1:00. And we'll be communicating with you and so will Alex and Nathan. So we look forward to seeing you in a few weeks. Please enjoy your weekend. Thank you so much.