Summary of DML Steering Committee Meeting
March 19-20, 2003 - Université Joseph Fourier
Grenoble, France

Participants:

IMU Liaison
Rolf Jeltsch

Cellule MathDoc/NUMDAM
Catherine Barbe-Zoppis
Helene Begnis
Elizabeth Cherhal
Thierry Bouche
Claude Goutorbe
Laurent Guillope
Yves Laurent

Meeting agenda (password required)

Jean Poland reported that a request for supplementary funding was submitted to the National Science Foundation in February 2003. Since no response has been received we will proceed without additional funding and reallocate funding from the original grant to support the second planning meeting. Several members of the steering committee indicated they would pay their own way if necessary to that meeting.

The Steering Committee reviewed each interim report, discussed next steps and developed a draft agenda for the second planning meeting scheduled for May 21 and 22 in Göttingen Germany, preceding the CEIC meeting in Berlin. Göttingen State and University Library will be our host, thanks to a kind invitation from Library Director Professor Dr. Elmar Mittler.

Prior to the Steering Committee had interim reports from the working groups on content, rights and licenses, technical standards, archiving, and metadata. At the meeting, Rolf Jeltsch provided a copy of a report titled “DML Working Group on Economic Models” which had been presented and discussed at the January 2003 meeting in Berlingen sponsored by the European Mathematical Society.

With much assistance from Kizer Walker, the steering committee will draft a final report incorporating the interim reports. The draft report will be disseminated prior to the Göttingen meeting and presented by the Steering Committee at the meeting. Most of the meeting will be taken up by discussion of the draft report.

The interim reports represented a great deal of hard work. In several cases the Steering Committee was concerned that the degree of specificity suggested in the reports would make it difficult for participants to meet the high standards and result in projects that developed without meeting any of our standards.

The Steering Committee would like to have a centralized international registry for journals. Hans Becker volunteered to develop such a list in conjumction with EMANI. A list of monographs that have been digitized can be built using the Linum database: http://www-mathdoc.ujf-grenoble.fr/linum/

The committee felt that copyright is an issue we cannot solve at this time. Simply stated, DML is not in a position to change laws. We can encourage authors to share non-exclusive digitization rights with their institutions in addition to publishers. It is important that DML is not seen as a threat to publishers.

The committee recommends that all digitization efforts should include mirroring and archiving. DML members need to be aware of the real costs that are currently being absorbed by institutions including libraries and universities.

The committee agreed that minimum standards for metadata should be adopted, with additional recommended standards. There was concern that a strong stand on complex metadata would result in greater non-compliance.

After much discussion about governance the committee felt that DML is best understood as a loose federation of projects and interested organizations. Some members would find it difficult to contribute membership fees. We expect that representatives of DML projects will meet annually. The meetings would be self- financed and members would take turns hosting. We recommend that grant proposals include funding for attendance at annual meetings. Cornell University Library will continue to host the Web site under a more general url. The International Mathematical Union is an appropriate umbrella organization for the DML.

Rolf Jeltsch reported on the development of a DML-EU proposal from the European Mathematical Society in response to a call from the EU Sixth Framework Program. The proposal is due April 15; a decision is expected in October. The DML-EU will hold a meeting in Göttingen on May 22-23, following our DML planning meeting.

On Wednesday afternoon (March 19) members of the Steering Committee, along with Celulle MathDoc staff, participated in a seminar sponsored by L'Institut des Sciences du Document Numérique en Rhône-Alpes (ISDN) (see http://isdn.enssib.fr/jdn/direct.htm). On Thursday afternoon, NUMDAM staff presented an in depth program on the development and the technical aspects of their project. See the NUMDAM link at http://www.numdam.org/

All members of the Steering Committee extend thanks to our hosts for their generous hospitality, for providing comfortable and appropriate meeting space and excellent meals. The programs were very well planned and executed. Kudos and thanks to our colleagues at Cellule MathDoc/NUMDAM.