Thursday, September 29, 2016

Annual Meeting of Digital Scriptorium, Houghton Library, Harvard University, 23 September 2016
(photos by Matthew Heintzelman)



Digital Scriptorium
October News
On Friday September 23, 2016 Digital Scriptorium held its annual all-day meeting of the membership at Houghton Library, Harvard University, in Cambridge, MA. The annual meeting this year was exciting for several reasons:
1.       It coincided with the opening of the Beyond Words exhibition of illuminated manuscripts in Boston area collections, held at three separate venues: Harvard, Boston College, and the Gardner Museum.
2.       The same Beyond Words exhibition helped to encourage interest in DS membership among Boston institutions.  At the meeting:
·         Tufts University officially joined DS
·         New York Academy of Medicine became a non-voting Associate
·         Wellesley College sent a representative who attended as a potential member
3.       DS members approved new Bylaws, Articles of Incorporation, and a legal Action of the Board to incorporate DS as a 501c3 tax-exempt organization. This means that DS will soon be eligible to receive tax-deductible donations, apply for government supported grants, and operate as an independent non-profit organization with all the legal protections and privileges that status incurs. We are grateful to the St. Louis based Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants for the Arts who assigned to us a pro-bono corporate lawyer to help us through the requirements of non-profit organization.
Presentations were made about:
·         new cataloging and research tools implemented at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library
·         new appointments and tasks for the DS Advisory Council
·         progress made on the Broken Books project
·         the Digging into Data Challenge and the possibilities of CC0 licensing of DS records
·         the potential for use of authority control of names,
·         a membership strategy based on regional analysis of the Conway-Davis directory and inspired by the Digital Public Library of America.

In attendance were: Christopher Barbour (Tufts), Debra Cashion (Saint Louis U), Lisa Fagin Davis (Medieval Academy), Consuelo Dutschke (Columbia), Lynne Grigsby (UC Berkeley), Matthew Heintzelmann (Hill Museum and Manuscript Library), Janine Pollock (Free Library Philadelphia), Ruth Rogers (Wellesley), E.C. Schroeder (Yale), Barbara Shailor (Yale), William Stoneman (Harvard), Elizabeth Teviotdale (Western Michigan), Vanessa Wilkie (Huntington), Cherry Williams (UC Riverside). Lynn Ransom (UPenn) was absent due to illness.

DS Board of Directors with signed Action of the Board to incorporate as a tax-exempt 501c3 non-profit. From left to right: Janine Pollock (Deputy Director), E.C. Schroeder (Treasurer), Vanessa Wilkie (Director At Large), Consuelo Dutschke (Director at Large), Debra Cashion (Executive Director), Cherry Williams (Director at Large).

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