Respecting Deadlines and Project Integrity

The Project management Team (Nancy Friedland and John Tofanelli) met on Monday to discuss how the Humanities and History team should best move forwards on our Morningside Heights Digital History (MHDH) project in light of our pending deadline for the initial launch of our public site–January 1, 2015. Here are our decisions:

  • Downsize specifications for initial launch of public site. Our present guidelines for initial launch specify that each author should contribute three exhibits (that is, multimedia essays) for his/her chosen building or location plus twenty items with metadata, some of which should be in support of those exhibits, some of which can simply enhance the site overall. We have decided that the specifications for initial launch shall be revised as follows: one exhibit plus eight items with metadata from each author.

  • We will leave it up to the MHDH team to decide at our 11/18 meeting who would like to add content beyond the initial launch specifications, what sort of content they would like to add, and within what time frame.

  • The Project Management Team will meet with the heads of the Design Team (Karen Green) and the Development Team (Meredith Levin) prior to our 11/18 meeting to clarify how those groups will be working together to complete the architecture of the public site.

  • In both of the meetings described in bullets immediately above, the Project Management Team will seek input needed to assess if the January 1, 2015 initial launch deadline is feasible.

  • In order to provide the Design Team and Development Team a sample exhibit page to work with, John Tofanelli will author an exhibit page for his chosen building by 11/17.

Considerations:

As stated in a poster about our project that was recently exhibited by MHDH team members at the Digital Library Federation meeting in Atlanta: ‘The project is important, but the process of learning emergent technologies . . . is equally, if not more, important than the product.’ The entire MHDH team is in agreement with this viewpoint.

Our Project Management Team felt strongly that respecting the original deadline for the project, insofar as possible, would provide all with a welcome sense of accomplishment. Downsizing the scope of the initial launch specifications, furthermore, would create a goal within reach that would provide each team member with an inspiration for the completion of work in progress. It remains the intention of the Project Management Team to work with the MHDH team to maintain fully the integrity of the project. Full attention will still be given to issues of metadata, site architecture and design, content, and functionality. We will aim to find and implement workable answers for the questions regarding these issues that have arisen throughout our work on the project. It will simply be a smaller site at the point of initial launch–one that may grow as and if members of the team choose to continue adding on to it.

Overall, we hope that other librarians engaged in project-based learning of new skills might find our example useful. Integrity and quality remain accessible goals–regardless of the sweep and scope of a project. Sometimes sweep and scope need to be reined in so that learning objectives can be attained.

John L. Tofanelli

Author: John L. Tofanelli

John is Columbia’s Librarian for British and American History and Literature. His research interests include literature and religion in 18th- and 19th- century Great Britain, textual criticism, and book history. He has enjoyed the chance to explore the early architectural history of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine.