You Can Go Home Again

I thought I knew the four things I had learned from today’s session. They are listed below. But then, when I read Barbara’s post, ‘Revisiting Requirements Guidelines,’ I realized that we really were returning in today’s session to crucial principles from some of our earliest meetings.  In one of those meetings, Alex had asked us to think carefully about what our requirements were for the site and had warned us of the danger of having requirements that were too diffuse or too great in number. This idea was revisited today when we were asked to think of digital history projects as being situated on a spectrum reflecting varying degrees of formality, exactitude, and time-commitment.

Four things learned today:

  1. We should picture digital history projects as existing on a spectrum. At the formal end of the spectrum are projects that expand the realm of FEDORA resources. At the less formal end of the spectrum is what we are doing: compiling exhibits and narratives. An example of a project on the FEDORA end of the spectrum is the Avery real-estate brochures project: it is highly systematic, employs high resolution images, makes a coherent special collection public, and serves as a full-fledged scholarly resource. Those are all virtues; but they are out of scope for us. Our Morningside Project site allows a high level of individual freedom in the creation of exhibits. Individual project curators can decide on the types of stories they wish to tell. We will not be creating high resolution images that scholars can use as a substitute for the real artifacts. Although our site will implement overarching features that contribute to site coherence and functionality, these will not require the level of hyper-meticulous, time-consuming, and systematic pre-planning characteristic of a more formal site.

  2. Our project site is the flip side of our process site. Each enhances the value of the other.

  3. Exhibits are where the story is told. Collections are where we store the resources to be used in exhibits. An exhibit can draw its items from any number of our Morningside collections or it can focus on items from a single collection.

  4. Peer programming is a technique whereby one individual directs another step-by-step how to enter data, etc. It is a useful technique for teaching, learning, and programming.

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.