Where we are: 3CDL is now Compass

The teams from Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith colleges are very happy to announce that Phase II of 3CDL is complete and has been renamed Five College Compass: Digital Collections. This initial release of our digital library platform is the result of a great deal of dedicated work by 3C and Common Media staff. Please explore Compass and let us know what you think by using the Feedback button at the bottom of every page, or through the Contact form.

 

 

Where we are: (we’re back!) June 29, 2016

Beginning in March of 2016, the teams from both Common Media (CM) and the three colleges (3C) were hard at work finalizing our Phase I work. We are very happy to report that the result of that work is a Project Plan for Phase II. The Library Directors approved it and gave us the green light to proceed with our collaboration. We have updated our About page with an overview and scope of Phase II!

We are very grateful to partners CM for their expert project management and for applying their deep technical experience with the Islandora platform to the Phase I process. Additionally, the entire team on the 3C side put in a huge amount of work to facilitate the (quite deep) scan of our current digital repositories, metadata, and DAM environments.

So what’s next? 3C Team Lead members held a kick-off meeting with CM last week to review the Phase II timeline and project plan for any necessary re-calibrations, and discussed one of the first major project segments ahead of us — metadata! There are two areas where metadata management are particularly important: for the successful migrations or rebuilding of our collections/assets within the Islandora repository, and to support the capability for our users to search across all three of the schools’ collections from a single front-end. A 3C/CM Metadata Team will be formed to support and facilitate this work, comprised of staff from all of the schools led by Liza Coburn, Metadata Consultant for CM. A scope and responsibilities charge will be created for the Metadata Team, and their work will begin ASAP.

There are other operations in the works: some continuing project management administrative follow-up to get the wheels going (setting up shared documentation spaces, setting up tools for communication and task tracking), as well as a closer look at the elements of the first major project milestone and breaking out how that work will happen over the next weeks and months.

We hope to update this site as much as possible over the course of Phase II, and we’re happy to answer any questions you may have about the project! Please use the Contact Form at the bottom of this page to get in touch.

 

 

Where we are: February 9

No, you didn’t miss a post– it’s been awhile since we have updated the site! Lots has been happening, here’s the latest on the project:

  • We reached a number of milestones in early January and wrapped up some of the information-gathering exercises requested by Common Media (CM):
    • the User Stories Roadmap
    • a Technical Survey, which outlines the general scope of the IT landscape at each school
    • the Ingest/Workflow Survey, with samples of collection assets and related metadata for review by CM
  • At our face to face meeting with CM on January 15, we discussed the first outcomes of data analysis created from our initial collections, metadata and technical information-gathering efforts, along with some initial scenarios on what the installation of Islandora might look like as a shared application. It was pretty exciting to see some of our ideas and conversations take shape.
  • Out of this meeting, we determined that we needed to share information about user access categories. In other words, who are our users? How might they use the repository? What kinds of categories of access are needed? And how do these categories align (or not) among the 3C? We created an Access Survey which CM will review and merge into the other streams of data and 3C information as they proceed with their report.
  • CM is currently closely examining all of the collected metadata and collections information (from both the Metadata Survey and Ingest/Workflow Survey) from 3C so it can be wrapped into the final report.
  • After struggling for weeks on the Governance Roadmap, the 3C team, in consultation with CM, came to the realization that it’s difficult to make and write up governance decisions when you aren’t entirely sure what it is that needs to be governed (in other words, there’s no there there!). So we’ve decided to roll this important work into the report-writing phase over the next two months.
  • And speaking of the final report: from here on in our work shifts more to an iterative process with CM as the report begins to be written, with less emphasis on surveys and data collection.

On January 25, Members of the 3C team and staff from CM attended a gathering at Williams College in the beautiful new Sawyer Library. Members of the Islandora Consortial Group (ICG), along with representatives from Barnard and Wesleyan, met to discuss ways in which the combined colleges might work together to collaboratively develop functionality for Islandora. It was a wonderful day and we’re all looking forward to continuing the conversation.