It is fascinating to look at the variety of documents connected with the early history of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. The guidebooks and historical accounts are, of course, interesting; but sermons preached there can also be highly revealing of how the meaning of the cathedral was...
We were talking yesterday about the purpose of our Morningside Heights historical Web site. What is the overarching vision or the story we are trying to tell? How do we impart any kind of vision to users? One suggestion was that we include narrative elements–for example each compiler of a...
In his Introduction to The Cathedral Church of St John the Divine (1916), the Very Rev. William Mercer Grosvenor, then Dean of the Cathedral, wrote: “It is evident that we are at the very beginning of what we believe to be a great future for this Cathedral. We are trying...
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...
In today’s session I and Bob Scott reported to the group on our experience working with Alex Gil to implement a site enhancement. The site enhancement was the introduction of a distinct page titled ‘Four Things’ to which any posting assigned the ‘four-things’ category (as its sole category) would go...
Each of these meetings was a combination of instruction with hands on workshop. For 8/26 meeting Bob Scott instructed the group on some finer points of Zotero and worked with individuals on questions arising as they contributed bibliographic entries to folders in our Group Library for the Morningside Project. For...
Four things learned today 9-17-13 in conversation with guest speaker Breck Witte, Director of Library Information Technology Office. Columbia Libraries wants to extend developer access to people who are not full-time developers. Since we don’t do this type of work all the time, we need to be extra careful to...
Four things learned today, Oct 1, 2013 When working in Github: “commit often.” Commit every time you’ve made a substantial change. Each time that you commit, you create a version that can be rolled back to in the future. The description field is Optional when you commit. When you are...
1. The difference between Git and GitHub is as follows: Git is a tool to manage your source code history. It lives in your computer. GitHub is a hosting service that lives in the cloud. 2. A repository is a set of files and directories; an historical record of changes;...
Four things learned in the session today December 17, 2013: Responsive design responds to variability in screen size. The designer can encode multiple sets of instructions based on different screen sizes. These instructions determine how the design will configure itself for each screen size. Overlapping elements are a common feature...
1. For learning more about PHP, we should codecademy.com or Lynda.com. 2. PHP is a widely used open source scripting language. 3. PHP commands are typically incorporated into pages that begin and end as HTML documents. 4. The value and power of PHP is that it can execute instructions based...
Four things learned: In the phrase ‘object-oriented programming,’ the word ‘object’ should be construed to mean the data plus the methods information that tell you how the data would like to be used. PHP is an example of object-oriented programming. We can teach ourselves more about using PHP on Lynda.com....
1. One key question in all projects should be: Why? That is, what is my motivation? Whom am I affecting and how? 2. Definition of scope is crucial. Which elements need to be functional online for the initial launch? Which elements could be considered desirable but regarded as optional add-ons...
Now that our Developing Librarian group has been formed into teams (see message immediately below), we have turned our attention to the areas of project planning and management. On March 4, our meeting was devoted to a project management workshop with Mitch Brodsky from the New York Philharmonic. Two important...
I have never felt at home in the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. To me it has always seemed needlessly massive, incoherent, uninspired, and, perhaps worst of all, uninspiring. The questions I am inclined to contemplate when there are not eternal but rather historical ones, such as: How...
For the initial launch date of our Morningside project site, December 2014, we are all expected to have completed three exhibits, and to have provided access to at least twenty items, of which many should be in direct support of our exhibits. An exhibit, in a project such as ours,...
In our Developing Librarian Meeting today we moved forward in various ways. The Project Management team (Nancy and John) presented to the group a new central Google-shared space containing a folder for each team, foundational project documents, and our project timeline. Teams were invited to deposit in their folders any...
In our meeting today we basically focused on two things: the work of our Research and Editorial Team and how to keep this Developing Librarian blog vital and varied–reflective of the vital and varied nature of our own experiences working on this project. Our Research and Editorial Team consists of...
Our Design Team has been learning Adobe Illustrator and has been working in Illustrator on the creation of two logo options for our Morningside Heights history site. Today both logos were presented. One was relatively complete and the other was complete as a concept but had not yet been fully...
For our project we have a small but highly capable project management team–myself and Nancy Friedland. A number of our team’s meetings have also included Alex Gil, our Digital Scholarship Coordinator, who is something of an ex officio member. Initially, I viewed the role of project manager with some misgivings....
The Design Team had done additional work on proposed logo designs for our Morningside History Project site. Two designs were presented to the group for a vote and one was chosen. Both designs demonstrated considerable ingenuity. One key consideration in logo selection was scalability. Would the key idea of logo...
Our project is moving forward along two basic tracks. The first is team accomplishments, and progress here depends heavily on synchronization. For example, the Design Team needed to complete its designs and specifications for logo and home page before the Development Team could begin working on implementing them. The second...
Announcements and updates Bob Scott announced that he, Meredith, Sarah, and Alex have had a proposal approved for the Digital Library Federation Forum in Atlanta this October. They will be doing a presentation on our Developing Librarian project. Design team report Karen Green reported on the latest progress of the...
As the faded Hollywood star played by Elizabeth Taylor in There Must be a Pony (1986) wryly quips ‘That’s the problem with life–bad lighting and no music.’ We might add to this list of life’s deficiencies: insufficient time and inadequate metadata. In a project such as our digital history of...
Following up on recent discussions about the use of metadata in our Morningside Heights Digital History project, we focused more today on implementation and on practice-based rules and agreements. Elizabeth Davis will be our sole continuing member on the Editorial Team. Fortunately, she has prior editorial experience with W W...
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...
The main focus of today’s meeting was on exhibits. 1. What is an exhibit? And what do I need to do to create one? An exhibit is an essay or narrative illustrated by online items that support or enrich what is being said. There is no prescribed length. It should...
1. Team updates The Design team has been working on a front page for our public site. It will be handed over to the Development Team for implementation once the design work is completed. Karen Green, Chair of Design Team, showed the group a Power Point mock-up of the intended...
1. Location for Morningside Workshop meetings The group agreed that these will be held in our Digital Humanities Center on scheduled Tuesdays 10-11. The computers there have big screens conducive to working on exhibits. They also have the full range of software we might want to use. 2. Map color...
1. Development Team Update The Development Team showed our group the new home page for our Morningside Heights Digital History project site. This new page incorporates an historical map for Morningside Heights with its original colors restored (and slightly heightened for emphasis and clarity). The page surrounding the map was...
1. Creative Commons License for our Morningside History project site Near the start of our process, we discussed Creative Commons license options and settled on a CC-BY 3.0 US License. This is featured on the front page of our Developing Librarian process / blog site, which states in the bottom...
1. Terms of use statement The group discussed and reviewed a terms of use statement that been drafted by Bob and John for the Morningside Heights Digital History (MHDH) project site. One minor emendation was agreed upon. John and Bob will next send the statement to Rina Panatalony, Director of...
1. Review of Map Project about development of Morningside Heights - historic map is more powerful because of historical context. Not all locations are on current map. Cognitive noise on historic map. Leak and Watts is in foreground. Level playing field with newer map. Historical map misleading. Historical map not...