Gathering Momentum

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 documents that they wished to share with the group as a whole.

  • The Development Team reported that they were ahead of projected deadline for creating and sharing amongst themselves a GitHub repository. Meredith and Alex explained more to the group about the importance of GitHub. It allows the Development Team to stay synchronized with one another in making design changes, sharing data, and posting content. So far there is a Master branch and a Design branch. There can be any number of branches. An important principle in GitHub is that any branch other than the Master branch might get broken but the integrity of accomplished work will be preserved as long as the Master branch remains intact.

  • The Development Team is using GitHub to work on the scaffolding or platform for our Morningside project site. We have so far been individually contributing various items with various content fields concerning buildings or places in Morningside Heights. The platform designed in GitHub will determine how users interact with those items, how they are presented, etc.

  • Individuals were invited to continue adding items as appropriate to our old bare-bones project site. All of these will finally be absorbed into the platform currently under design.

  • The Design Team has two logos under consideration. These two, with variants, will be presented to the group as a whole by late May.

  • It was decided that any instruction being provided to any team should be announced in advance to the group as a whole, so that anyone who wished to could participate. For example, Alex was scheduled to meet with the Design Team after this morning's meeting in order to instruct them in how to use the program Illustrator for design of logos. Other group members decided to join in this instructional session in order to learn Illustrator basics.

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.