Overview

This week went over very nicely for the team. I had done some more metadata entry and Dylan had called in a meeting with everyone (Jack and Thomas had class so they did not make it) with Dr. Mike Sheir attending. I thought this meeting had a really great conversation about how the metadata is going to be used and how our system can be updated so that in the future a machine would be able to read this. Nate had brought up it was smart to add a section saying which file I had left off of, this introduced how the team could be more organized.

Organization

Since I had already made a section display which folder the metadata was in, we first talked about sectioning off certain areas. Visually, this is a good idea so nobody gets lost; however, this would not entirely benefit an automation system reading in the metadata. Dr. Sheir had brought up putting in a column at the start to keep track. I thought this was a wonderful idea, it takes out the guess work and puts in a system so when a script is going through the folders, it is easily able to find the image attached to the data.

Dr. French, I had read your note about using sharepoint for organization, and brought this up to the team. While it could be good, I'm not sure if it holds up for longer or is any different than what we are using now. Building a site, it needs a frontend (how the site looks) and a database (where metadata is stored) then using an API to connect the two. I do not think there is an API that connects to sharepoint for this unfortunately.

The team did talk about what would be good for a website and the permissions we would need. Dr. Sheir brought up an amazing point that the archival material is not ours. The team at the New Smyrna Beach had just given instructions to digitize it. I volunteered to make a design document, showing what the archival material may look like if we put it out there. I am planning to work on this throughout next week, so emailing the museum won't be stressful, and they would be able to decide if they would want the product.

The future of this team

I personally think the systems being placed right now are going to guarentee success for this project. Given the team does a good job at delivering what the New Symnra Beach museum wants, this can lead to attracting more smaller museums. I also infer that this program, if the website is a success, would be able to take on computer science interns. This would help bridge the gap between technology and history as well as uplifting the students at UCF for real customer work. I'm not sure how exactly asking for funding works, but this might be favorable for the future of CHDR's grants. I'm very happy with how everything has turned out so far!

Ending notes

I'll be out of state for this weekend, but working on the design will be my first priority and maybe configuring a small front-end without a database. Working on the metadata will also be a priotiry for me given now it'll be more organized. As for the blog site, I'm planning to finally fix the mobile site of this and maybe add in a 3D globe to the front page which I think would look cool! Dr. French, if you have any input on all of this, please let me know. The more information I have to work with will always be helpful and happy Valentine's weekend :D