Tara's Reflection

This project can be deemed a success in many ways.  I have not had the opportunity to do something so hands-on during my time at SIS.   From this project, we are able to have a concrete result from our work, available online for any prospective employer to see.  There were some road blocks and frustrations, mostly in the administration of the project at the beginning.  Once we set our minds to just getting it completed to the best of our abilities, the forward progress was apparent. 

Based on the structure of the original proposal, we divided up our tasks with the intent that we would each have some equal workload.  Although I think we each initially volunteered for an area of our “expertise” (or at least some background), I personally knew that I needed to gain some experience in areas in which I had no solid foundation, especially metadata.  I had no experience at all in website design, but I volunteered for the task.  Although I did not start much of my research for my annotated bibliography on content management systems until after we got deep into this project, combining my task of researching Omeka with reading about other CMS’s really helped solidify what I practiced with this project.  By the end of the project, when we were actually uploading the files and metadata, we all met together and attempted the uploads together.  None of us had ever created a website before so the actual creation process was something we all needed to see and do. 

Although the five of us had not all worked together at once, each of us had worked with another in some capacity in past classes and therefore had someone to vouch for our accountability and performance.  I understand that not all projects, in the academic or professional world, are granted this advantage and for that, I am extremely grateful I was able to work with the people I did.  We each knew our assigned tasks and no one failed to deliver on their part.  We did seek some much needed advice and instruction from Bridger outside of class that helped us understand exactly what Omeka could and could not do.  Most of our progress was simply trial and error, especially when it came to the actual implementation.  We uploaded the images twice and the metadata at least three separate times in an effort to get them to link together. 

If this had been an actual digital library, I would assume that there would have been a little more feedback and criticism from the host institution that may have required more research or modifications on our end.   I was a little frustrated with the lack of “pizazz” offered by Omeka, but we knew that we were working with the free model.  None of us had any experience or understanding of how we would even go about using the server model, although I think that project would have been even more valuable.  Had this class been dedicated to the creation of a digital library all semester long in conjunction with content lectures, I know that many students would have really benefited from the hands-on and practical experience of going out to the web and actually creating something tangible.  Overall, this was a valuable project, and I wish that other SIS courses did similar projects.