Category Archives: First Wednesday

Announcements, First Wednesday, Technology

New Project Request Process

Last week, I presented our New Project Request Process at First Wednesday.  This request process is to help the Digital Strategies & Technology (DST) Leadership Team more effectively evaluate and prioritize projects that require ITS resources.  Over the summer, we developed and tested a two-stage workflow aimed to lower the barrier for library staff to submit project ideas and streamline the prioritization of projects into our three new project management streams: Library Systems, led by Karen Newbery; Web Experience, led by Tom Crichlow, and Application Development, led by Cory Lown, or into the existing Operations stream, led by John Pormann.

You can view the presentation here.  (My presentation begins at 35:45, but you should definitely watch Karen present on the Updated Request App and her trip to DKU.)

The quick summary notes of our process is this:

  • Project Summary is a short, one page summary of your project idea that includes 4 major elements:
    • Summary
    • Project Rationale
    • Goals
    • Stakeholders
  • The DST Leadership will evaluate Project Summaries within one month of submission and accept it, decline it, or request more information.
  • Accepted Project Summaries will be assigned a Project Lead, who will guide the Project Sponsor in writing the Project Charter.
  • Project Charter is an in-depth project plan that includes these elements:
    • Project Details:
      • Requirements – list of the high-level project requirements
      • Scope Statement – narrative description of the project scope
      • Deliverables – A deliverable is a unique and verifiable product, result or capability to perform a service that must be produced to complete a process, phase or project.
      • Estimated Schedule – focus on schedule and timeline, not specific dates
      • Completion Criteria – what must occur before project is considered complete
      • Goals – specific measurable objectives the project must achieve for completion
      • Dependencies – any outside factors, including people, data, and systems
      • Collaboration and communication strategy – frequency of meetings, project management tools used, plan to provide communication to those outside the project
    • Risks to Scope, Budget, Resources, Schedule, Technologies
    • Stakeholders – people outside of ITS (List of names and contact information)
    • Project Team – roles needed for team (Specific team members will be assigned, if project is approved and scheduled)
    • Budget – especially important for grant-based projects
  • The DST Leadership will review Project Charters within one month of submission.  Accepted project charters will be prioritized based on one or more of the following:
    • Portfolio Management review of resources by the Director, ITS
    • EG input for projects involving two or more divisions, or that impact campus users, or that impact a majority of DUL staff
    • Input of corresponding AUL, if competing projects require same team members of an previously approved project in queue
    • Input from DUL department or existing committee with governance oversight of a particular area, such as WebX or Digital Preservation and Production Program

We believe this process will enable us to plan projects more effectively with project sponsors and utilize the Libraries’ resources more efficiently.  We also believe this will improve communication with stakeholders and provide EG with better information to make priority decisions for projects that have benefit or impact to our staff and users.

You can download the Project Summary and Charter template here.  You can submit your Project Summary to dst-lt@win.duke.edu.

 

Behind the Scenes, Duke Digital Repository, First Wednesday

September scale-up: promoting the DDR and associated services to faculty and students

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It’s September, and Duke students aren’t the only folks on campus in back-to-school mode. On the contrary, we here at the Duke Digital Repository are gearing up to begin promoting our research data curation services in real earnest. Over the last eight months, our four new research data staff have been busy getting to know the campus and the libraries, getting to know the repository itself and the tools we’re working with, and establishing a workflow. Now we’re ready to begin actively recruiting research data depositors!

As our colleagues in Data and Visualization Services noted in a presentation just last week, we’re aiming to scale up our data services in a big way by engaging researchers at all stages of the research lifecycle, not just at the very end of a research project. We hope to make this effort a two-front one. Through a series of ongoing workshops and consultations, the Research Data Management Consultants aspire to help researchers develop better data management habits and take the longterm preservation and re-use of their data into account when designing a project or applying for grants. On the back-end of things, the Content Analysts will be able to carry out many of the manual tasks that facilitate that longterm preservation and re-use, and are beginning to think about ways in which to tweak our existing software to better accommodate the needs of capital-D Data.

This past spring, the Data Management Consultants carried out a series of workshops intending to help researchers navigate the often muddy waters of data management and data sharing; topics ranged from available and useful tools to the occasionally thorny process of obtaining consent for–and the re-use of–data from human subjects.

Looking forward to the fall, the RDM consultants are planning another series of workshops to expand on the sessions given in the spring, covering new tools and strategies for managing research output. One of the tools we’re most excited to share is the Open Science Framework (OSF) for Institutions, which Duke joined just this spring. OSF is a powerful project management tool that helps promote transparency in research and allows scholars to associate their work and projects with Duke.

On the back-end of things, much work has been done to shore up our existing workflows, and a number of policies–both internal and external–have been met with approval by the Repository Program Committee. The Content Analysts continue to become more familiar with the available repository tools, while weighing in on ways in which we can make the software work better. The better part of the summer was devoted to collecting and analyzing requirements from research data stakeholders (among others), and we hope to put those needs in the development spotlight later this fall.

All of this is to say: we’re ready for it, so bring us your data!

Equipment, First Wednesday, MSI, Technology

Multispectral Imaging: What’s it good for?

At the beginning of March, the multispectral imaging working group presented details about the imaging system and the group’s progress so far to other library staff at a First Wednesday event. Representatives from Conservation Services, Data and Visualization Services, the Digital Production Center, the Duke Collaboratory for Classics Computing (DC3) and the Rubenstein Library each shared their involvement and interest in the imaging technology. Our presentation attempted to answer some basic questions about how the equipment works and how it can be used to benefit the scholarly community. You can view a video of that presentation here. 

Some of the images we have already shared illustrate a basic benefit or goal of spectral imaging for books and manuscripts: making obscured text visible. But what else can this technology tell us about the objects in our collections? As a library conservator, I am very interested in the ways that this technology can provide more information about the composition and condition of objects, as well as inform conservation treatment decisions and document their efficacy.

Conservators and conservation scientists have been using spectral imaging to help distinguish between and to characterize materials for some time. For example, pigments, adhesives, or coatings may appear very differently under ultraviolet or infrared radiation. Many labs have the equipment to image under a few wavelengths of light, but our new imaging system allows us to capture at a much broader range of wavelengths and compare them in an image stack.

Adhesive samples under visible and UV light.
(Photo credit Art Conservation Department, SUNY Buffalo State)

Spectral imaging  can help to identify the materials used to make or repair an object by the way they react under different light sources. Correct identification of components is important in making the best conservation treatment decisions and might also be used to establish the relative age of a particular object or to verify its authenticity.  While spectral imaging offers the promise of providing a non-destructive tool for identification, it does have limitations and other analytical techniques may be required.

Pigment and dye-based inks under visible and infrared light.
(Photo credit Image Permanence Institute)

Multispectral imaging offers new opportunities to evaluate and document the condition of objects within our collections. Previous repairs may be so well executed or intentionally obscured that the location or extent of the repair is not obvious under visible light. Areas of paper or parchment that have been replaced or have added reinforcements (such as linings) may appear different from the original when viewed under UV radiation. Spectral imaging can provide better visual documentation of the degradation of inks ( see image below) or damage from mold or water that is not apparent under visible light.

Iron gall ink degredation. Jantz MS#124, Rubenstein Library
(Jantz MS#124, Rubenstein Library)

This imaging equipment provides opportunities for better measuring the effectiveness of the treatments that conservators perform in-house. For example, a common treatment that we perform in our lab is the removal of pressure sensitive tape repairs from paper documents using solvents. Spectral imaging before, during, and after treatment could document the effectiveness of the solvents or other employed techniques in removing the tape carrier and adhesive from the paper.

Tape removal before and during treatment under visible and UV light.
(Photo credit Art Conservation Department, SUNY Buffalo State)

Staff from the Conservation Services department have a long history of participating in the library’s digitization program in order to ensure the safety of fragile collection materials. Our department will continue to serve in this capacity for special collections objects undergoing multispectral imaging to answer specific research questions; however, we are also excited to employ this same technology to better care for the cultural heritage within our collections.

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