Power of Three (POT) 1 begins to build UC Digital Collection infrastructure
As the Power of Three group begins its tasks, team member Lisa Schiff (CDL) discusses the objectives, challenges, and outlook for POT 1.
What do you see to be the goal or desired impact of POT 1's work?
The primary goal of POT 1 is to develop the systemwide infrastructure to support digitized and born digital UC collections, specifically a Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) coupled with an end-user-friendly Discovery and Display (DD) layer. While this infrastructure is intended to be used by all campuses, a primary requirement is to ensure that the system meets the practical needs of campuses that don’t currently have a DAMS in place. This is an exciting effort to ensure that UC can more thoroughly attend to and make available the extensive set of valuable materials throughout the UC system.Â
What are some of the challenges that POT 1 will be dealing with?
The POT’s biggest challenge is developing a good understanding of the baseline requirements for a DAMS and discovery/delivery system. By definition, the system is intended to support a diversity of materials that will exist in heterogeneous formats, have differing types and amounts of metadata, and come with varying levels of curatorial support. Additionally, identifying collections and associated owners presents its own challenges. We are currently in the early stages of tackling both of these issues.
What are the strengths of the team or some of the positive outcomes or aspects of team work thus far?
POT 1 is a highly efficient group that has been able to put structure and specificity around what could be an overwhelming charge. Team members share a desire to have concrete results from our efforts and to build something that will solve real problems for our campus colleagues. This inclination, along with a great degree of collegial respect and support, has established a positive tone for the group and has given us momentum as we move along with our work.
What are near-term next steps that people on the campuses will be hearing about or be involved in soon?
Some of our campus colleagues have already heard about the various POT 1 Lightning Teams (LTs) that are forming to tackle specific, narrowly scoped tasks. Two of the recently formed LTs will be actively contacting collection owners throughout the system, so there will be opportunities to provide information about the kind of support needed for those materials.
