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Reimagining Discovery DRAFT charter

Project Goals:

Transforming how researchers, students, and the global community access and explore Harvard's extensive collections, while making all kinds of information easily discoverable and accessible.

  • Enhance user experience 
  • Improve discovery and accessibility of special and archival collections and all types of digital collections including but not limited to image, text, audio, video, born digital, immersive (3d, XR, VR, MR), GIS, etc.
  • Integrate distinct digital collections discovery platforms, including developing a new one
  • Investigate and use AI-powered tools to enhance user experience and metadata

Problem and Value Statements

Problem Statement

Since its founding, Harvard Library has been a guardian of the University’s memory and a gateway to the world's knowledge. We currently host an array of discovery systems that use different design approaches, organizational priorities, and technology standards. Scholars and the public expect to be able to find trustworthy information and discover resources easily regardless of the system that is managing and providing access to it.

Solution Business Value

By enabling rich cross-collection search, this project will offer end users intuitive, contextual discovery of special collections, archives and digital collections, through a mix of conversational interfaces, browsing that emphasizes the visual nature of materials when appropriate, and recommendations for similar or related resources, all informed by ongoing user research.

Alignment with Harvard Library Multi-Year Goals and Objectives

This projects aligns with FY 24 HL Goals:

  • Diversify and expand access to knowledge
  • Maximize the breadth of tangible and digital collections across Harvard and peer institutions, for the benefit of all partners

  • Increase our focus on acquiring, accessing, and creating digital content that is accessible to all, as open as possible, and permits creative uses of collections as data 

  • Invest in open access infrastructure and services that support equitable, sustainable models for scholarly communication and open knowledge

Vision

In Scope/Out of Scope

In Scope

Out of Scope

Deliverables and Work Products

Key Tasks and Outcomes

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Task

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Outcome

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Responsible Parties

Definition of Done

Stakeholders

(Who is sponsoring the work? Who is funding the work? Who will accept the work? What organizations, departments, or people will benefit from this work? Link to related governance structure wiki page(s) where relevant.)

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Executive Stakeholders

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Library Stakeholders

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Adrien Hilton

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Technical Project Team

(Roles include: Product Owner, Project Manager, Scrum Master, Business Analyst, Quality Assurance Analyst, Architect, Software Engineer, Systems Engineer, UI Designer, Metadata Analyst, Subject Matter Expert, Release Coordinator)

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Team Member

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Project Role(s)

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Cost and Estimated Schedule

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Estimated Schedule

Note: Project is managed by using the Scrum framework and these phases/milestones will be adjusted. Below is a tentative plan for Year 1 of project.

both and physical with generative AI features

Phase

Phase Start

Phase End

Completion Milestone

1

July 2024

September 2024

Natural language discovery platform with generative AI features for discovering digitized, special and archival collections is built and tested by selected end users.
2

October 2024

December 2024Platform is adjusted based on user feedback, data pipeline is built, and platform scaled for a public soft launch. Design process for digitized collections component is completed.
3

January 2025

March 2025Digitized collections components are built. Platform is monitored for costs and analytics are gathered and reviewed for full launch
4

April 2025

June 2025Cont. building digitized collections components and platform is publicly launched

Assumptions, Constraints, Dependencies, and Risks

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