Project Goals
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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
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Deliverables and Work Products
Key Tasks and Outcomes
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Outcomes
Project Tracker Coming Soon!
Sprints | Outcome | Responsible Parties |
|---|---|---|
| Sprint 1 | Gained foundational understanding of back end, and established collaboration practices with each other and other HUIT and LTS colleagues. | Technical Project Team |
| Sprint 2 | Investigated front end frameworks and decided on React, diagramed a draft front end architecture, and "made real" step 3 (semantic retrieval) in order to help begin the front end work. See recording of demo here. | Technical Project Team |
Sprint 3 | Initialize front end development (big win: to work with fastapi for semantic retrieval), finish deploy of semantic retrieval, and experiment with one LLM generative feature and finish indexing the Finding Aids. | Technical Project Team |
Definition of Done
Stakeholders
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Team Member | Title | Project Role(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Enrique Diaz | Manager of Library Software Engineering | Product Owner (LTS) |
| Doug Simon | Senior Digital Library Software Engineer | Developer (LTS) |
| JJ Chen | Digital Library Data Engineer | Developer (LTS) |
| Maura Meagher | Associate UX Developer | Developer (LTS) |
| Carolyn Caizzi | Senior IT Project Manager | Project Manager/ Scrum Lead (LTS) |
| Robert Hampton | UX Researcher | UX Researcher/Designer (HL) |
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.
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 2024 | Platform 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 2025 | Digitized collections components are built. Platform is monitored for costs and analytics are gathered and reviewed for full launch. |
| 4 | April 2025 | June 2025 | Cont. building digitized collections components and platform is publicly launched. |
Assumptions, Constraints, Dependencies, and Risks
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