In February 2010 Bill DeJohn asked me to draft a proposal for a review of the platform that supports Minnesota Reflections for the Minnesota Digital Library. Reflections currently lives on a CONTENTdm system which may or may not be the right platform for the next five years of Minnesota Reflections. The task would be to discern the likely technologies required to support Reflections through 2015, conduct a review of the available platforms for supporting such needs, and reporting back a set of findings and recommendations for the MDL Management Team to consider.

Process

I would begin the investigation with interviews of two key MDL staff to determine the likely areas of focus for Reflections over the coming five years as well as to review the successes and failures of the current platform. This would be followed by interviews with two key technology administrators to both gather information about the support requirements of the current platform and intelligence about alternatives they see as feasible. Finally, I would conduct a set of interviews with three people outside MDL engaged in projects that address some of the needs identified in earlier interviews to help identify technologies that should be considered for a future Reflections platform.

Once interviews have been conducted I would focus on two to four alternative platforms, gather information about them, and document how they would address MDL needs and impact MDL support requirements. I would then write up a report of these findings as well as my own conclusions and recommendations.

Alternatives

I anticipate that the MDL staff I would interview would be Marian and Keith, since they probably have the best finger on the pulse of demands being made of reflections. However, it may be possible to interview both of them together, leaving me with time for a third interview without additional cost. This could be someone else on the management team.

I anticipate that the key technology administrators would be Jason and John, though, again, it may be possible to combine this into one joint interview. If so, it may be possible to interview on more person, perhaps Michael Berkowski who has been supporting the server side of other Reflections-related systems.

I welcome suggestions for the outsider interviews. I would likely reach out to someone involved with newspaper projects in the US or Australia, someone else managing a consortial collection, and perhaps someone managing one of the platforms the report would be focussed on.

Suggestions are welcome for alternative interviewees.

Also, if you want to capture broader input into the future needs of MDL Reflections, I could develop a survey to share with the MDL mailing list. Developing and analyzing such a survey, however, would be an additional cost. While gathering broader feedback might be interesting and illuminating, I am not sure it is critical given the familiarity staff already have with the anecdotal feedback they have been getting.

Costs and Timeline

Deliverable 1: Report and recommendations regarding the technology platform of MDL Reflections.

Cost: $6,000

If the timeline is not too urgent, it would be easiest for me to wait until June or July 2010 to start this work, with a goal of finishing by the end of September. But if the need is pressing, we could start in June 2010 and set a completion target of as early as the end of July. Other commitments would make it hard for me to get this done much sooner than that.

If a survey is also desired, I would suggest adding a month to the timeline for survey development, deployment, and analysis. This would be an optional deliverable.

Deliverable 2: Survey of MDL past and potential participants about their hopes for MDL Reflections.

Cost: $1,300