LSC 548: Class 1

Week 1

Web Project Outline: A Systems Analysis Approach

The Stielow text provides the steps in planning a virtual library project using a systems approach analysis approach. Since many of you may not have the Stielow text yet, this site will provide an outline of his suggested approach. Your goal is to arrive in class on June 1 with a "Project Definition" so #1 below provides some guidelines in what you should be thinking about when you define your virtual library project. Since the project groups will be made up of three to four students in the class, your project idea may not be used. You may decide you would like to work on someone else's idea and be part of that team, but I'd like you to prepare the definition of a project and consider the other aspects of the Initiation Phase regarding your suggested project.

Initiation Phase

1. Project Definition

Is the purpose to have an electronic sign proclaiming or marketing the institution?
The purpose of the Western Massachusetts Master Gardner Association Virtual Library (WMMGAVL) is to allow total virtual access to all sources that will help the Master Gardener on call or out on a volunteer site (that has computer access) to look up information on the spot. This would be in lieu of taking bulky reference books to the site. The problem is computer access but that can be dealt with at a later date.
Is the project a new work product or supplemental resource - such as a virtual library?
The project is probably a supplemental resource. There is presently a Western Massachusetts Master Gardener Web Site so this virtual library site will supplement the present WMMGA Web Site.
Is the purpose to provide staff with alternative sources of information for their jobs?
The purpose is the provide Master Gardener Volunteers with alternative sources of information for their volunteer time.

The site design should reflect and further the prupose of the institution, so you should consider tried and true questions - the who, what, where, when and why:

Who is the intended audience - a specific local group or a more general/national audience?
It would be mostly for the Western Massachusett Master Gardeners. There are four counties. They are: Franklin, Hampden, Hampshire and Pittsfield. The information would be geared to this part of the state but all Massachusetts and national Master Gardeners night benefit from the site.
What is the scope of the project - what elements are included?
This is still under consideration. I was going to go through the 12 week program and use this as the basis for the scope of the project.
Where will the operations and machinery be located - in house or contracted?
I will need to find out how the web site is operated and I would assume my virtual library could be housed there also.
When will it be launched - a rough timetable?
Hopefully in 10 weeks by July 27, 2002.
Why do you need to undertake such an effort?
I think this effort is needed because the Master Gardener's sponsor a hot line on the web. Right now some of the answer are gotten by resource books, online queries to google and calls to the Hadley Garden Center or the the UMASS Extension Service. It would be nice to have this information available on had to allow the volunteer empowerment over answering the questions themselves.

2. Authorization

Analysis should include some perception of staffing, cost-benefit implications, and potential impact on operations now and in the future.

I will be consuling with two people on this project. Both are Master Gardeners. One is Donna DuBour a veteran Master Gardener from Hampden Country. The other is Candace Trerotola, a new Master Gardener from Hampshire County. I hope to talk with both people after June 10th. For this class, you might think about how you and two or three others can manage the project you have in mind. You may not be able to complete the entire project within the ten-week period so consider what is workable given the peramaters of the course.

3. Web Policies - Legal/Ethical Concerns

You must be concerned with copyright and privacy rights that may influence policies and rules for site development and operations. These and other legal issues will be discussed in Chapter 3 of the text but always keep such concerns in mind.

This is an interesting topic and I need to reread Chapter 3 and apply it to this situation. I did create a web page with pictures for children's books and it was determined that that page was good under the "fair use" guidelines. My page made 50% of the guidelines which enable me to be under the umbrella of "Fair Use."

4. Initial Staffing Analysis and Team Selection

Your team will consist of you and two or three other members of the class. I will be working along on this project with the help of the other two Master Gardeners. The skills that will be needed to make up the team include: analysis of how to structure the page. What to put on each page. What elements to include. What element to exclude. Java script. html design skill typing skills printing skills

managerial competence
informaiton and user handling expertise - hopefully the two Master Gardeners will help here.
content specializations - Master Gardener Consultants.
design skills (graphics, layout, typeface) - Candace and Elizabeth and Donna.
implementation capabilities - Elizabeth.
maintenance responsibilities - Elizabeth.

5. Project Timetable and Documentation

Again, your project may not doable within the ten-week period for this course, so set up an outline of a timetable setting milestones for what can be done by your group within the paramaters of this course.

You and your group should accomplish all of the above by the time you leave Kingston on June 1.

Prototype Phase

The author suggests that smaller institutions (such as your group) will likely fold the Prototype Phase and the Pilot Phase into one.

1. Project Definition, Policies, and Timetable

You should have your project defined, establish any necessary policies and set a timetable for the accomplishment of tasks very early. Hopefully, you will have this done by the end of the face-to-face meeting.

The Western Massachusetts Master Gardener Association Virtual Library site is to be used by the Master Gardeners who will eventually have a lap top they can bring with them to different venues and be able to answer questions on the spot for people who have them. Visitors should be able to answer any gardening question a general public person might ask at the Home Show or the Big E or any other place.
This site will concentrate on identifying plants.
Commercial sites will not be used. (The organization is a little sensitive to their use.)
The design phase will begine the week of June 29th.
The programming will start the week of July 5th.
I will be on vacation for a few days the week of July 12th so programming may take longer than thought.
The prototype will be posted the week of July 19th.

Bugs will be corrected and the site enhanced for the week of July 25th.

2. Three Elements of Background Research

All members of the team should become involved in the "play" of looking at good ideas and concepts. Data gathering should initially concentrate on a top-down view of three elements:

Organizations Factors: What services or elements do you have and intend to present through the Web?
Ideally, this site will help the Master Gardeners answer questions from the public that they are not able to answer from their reference books. It will be an all encompassing reference site for gardeners. This is ambitious so to narrow the focus it will start by helping the Master Gardener identify those plants that are not found in their on-hand reference books. How can you best lay out the site to organize and display them for your intended audience.

The top tier as describe in Stielow will the the general purpose of the Western Massachusetts Master Gardener Association Virtual Library. This hopefully will not duplicate the information on their home web page. It will highlight the purpose of the Virtual Library and give general overview of the library.

The second tier will be focused on the four counties of the Association, Pittsfield, Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin. This will hold information that is specific to these regions. There will be a Reference Link that will be the heart of the Virtual Library. This will link to the areas that were covered in the training and will be ordered in the Dewey Deciam System order as suggested by Stielow. Why re-invent the organization of libraries if they have already been organized. Their will be a children's and youth portion to this virtual library and it will have a link for young children as well as a link for young adults.

Audience: For whom are you designing the site? For this type of Web project, it is important to settle on a primary target audience and then try to understand its particular methods of information retrieval. Do you also have a secondary user group in mind?

Mostly Western Massachusetts Master Gardeners will visit this site. They will use it primarily for helping people in person, via email or qustions the Master Gardener might have. The general public will have access to this site also as well as children. The common attribute the audience would have is an intersing in plants and gardening.

Content: What specific information needs need to be in place to encompass the services or elements that you intend to present? What is available from other sites? what will you need to devleop in-house? What policies are applicable?

3. Analysis

Here the team evaluates the findings in the context of the project definition and functional needs. Are things pretty much following the intial outline? Do any of the concepts or definitional structures need changing?

4. Design Solution

With analysis and consensus in place, the process flows into an intial concrete and functional design. Be flexible, change is inevitable. Technology and your expetise will evolve even during the next few weeks!

5. Offline Mounting

Your group can mount your site on one of the group members individual sites so you can view it yourselves, evaluate it and do any debugging.
The plan is to mount the site to the gslis.uri.edu server and when it is approved by the Master Gardeners, Donna Du Bour, Candace Trerotola and George Kingston, then it will be made a link on their member only web page. In the future there could be a public version available.
You can also make it available for me to view if I can be of any input.
Any feedback from you would be greatly appreciated.

Pilot Phase

Again, this phase will probably be folded into the Prototype Phase above.

1. Technical Implementation

Here is where you will open your site to the rest of the class or to the world. The author suggests that at this point you will include the definition of performance benchmarks (such as the additon of new specialty areas or a scheduled annual review) and the installation of counters or other measuring devices to monitor services. Online help and security should be addressed.

2. Content, Technology, and Design Evaluation

Again, any systematic approach involves continuous evaluation of the design/organization, content and technology.

3. Enhancement Plans and Implementation

Based on the above evaluation, improvements on the site need to be planned and implemented.

4. Marketing and Training

With the unveiling of the site, you will need to decide which commercial search engines you would like it listed on and what metatags you should use to optimize its use. Also consider other marketing strategie to ensure you target audience will be aware of the site.

Maintenance Phase

You probably won't have much of a chance to do much with this phase, but your group should consider and plan how the site will be maintained.

Broken links will be fixed or eliminated on a daily basis.

Any ad hoc changes will be made in a timely manner.

The site will be updated on the schedule of the newsletter, The Grapevine.

The author includes much more than the above, but this should provide you enough detail of his systematic approach to get you to come to the face-to-face class with an idea for a virtual library project.

Designed by Elizabeth Toms Matthews
University of Rhode Island
Graduate School of Library and Information Studies
LSC548 - Herb Carson
Last Updated 06 / 20 / 2002
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